August 02 2011
In a crowded restaurant in San Francisco, I sat down with Alex Lange, CTO of Market Leader. The din of restaurant patrons and staff would have been distracting – if the subject matter of our discussion hadn't been so compelling. Was I mistaken, or had Lange just said that Market Leader was aggressively investing and would be making a series of announcements to showcase its comprehensive lead-to-close solution?
"I think it's time we shook things up a little," said Alex. "So we've developed a variety of new products, services, and initiatives. The current launch is called 'Market Insider.' It's a market data tool – and we think it's going to be the industry's best product, allowing agents and brokers to provide all the rich local information that consumer demands. It has two other important characteristics: it is fully integrated into the agent's website and our CRM, and its an amazing value with an introductory free promotion."
Like Top Producer's Market Snapshot, Market Leader's Market Insider offers detailed, local market insights that Web-browsing home buyers find attractive: price trends, community info (crime, weather etc.), local schools, and more. However, Market Insider has several distinct benefits:
We'll share additional details of Market Insider later this week after a more in-depth webinar with Market Leader. We'll follow-up with these details and some screenshots.
Market Leader is extending this offering to meet the needs of clients who want market reports on listing detail pages. "This solution has been live on some early customers' websites for a few weeks," said Lange. "On the first day alone, these customers saw a 15% increase in lead generation from Market Insider. We've had incredibly positive feedback from them and are very excited about making it available to all of our customers on August 3rd."
Needless to say, my head was buzzing after my conversation with Mr. Lange. I scurried back to the Hilton and cornered Victor Lund, our CEO. He shared my enthusiasm. "This effort by Market Leader to empower the industry to extend valuable market trend data is a truly remarkable industry contribution," he said. "It is likely to replace services that agents and brokers pay significantly more for today."