All’s fair in love and business, right? Nope.

One of my competitors is doing something to deliberately use my work (and web presence) to assist his own business. He didn’t ask me. I found out because he was bragging about it at a convention last week. (Another agent told me.) After a few hours of feeling hurt about it, I put on my big-girl pants and made a decision to discuss it here. Here’s what he’s doing:

Retargeting: Do you know what retargeting is? It’s internet advertising that creates an ad for people who click on a specific website.

You’ve been retargeted. I have. Suppose I look at a purple pair of sandals on Zappos; I’ll start seeing all manner of sandals, purple and otherwise, all over my Facebook feed and in the middle of things I read on the web.

Zappos retargets ads for sandals to people who clicked on their sandal web pages. That’s what retargeting is designed to do.

One of my competitors is retargeting people who click on 4 Buyers Real Estate sites. When you come to 4 Buyers Real Estate pages, you are getting retargeted to ads for his business. Get it? He is using my work, my writing, my posting, and my web pages as the source for people to follow around the internet with ads for his company.

Raise your hand if you think this is smarmy behavior.

 

The Realtor® code of ethics prohibits me from defaming a competitor’s business. But you can help punish this kind of behavior.

Please click on as many 4 Buyers Real Estate pages as you please. Share them with your friends. 

I do not pay to retarget my pages. You will not see ads for 4 Buyers Real Estate following you all over the internet. Our company depends on referrals from our happy clients, so we don’t need to resort to lots of paid advertising.

You may start to see ads for another Buyer Broker Company. When you do, you’ll know who is practicing retargeting using my web addresses.

He pays per click for it, if you click on his ad. 

Have a nice day! And by the way, Happy Halloween.