I had just asked my client if her brokerage was doing much business with Chinese customers.
I could see the machines starting to gear up in the back of her mind. I knew what was coming next.
“I would totally do business with Chinese customers,” she said. “I know it’s a growing segment.”
I would have to press her to answer the real question: Was she doing business with Chinese clients right now, or had she in the past?
I’d have to ease into it a little bit though. These kinds of conversations are delicate. Separating the aspiration from the real, without crushing hope or innovation, is tricky.
Every now and then, when reviewing the geography of traffic for a client’s real estate website, I notice a large volume of visits coming from Asia — China in particular.
I’ve been told that Asian buyers are a growing part of certain segments in the real estate market. Since I don’t sell real estate that’s the best I know. But I do know that, globally, in a number of industries, the Asian market is of increasing interest.
There are some obvious reasons: a large population, a growing middle class, aspirational purchase behavior.
Just having a website and saying you'll help Asian customers if they show up isn't the same as pursuing that market.
But the bulk of online traffic coming to a real estate brokerage website from China is usually more about the aspirations of the real estate broker or agent than that of the Chinese market.
Most often, that traffic is from an ad spend that wasn’t targeted to just the U.S. or an even more specific area.
Or it’s the result of various harebrained short-term search engine optimization schemes. These schemes, I should note, nearly always fail.
I’m often called in to try and fix the situation several months later, when Google retaliates for being tricked by some SEO “expert.”
Got Your Eye On The International Market?
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