I believe the folks behind HomeASAP are building something special, and real estate agents should pay attention to it.
Have suggestions for products that you’d like to see reviewed by our real estate technology expert? Email Craig Rowe.
Search Alliance is a bid-based advertising and lead-generation tool developed by HomeASAP.
Platform(s): Browser-based; iOS app to launch soon
Ideal for: All agents and teams
Top selling points
- Gives agents full control of lead budget
- Rewards good marketing
- Good alternative to major portal marketing
- Ties directly to existing IDX home search
Top concerns
- Growing the agent network
- Increasing costs as network grows
What you should know
I believe the folks behind HomeASAP are building something special, and real estate agents should pay attention to it.
I previously reviewed the company’s IDX home search, which is a tighter and more user-friendly property browsing experience than what the major portals offer.
Now, the company is using that tool to offer agents a transparent, affordable way to advertise for leads called Search Alliance.
Agents set a budget and only pay for the leads they earn. They do this using a bidding process based on a preferred territory.
As a user selects a region with a map drawing tool, and the leads originate from consumers who use the HomeASAP portal.
The system dynamically generates the number of MLS listings, their total market value and the median home price. Essentially, agents are given a number of clear factors to guide their ad spend.
By entering a bid amount, agents learn how many leads they can expect to collect, and how much more it will take to be the top bidder for a territory.
Those who want more control can set a budget, and Search Alliance will cap it accordingly.
Taking the temperature of your leads
Agents whose individual marketing efforts bring people (who end up in another agent’s territory) to the portal can earn “Network Credits.”
The originating agent is awarded with an automatic boost to their budget up to 100 percent of their original bid.
Users can track leads by social their media profiles when available and rank them by “temperature” icons.
Every time a lead visits a listing, the agent winning that territory is alerted.
What about mobile?
Search Alliance will be the focal point of HomeASAP’s app, available in a few weeks for the iPhone.
The fully featured mobile version is as handsome as its browser-based sibling and accomplishes the lead tracking in a more concise manner.
The app is fully embedded with home search functionality and geo-tagged listing data for buyer’s agents to use when information is lacking.
To retrieve the information, a user need only be near or in the property for the app to recognize the listing.
The fully featured Search Alliance mobile version is as handsome as its browser-based sibling.
Overall, the user experience was designed to take the intimidation and financial stress out of buying ads alongside listings.
It’s strictly for agents, not people wanting to sell things to agents.
Current metrics
Search Alliance has 14,000 agents so far, but the tool hasn’t been around long. The company’s agent directory has more than 470,000 members.
I’m a fan of what this team of hybrid agent-software executives are doing for the industry.
Those agents harboring angst with Zillow‘s collective data hijacking scheme could find some solace in what HomeASAP’s Search Alliance offers.
Have a technology product you would like to discuss? Email Craig Rowe.
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