Leaping ahead

“The impediment to action advances action.” — Marcus Aurelius

Most real estate brokerage websites still hew to the old formula:

Home search box on the homepage. 

Map-based search results. 

Property detail pages with a photo carousel and a contact form. 

Some brokerages generate enough buyer leads off their sites to make this work. But the majority pay website platform vendors exorbitant sums for superannuated crap that costs 10, 20, 30 thousand a month (or more!). 

Oof. 

Worst of all, these websites are frequently set in digital concrete, rendering their owners powerless to do something that might actually help their bottom line. 

Say, for example, telling a story and showcasing their brand in a way that attracts sellers, buyers and recruits.

The way

In early summer, as Michael Saunders & Company prepared to launch the brand refresh and story we created with them, there was one question that loomed large:

How do we update the company website to fully express our new look and brand campaign?

Not an easy question to answer, even though MichaelSaunders.com is one of the country’s best brokerage sites – and one that is maintained by a capable internal team at that. Even in these favorable conditions, renovating a very large site in time for rollout was going to be a heavy lift. 

Too heavy. 

We needed to move. So, in close collaboration with the Michael Saunders & Company marketing team, we set about designing, coding and creating content for a completely standalone brand website that would showcase gloriously the refresh and fully tell the brand story. 

We mined the MS&C photo archive to evoke the company’s deep ties to the community. We commissioned custom photography. We wrote community profiles that surpassed the usual copy-and-paste SEO bait to express the company’s singular connection to these places. 

The touchstone of the site, and the entire brand campaign, is the slogan – “Nowhere but here” – a truth spoken to consumers and agents alike. 

View the full microsite at NowhereButHere.net.

Microsite and main site are connected, and the latter will be updated over time, but all print, social and other campaign promotion will point to the microsite. 

Michael Saunders & Company is not just another real estate company. It shouldn’t look like one in the digital world. They ran into a common obstacle that stood in their way – and leapt over it.