Why Do You Advertise?
Branding
Impressions
Attract Buyers
Attract Sellers
Drive Web Traffic
Generate Leads
Branding. The purpose of branding is to make you, and or, your company stand out. We want you to be memorable. Certainly everyone who knows you will recognize you in your ad, they might mention that they saw your ad, and they might tell a friend about you. The point of branding is to be remembered: you can brand yourself as a real estate expert, brand yourself to a community, brand yourself to a firm.
Here’s a very good article about Branding Basics by Laura Lake:
http://marketing.about.com/od/brandstrategy/u/brandbasics.htm
Impressions: Print advertising is an inexpensive way to deliver impressions. If you buy a box of business cards, let’s say you get a deal: 1,000 for $25.00, you still have to hand them out. We do that for you. We’re going to print ~20,000 books and deliver them to more than 500 locations in 4 counties where your potential clients will pick them up in what’s known as permission based target marketing. This is different from other forms of print advertising where your ad is distributed to all of their subscribers who may or may not be interested in real estate. When advertising in the newspaper, for example, as much as 90% of your advertising is directed to people who aren’t potential home buyers or sellers. Our books are picked up by the target market, the end user, the consumer. Your customer.
Buyers will pick up a book; they’ll see you in print. Your ad must convey to them “Here’s a knowledgeable, successful agent.” Buyers want to work with agents who can afford to advertise and who can blame them? Buyers want information and they want a real estate agent who can help them find and buy a home.
Sellers will pick up a book, they’ll flip through it. Who do they want to list with? What about your ad will appeal to them? Can they readily imagine seeing their home advertised under your header?
The point of advertising to buyers and sellers is to “find a need and fill it” as Zig Zieglar said so often. Use your advertising to make the phone to ring. Get some leads coming in and work those leads. Advertisements are your introduction to Buyers and Sellers: your ad goes out ahead of the handshake.
Driving Web Traffic: When I went to Atlanta for TREB (The Real Estate Book) training they gave me a homework assignment. I had to select a client for a case study. One of my firms was experimenting with ads at the time which made them a perfect test case. In class, I was challenged to Google what I thought would be a potential buyer’s search phrase, I typed: Rutherford County real estate for sale. Google returned 98,000 hits and my client was not on the first three pages. Today, I ran the same search, Google returned 152,000 results, my client is not in the first 5 pages.
At TREB we not only host your listing in our system, we send your listing to 30 online partners. Each of those partners has their own SEO (Search Engine Optimization) engineers. They’re all chasing web traffic, they have their own marketing plans, and they all drive internet leads to agents. Your specialty is real estate. Why spend hours typing your listings into multiple search engines? Why spend hours trying to come up with your own tags and key words, when you can optimize your time and effort by focusing on your specialty and letting the SEO staff work for you?
Hands down, the best way for a prospect to find your website is to type your address into their web-browser. And if you’re watching your analytics you’ll know what’s driving your web traffic. You have to get your web-site’s address into your prospect’s browser window. An ad can do that for you.
Lead Generation: In 1978, The Real Estate Book founders committed to generating the most leads for the least amount of money than any other kind of advertising media. In print and online we drive traffic to our customers. We are committed to helping our firms and agents use their advertising to accomplish their objectives.
We do that by having the best distribution. We create the largest audience for our customers both in print and online. We rank higher in the search engines, than any of our competition, we get more hits and route more web traffic. The http://www.realestatebook.com/ is on the front cover of ~9 million books every month. We direct 45,000 internet leads every month. Our SEO team drives traffic directly to our clients. A larger audience equals more exposure for you..
If you aren’t getting calls your ad isn’t working. If your marketing program is not generating leads you need to find out why. When you’re advertising you should expect a return on your investment. See the, Income Marketing Approach.
http://blog.realestatebook.com/2009/11/11/income-targeted-goals-set/ The Income Marketing Approach shows you the relationship between your ad and your business. It gives you the formulas you need to use your ad to generate leads and return your investment.
Remember the adage “If you don’t plan to win, you’re planning to fail”. If your marketing plan isn’t working as well as you’d like, if you don’t have a marketing plan, I hope I’ve convinced you to give it some thought.
Perhaps it is better to try and fail, than never to have tried at all, and maybe it is better to advertise by flinging listings into the marketplace, than not to advertise at all. “Cast thy bread onto the waters” the Good Book says. If you’re not sowing you can’t expect to reap, but sow at the right time and place. “Right Now, millions of home shoppers are searching online. Will They Find Your Listings?
THE END
Resources:
The Power of Print by Rebecca Chandler
http://blog.realestatebook.com/2010/04/20/the-power-of-print/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRealEstateBookBlog+%28The+Real+Estate+Book+Blog%29
Attention Listing Agents: Steve Jobs offers some pointers:
http://kdmccall.blogspot.com/2010/05/presentation-pointers-from-worlds.html
What’s the difference in advertising and marketing, Advertising vs. Marketing, by Laura Lake
http://marketing.about.com/cs/advertising/a/marketvsad.htm
Branding Basics, By Laura Lake, About.com Guide to Marketing
http://marketing.about.com/od/brandstrategy/u/brandbasics.htm
$$$ Expect to see a return on your investment. $$$
Income Based Approach to Real Estate Marketing.
http://blog.realestatebook.com/2009/11/11/income-targeted-goals-set/
Advertising is only part of your marketing plan.
Your real estate marketing plan will contain everything from soup to nuts: Pictures, Flyers, Postcards, Talking Houses, Virtual Tours, Name Badges. Magnetic Signs, Business Cards, Stationery, Blogs, Social Media, Email Marketing, Signs, Magazines, Telephone Books, (in print and online), SOI, Professional Groups: Linked In, MLS, Website, Newspaper and Print Advertising…
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