Just over a month ago we launched a new business from our incubator, Classified Ad Ventures, called ListGlobally.  ListGlobally allows any realtor, agent, broker or developer around the world to advertise their listings to a global audience. All they do is upload the listing to www.listglobally.com and we then syndicate that listing to the market leading sites in 23 countries. We make money by charging US$90 to advertise the listing for 90 days and then pay our distribution network a percentage of what we charge. Overall a simple, but effective, model.

We were fortunate to have a great write up of the business in The Australian newspaper last week. Here is the article.

Nerd goes global in real estate listings: Simon Baker’s attraction to the net has paid off

FORMER REA Group chief executive Simon Baker is a self-confessed “closet nerd”.

From a young age, the 43-year-old says, he has been fascinated with computers.

Baker previously ran REA Group, the owner of realestate. com.au, before starting his latest venture, Classified ADventures.

He studied computer science at Monash University, and his first job was a “tour of duty” at IBM in the sales division.

“I started off life as a programmer in sales and marketing,” Baker says.

“As such, you can’t help but get attracted to the internet and the opportunities it provides.”

He loves the fact that the online real estate market is not fully defined yet, and that new products and possibilities are arising on a daily basis.

That fascination has brought him to where he is today — running his own show as founder of online classifieds company Classified ADventures.

The company provides operators of online classifieds sites with consulting services and helps them get the most out of the internet to advertise their listings.

Among the websites in the stable are smartagentsites; Sobox (Social Media in a Box) and listglobally.

The last, launched a couple of months ago, aims to help real estate agents get global advertising exposure for their listings.

After talking to real estate agents around the world, Baker discovered there were people buying properties across borders.

When you look at the way the online advertising space is set up, he says, each country has its own realestate.com.au, but no one is seriously asking how to market a property across a number of countries to attract an overseas buyer.

Out of that idea, listglobally was born.

From there, Baker says, his team approached the real estate.com.au equivalents in 20 markets around the world to see if they could put listings on their sites.

In each market, the website has become one of the most popular.

For example, if you are in Britain and want to buy property in Australia, he says, your first port of call may be rightmove.co.uk (the equivalent of realestate.com.au).

Each month, 1.6 million searches are carried out on that site’s international section, he says.

“What’s funny is that the fifth most searched country is Australia and there are only 200 listings there,” he says.

“It’s all about saying how do I put Australian listings in front of English buyers or South African buyers or Hong Kong buyers.”

Essentially, with one click and a fee of $90, a real estate agent can put their listing on the equivalent of realestate.com.au in 20 markets.

By the end of the year, he hopes to be in 23 countries.

If all goes to plan, listglobally will be a $10-20 million-a-year business.

Baker’s fascination with computers started early, but the property link was accidental, and only developed several years ago, while he was working at realestate.com.au.

Not long after joining News Limited (publisher of The Australian), Baker says, he was asked to undertake a review the realestate.com.au business.

Not long after that, he joined the board of realestate.com.au and asked for a shot at the top job.

In 2001, he got his shot.

For the next eight years, he says, he spent morning, noon and night turning the online property portal around from a loss-making business to what he describes as a very profitable, dominant market player. In 2008, he departed as chief executive of REA Group and a week later started his own venture with some of his former colleagues.

He had two aims. One was to invest in companies through an investment fund known as CAV Investment Holdings, and the other was to build companies.

With the money he earned from his shareholding in REA Group, Baker invested in a number of businesses. But the main focus for him is Classified ADventures.

He identified about four or five ideas and created an incubator in which those new businesses could be formed, he says.

Three of those ideas have become reality: Sobox, smartagent sites and listglobally.

Baker says his team has very clear goals it wants to achieve, given its financial projections.

With distribution partners lined up, he says, the next goal is to increase the number of listings going through the system. “Our first goal is to get to 1000 listings a month, then we want to get to 5000 listings a month,” he says.

“We are the only ones doing this,” Baker says of his new online property classified website.

“We are the first one to go out and line up all these market leaders, link them all together, and provide them with a feed of properties.

“Either it’s going to be an incredibly good idea or I just wasted two years of my life.”

This question got me thinking.  The reader does face an interesting problem and i think that approach to the problem is to think about it like a for profit business and to think about it in terms of what they would do if faced with a similar problem.

I guess the bottom line is that you are struggling in generating enough revenues to cover the costs of the business. I therefore see this as a true marketing problem where you need to communicate the product (what you do) to the potential purchasers and get them to understand the benefits (ie doing good and feeling good about it) if they invest in the product.

I would therefore start by saying who are the most likely customers for your product – ie who are the people that are most likely invest in your organisation.  The simplest way to do this is to look at who has already invested, group them logically and then identify who else should be in the most popular groups and then you need to target them with your message.

Now the next question is what is the offer?  Traditional marketing is all about feature, function, benefit.  So what are the features of what you do, how do you do it and what is the benefit to me if i invest in your business.  Now your challenge is a little bit more difficult as you are selling a service or an experience.  I guess the key benefit for someone investing in your business is feeling good and feeling like they are helping those that are less fortunate.  How do you codify this into a message that when someone hears your message, they will donate.  The way i would approach this is to look at how successful charities do their marketing and then take the best ideas and use them as a basis for your marketing.

Once you have taken this approach it then comes down to execution.  Now i am not aware on how much normally is donated, however you should look at either direct mail (for small amounts), telesales (for medium amounts) or field sales (for large amounts).  This is something that will be tailored to the situation.

For me, the bottom line is that it doesnt really matter if you are a for profit, NGO or charity, the issues are very similar and the approaches should also be very similar.