New VHT ImageWorks Marketing Platform Helps Real Estate Brokers Take Back Control of Online Homes-for-Sale Listings

ROSEMONT, Ill., June 20, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- VHT, a leading provider of technology and services for marketing residential real estate online, announced the launch of its VHT ImageWorks platform following a successful beta program involving 20 leading brokerages and more than 100,000 real estate professionals.

VHT ImageWorks is the first turnkey platform that helps inform search engines that brokerages are the original source of all listing information: property details, photos, videos and other real estate-related content. While listing aggregators tend to get between brokers and homebuyers, VHT ImageWorks boosts visibility of the brokers' websites, driving traffic directly to them and helping them win the intense online battle for buyers.

Brokers using VHT ImageWorks experienced a 37 percent average increase in web visits from search engines in the first quarter of 2011, compared to a 9 percent decline for the industry overall. Some brokerages reported increases as high as 100 percent with return on investment as high as 10:1, exceeding any other client acquisition method.

VHT ImageWorks, designed by Internet entrepreneur and Orbitz founder Alex Zoghlin, is the first marketing platform that produces measurable results by significantly improving brokers' search engine-generated traffic and sales conversion rates.

"We wanted to increase our market share of online traffic and provide consumers with a superior experience on our website," said Joseph Horning, President of Shorewest Realtors™, based in Brookfield, Wisc., and Chairman of The Realty Alliance. "With VHT, we achieved that quickly and simply. VHT ImageWorks gave us an easy-button for cost-effectively capturing and engaging homebuyers on the web."

"There's a startling new reality in the real estate marketplace," said Zoghlin, VHT's CEO. "Studies show that 96 percent of homebuyers are now researching properties online. But real estate companies have lost control over their property listings on the web, resulting in billions of dollars in lost revenues."

A consumer viewing a listing on the Internet is virtually the same as a person walking into a broker's office to inquire about a property. Online competition for that homebuyer's business is fierce and too often, brokers are losing out to industry middlemen.  

"We developed VHT ImageWorks to enable real estate companies to take back control of their online marketing and stop them from being cut out of the picture by competitors using their listings to siphon away homebuyers and commissions," Zoghlin said.  

VHT ImageWorks is a comprehensive, automated and easy-to-use platform that strategically leverages a broker's visual assets on the web and utilizes cutting-edge SEO techniques to help connect brokerages directly with online homebuyers. The platform, which managed 300,000 listings during the beta program, digitally optimizes property photos and provides engaging, full-screen presentations using consumer-friendly, multi-media tools. It creates videos with music and narration and posts them on YouTube, DailyMotion and other popular sites. The platform also provides detailed measuring and reporting of results.

The per-agent cost of the platform is about one-sixth the cost of most marketing tools, and provides more functionality for the brokerage and the agent than any one tool alone.  

"VHT ImageWorks is so simple and automated, it took almost no time at all to use," said Steve Storti, Senior Vice President of Marketing, Prudential Fox & Roach, based in Devon, Penn. "The platform helped us differentiate our website in online searches. Our website now appears in more Google search results for many more search terms, driving more qualified traffic to us, so our agents can focus on closing sales instead of finding buyers."  

Other VHT ImageWorks clients include: Carolina One Real Estate, Charleston, S.C.; Coldwell Banker Honig Bell, Joliet, Ill.; Comey & Shepherd Realtors, Cincinnati, Oh.; Hegg, Realtors, Inc., Sioux Falls, S.D.;  Patterson-Schwartz Real Estate, Hockessin, Del.; Prudential Georgia Realty, Roswell, Ga.; Prudential Kansas City Realty - Corporate, Overland Park, Ks.; Willis Allen Real Estate, LaJolla, Cal.;  and Allen Tate Realtors, Charlotte, N.C.

About VHT, Inc.

VHT is a leading provider of technology and services to brokerages nationwide for marketing real estate online. Since 2000, VHT has been providing professional production, management and distribution of visual assets– including photographs, video, multimedia tours and Video on Demand television spots - for more than $1.5 billion in properties for 3,500 clients and more than 100,000 real estate professionals. VHT's production services include the creation of visual content by VHT's nationwide team of professional photographers and videographers as well as the award-winning video editors and image specialists at VHT Studios. VHT ImageWorks is the first turnkey marketing platform developed to position brokers as the original source of listings information on the web, while increasing brokers' online traffic and conversion rates. Venture-backed VHT is based in Rosemont, IL.

Media Contact:
Carol Jouzaitis, [email protected] or 312-342-7304

SOURCE VHT