Print Advertising vs. Online Marketing: Which Way Should A Real Estate Agent Go?
Study what major corporations do, then decide where to place your marketing dollars!
Years ago, one of my CyberStars(r), Greg Gorman of Keller Williams Realty, Naples, FL, stated the following during a session he did for a CyberStar(r) panel on customer service:
"Your competition isn’t the broker down the block…it’s Nordstrom’s, it’s Wachovia. Study them if you want to learn how to give good customer service."
Greg urged agents in the audience to study what Nordstrom’s does with regards to customer service, and I’ll expand on his concept. When deciding where to put your marketing dollars, look at national companies instead of at what other brokers do. National companies, with their huge research and marketing budgets, have put their money on the Internet for years. It is easy to understand why: the consumer goes first to the Web for research and buying.
Real estate has, even recently, lagged behind. Most real estate agents still put their money into real estate magazines and classified advertising, even though the consumers go first to the Web to look for homes and to select an agent.
Here’s the latest report on print advertising growth from MarketingVox.
Among the major print components in the third quarter, classified advertising fell 17% to $3.4 billion. Retail declined 4.9% to $5.1 billion, and national was down 2.5%, coming in at $1.7 billion."
Another report on MarketingVox stated that Internet advertising rose by 17.2% during the first three quarters of 2007.
What the message to the real estate agent? It’s time to put more of your marketing dollars into:
- Developing your personal Web site
- Promoting your Web site
- Learning to create videos and then posting them on sites such as YouTube, etc.
Times change. Major companies realize this…it’s time more real estate agents realize this, too.
It’s a great day here on the lake in Reston…hope it’s a great day wherever you are, too!
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.
