/Seocracy.com/

Tonight I was invited to a hockey game by some of my suppliers.

First off, the Canucks sucked. Im sorry Vancouver, but WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?!?!? We were playing against Nashville….what the hell! We shoulda creamed them, but it was like our boys were asleep at the switch…we ended with something like 36 shots on goal, and 0 points…whereas Nahville had like 5 shots on goal and 4 points. Disgraceful……..

………….but I digress……………As I was saying, I was invited to a company suite at GM Place by a supplier who I spend alot of advertising dollars with. Now keep in mind, Im not talking about internet marketing or search advertising. I’m talking about print advertising.

Whenever you get a couple beers in business people, and especially in an informal setting, you get some pretty insightful converastion’s happening, and tonight didn’t disappoint. Inevitably, conversation turned towards the power of internet marketing & new media in the real estate industry, with me contending that America’s struggling market (especially Arizona) is light-years ahead of Canadian Real Estate marketers in terms of their adaption and utilisation of digital media……

These fellows are executives from one of the major real estate publications, and as conversation continued, I started explaining to them that, in my opinion, one of the things I think they fail at is their web approach. Their website is a rather embarassing pre-1998 piece of nastiness that really feels like it has been forgotten about. Now a days, with the popularization of brand based networks and the ubiquitousness of digital media, I expect a real estate publication to have nothing less then a complete MLS style listing of projects listed in its pages, as well as video/photographic slide show tours of homes, not to mention full editorial opinion delivered via blog and an open forum for discussion on the market and product offerings. Not only would I be charging developers an arm and a leg to have their ads displayed on page and in email correspondance with users, but I would also be tapping into the realtor market and gleaning advertising dollars from that impressive sub-section of the overall real estate market….

This, more or less, was met with agreement from the executives I was conversing with, but still they had no clue about how to even wrap their heads around the needs and demands of today’s internet user. One said to me “We have been seeing income from our Buy & Sell site dwindly quite rapidly over the past year.” Which prompted me to ask, “What is your plan as to how to contend with the likes of Craigs List?”………only one person in the crowd knew what Craigs List was.

Then it occured to me: Real Estate is an ‘old boy’ industry. I mean…I’ve always known that the industry was full of rough necks and old boys, but it never really hit home until tonight. Tonight, I realized that at some point, someone is going to really step up and shine by showing people the true power of digital media as it pertains to the Canadian Real Estate industry. Here lies before us a market untapped.