Last night the big man from the Boston Celtics, Shaquille O'Neal, was on David Letterman's talk show.
I live in Boston and it is amazing how quickly fans have embraced Shaq. I had a chance to watch him in action a few weeks ago from courtside. Amazing.
Anyway, Shaq told Letterman that he found his house on Google with the phrase: "Big house outside of Boston."
Some smart real-estate person scored big time with that one!
You'll hear the Google reference at about 2:25 in the video: "I live in a small town called Sudbury. I signed kind of late, so I really didn't have a chance to find a house, so I went on Google and put 'big house outside of Boston,' and I found this big 10-acre farmhouse..."
Direct link to video on YouTube.
Do you own the search results for your marketplace?
If not, can you create some great content to drive the natural search results so that when "the big one" searches for what you have to offer, you'll be the winner?
Photo by David Meerman Scott shot December 1, 2010 at the Boston Garden
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Not so sure it was intentional but pretty darn clever indeed :-)
Posted by: Ricardo Bueno | January 05, 2011 at 11:58 AM
And now the #1 Google result for 'big house outside of Boston' is this blog post. Well done, David!
Posted by: Scott | January 05, 2011 at 12:46 PM
Scott, that was not my intention but it is interesting!! Thanks for letting me know.
Posted by: David Meerman Scott | January 05, 2011 at 03:39 PM
It's funny: finding a real estate agent with a good internet strategy is tough to find but worth their weight in gold. We found our dream house with the REALTOR app on the iPhone and snapped it up before it hit any newspaper listings or open houses. It wasn't up more than a few days. THen our problem? What do we do with our old house -- and in this market? We selected an agent that could verbalize a strong sales strategy, that also included a social media/web/email strategy. He sold our house in three weeks. It can be done...although Shaq's story just blows my mind!
Posted by: Richard | January 05, 2011 at 08:43 PM
David - A great example of real time marketing blending with the psychology of how people search to having the right hose at the right time for that listing agent.
As a Director of Training for a large real etstate brokerage in Ohio, this will be a great article to show agents the power of search and the importance of multiple photos, detailed property descriptions, links to local services and features and hopefully video on their site.
Shaq didn't say anything about it in his video but my guess is once he found the eventual link to the "big home outside of Boston" he found valuable information, saw multiple photos and was able to contact the agent - who hopefully responded quickly, i.e. "real time."
Thanks for sharing this.
Sean
Posted by: Sean Carpenter | January 06, 2011 at 08:16 AM
I think this is just another example of how savvy buyers are, and how old school businesses need to change.
Look at how consumers buy new cars nowadays. They are very informed, they know what they want, and the dealer has to be media-savvy or they lose the sale.
In B2B marketing we're finding the same thing--the sales process has to change and adapt because the buyer is informed.
Oh, and I'm still hoping for a Shaq sighting at Sudbury Farms!
Posted by: JeanneBrown | January 06, 2011 at 10:14 AM
Shhh! I don't want my competition to find out. I just started to understand how important that is, and I'm amazed with the results.
Posted by: Mike | January 07, 2011 at 01:01 PM
He should have just Google 'Shack for Shaq'. Thanks for the post. I had a good giggle.
Posted by: Amanda_pants | January 13, 2011 at 04:35 PM