Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
This is Fred Ball for Zions Bank, speaking on business.
Statistics indicate that more than 80 percent of homebuyers begin their search for property on the Internet, an increasingly crowded market where sellers are looking for ways to stand out from the crowd. Robert Davis found himself thrust into the market but has since launched a successful company that garnered national attention.
In 2000, Robert and his brother were doing some Web development work. They went to a real estate convention where they attended a workshop detailing the technology behind providing virtual images of real estate properties. After the convention, Robert purchased a lens and camera just for fun. However, it was expensive enough that he wanted to put it to good use. He decided to work with his brother-in-law on developing virtual real estate tours, which led to the creation of CirclePix.com.
At the time of its launch, Robert considered CirclePix as a virtual tour company, but over the last four years, the focus has shifted to become a real estate marketing company. Its core purpose is photography, imaging and virtual tours. He has developed a tiered image-based marketing system. The base of the program is exposure, or putting the images in places prospective buyers would find them.
The next step is online lead generation. When somebody clicks a link to see a virtual tour, a box pops up that asks the person's name and phone number, which is then emailed to an agent. This also includes offline lead generation such as 24-hour information lines buyers can call to find out about a particular property. The third step is communicating with customers through email, text messages or e-postcards.
CirclePix.com is a nationwide company with close to 400 professional photographers in 45 states who are available take pictures of someone's property. Robert hopes to not only continue to be a total imaging and marketing solution for brokers and agents but also to branch into video imaging, which he feels is the next step.
For Zions Bank, I'm Fred Ball. I'm speaking on business.
