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Simon Parker
LJ Hooker said its $16 million investment into various online initiatives, launched in June 2011, is beginning to pay off, with both its property sale and online traffic numbers rising sharply.
“Our focus is to expand the local agent’s reach via the web,” said LJ Hooker CEO Georg Chmiel, about the company’s three year online plan. “Everything we do is focused on increasing the local agents’ ability to better reach new customers, sell property or manage properties.”
The company, which recently surpassed the 700-office mark, said based on statistics from RP Data and its own internal sources, its residential market share is now 20 per cent higher compared to when it started the initiative.
Moreover, based on Google Analytics, the number of people visiting the hundreds of websites run by local LJ Hooker offices increased by 350 per cent since October 2011.
LJ Hooker said another key result from the initiative was a surge in the proportion of offices actively engaging their community with Facebook pages, up from five per cent a year ago to around 55 per cent today.
“Facebook has become the fourth-largest source of referrals to ljhooker.com.au and office websites over all,” the company said. “Surprisingly, many offices now receive more web traffic referred from Facebook than from traditional real estate portals realestate.com.au or domain.com.au.
“More LJ Hooker agents are also employing Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.”
The company also reported a 56 per cent rise in traffic to the corporate property website, and is now Australia’s most popular real estate agency website, according to Nielsen Market Intelligence.
Other initiatives include the launching of 582 new mobile websites for every Australian local office, which the company sees as “vital” on the back of the number of Australians who now have smartphones, and the 2,500 salesperson profile webpages that it created in late July 2012.
“Our three-year internet marketing plan has three stages. Year one is the building phase, in which we build the basic infrastructure. In the coming, second year, we are moving to the education phase, in which we focus on training agents and principals and encouraging the use of the new tools,” Mr Chmiel continued.
“Our strategy has been to give the individual offices and agents the best possible tools and training. That turns them into online marketing powerhouses.
“As property hunters continue to shift to the web, it is more important than ever for vendors and investors to rely on internet-savvy agents and finance brokers.”
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