Real Estate Marketing Dollars for Print vs Web

Study into Real Estate Advertising

Disclaimer: we have a good friend that works at the Burlington Free Press and do believe there is a role for print in the real estate advertising model.

This blog article on real estate advertising in newspapers from a veteran media executive is a must read for REALTORS undecided about the ratio of print to web investment. The article states that 6 out of 10 real estate agents think newspaper advertising is useless. However, 80% still buy print ads often just to appease the sellers they are representing!  This is consistent with the anecdotal reports we’ve heard from our clients.

We feel that REALTOR are the expert in their field.  With their knowledge of the market and trends, they are best qualified to know how to market their properties and to whom.  If the high quality leads are coming from the web then this is the sort of quality control that needs to be measured and communicated to sellers.  One client of ours has recently started offering sellers $250 back at closing if he never has to run their house in a print ad.  Think that’s crazy?  Try pitching it as your next listing presentation.

Brian Boardman on real estate marketing

Brian Boardman, the broker and owner of Hickock & Boardman  and a longtime USM client, spoke to us recently about the growing trend of moving away from print to web to market properties.

Targeting homebuyers through social networking

This article from the New York Times highlights how savvy real estate agents are using social networking to target their buyers.

Some important points raised in the article include how the new trends on the web are reaching younger audiences for free. This more tactile marketing by many web-savvy professionals are now sending messages on Twitter, getting referrals on LinkedIn, posting blogs, uploading virtual tours onto the Internet and sending text messages and alerts to customers’ phones when homes come on the market.

Bettie Meinel, vice president for career development at Century 21 Laffey Associates, based in Greenvale, said that because consumers are already online seeing the photos and virtual tours, “that is their first showing.” Actually touring the house shows more serious intent, she explained. “If they like it enough, they make an appointment to come and see that property; that is the second showing,” she said.

Also check out other blog posts on these topics in the social media and video sections.

Negative Real Estate Consumer Report

I receive daily emails from ActiveRain, these cover all kinds of topics. Usually I don’t have a lot of time to read through them; so I skim over the newsletter titles and see if anything catches my eye. Well today one did: “Survey Says… REALTORS Suck”. Wow! I certainly clicked on that one.

The first thing that struck me was that this is a great example of an attention grabbing blog title. It will get your readers to click and read. It is controversial, and let’s face it, people love controversy. As a former real estate agent and the daughter and sibling of two REALTORS I couldn’t resist reading on.

I found the article interesting. I think it is a good reminder to ANY agent, new, old or otherwise, about what your consumer is looking for and what is important to them.  A professional in any field should always be keeping up on the needs of their clients.

Two of the most interesting points for me where:

1. That the most important thing to the consumer is lowest commission and knowledge is the least. My reaction to that was, “No wonder you think REALTORS suck.” In my experience the lower the commission, the less attention paid to the client.

Maybe that’s not true in all cases, but I have a feeling it doesn’t help! So how does the average REALTOR put this information to use? Should they all be slashing their commissions?  Well it turns out that 95% of consumers are still using Agents. Even though the consumer feels they can get just as much knowledge by doing their own legwork, they are still relaying on real estate professionals when all is said and done.

I don’t think this is a free pass and should be counted on, especially in this market. I think it’s important to be the best at what you do and the most knowledgeable about technology, your area, the state of the market, etc. Those are the agents that will get the business and keep it.

2. The example photos Jeff Corbett uses, got me giggling. He could not be more dead on with this point. If all you can fit in the bathroom shot is the toilet, leave it off the listing! Nobody needs to see the toilet. Okay, so the owner did a great job redoing the bathroom, but it is too small to photograph. How about taking close-up shots of some of the details? BUT, please spare us the toilet shot.

The other one that always gets me is the tiny bedroom, that just shows the bed or maybe a corner of the bed and a window. In those cases, how about a video of the property? We can help guide you through this process and you’ll be better off for it!

Just to hammer the point home, here are a few examples of photos you should skip!

Are they selling the bed or the house?

Ahh the lovely toilet… So homey!

Overall its a great article so give it a read! “Survey Says… Realtors Suck!” By Jeff Corbett, Active Rain Staff Writer. You’ll probably find one or two take aways.

Mobile Internet Advertising with Google Adwords on G1 and iPhone

If your web marketing strategy incorporates search engine advertising and you want to reach consumers wherever they are: good news. Google is now setting up mobile-specific segmenting options that reach the G1 and iPhone operating systems only.

So, for example, if you have mobile real estate web templates enabled on your site, you can set up an ad campaign targetted at a mobile audience. And only pay for those who click through.

If you’re in ecommerce or retail, Google notes that “last Christmas, the iPhone drove more traffic to Google.com worldwide than any other mobile platform.”

One of the advantages of mobile search marketing is that you’re reaching a customer exactly when they are looking for something. Not when they’re at work or at home or tethered to a laptop. Right when they want to find something. Combine this with geo-targetting and things can get pretty interesting.

More details at allthingsd.com.

See also: Joel Burslem’s Future of Real Estate Marketing blog where he gives this practical tip to real estate marketers: “…create unique campaigns with mobile-ready landing pages as well as mobile-specific calls to action (e.g. “Call 1-800-XXX-XXXX for help with your home search”).”

Related articles:

• Target Google AdWords to Android and iPhone

Zillow makes list of 11 “Troubled” Web Companies

C|Net’s Webware section has recently published a list of 11 “troubled web companies.” The piece appears to consist mainly of hypothesis by Rafe Needleman based on the various business models of the companies involved. Zillow made the list at position #4:

The real-estate site’s revenue model is advertising. Real estate and bank advertising. Unless the real-estate research site starts charging for foreclosure listings, I don’t see it doing too well in a hunkered-down economy, in which people are trying to hold on to their homes for dear life, not upgrade.

Not sure why Zillow was singled out among all the various real estate search aggregators, but I would imagine the same criticism would hold for any of them. For that matter, the same criticism might hold true for all advertising-based businesses as credit issues are not limited to real estate and banking.

Myself, I don’t entirely buy it. Needleman’s rationale for including Zillow involves the non-paying audience of the site (”people … trying to hold on to their homes for dear life”) and not the paying part of the Zillow audience. A commenter, Renoir, put the opposite spin on audience situation (emphasis is mine): “Zillow provides a valuable service and homeowners will be checking their home prices like they check the stock market to see which one rebounds first.”

Certainly banks and real estate are going to be looking pretty carefully at their expenditures; all businesses will. But do any of them think that decreasing their visibilty will help them improve their business? If Zillow can find a way to demonstrate value in a crumbling marketplace I’m sure they’ll do fine.

On the other hand, not everyone who is in the real estate profession today will be next year. If the ones that disappear are the ones who are advertising then I suppose there’s more merit to Needleman’s claim that Zillow is “troubled.”

I can appreciate C|Net’s requirement to publish eyeball-gathering content regularly. But a more interesting article might have actually looked into the business models of the “troubled” companies far closer and perhaps included financial information where it was possible.

[Update: Spencer Rascoff CFO and VP of Marketing (yeah, I admit that sounds a little funky) was interviewed by BlogTalk Radio and had this to say (about 19 minutes into the audio on the linked page):

Our whole goal is to get traffic to the website. Last month we got almost five and a half million people to the website. Up 42% versus the same time last year. ... Our advertisers are typically real estate brokers or agents who are advertising themselves or their listings. As well as large national advertisers that are trying to capitalize on this decision point of buying or selling a home. Which drives a lot of purchase activity whether it be a new car or TV or washer/dryer or a new lawnmower or new cable service or new cell phone or you name it. A lot of those kind of transactions occur around the home buying transaction. So we sell a lot of advertising to a lot of those types of companies.

Later on (about 29' 20" into the audio on the linked page) Rascoff is asked about the direction of Zillow and he says:

So we're a private company and we've raised almost 90 million dollars in venture capital. We someday may go public. We have very patient investors. The traffic is going great and the revenue monetization is coming along nicely our key areas of focus are improving the quality of the data that we have, the accuracy of the Zestimates, the information we have on all these homes, the quality of the listings. We have a lot of work to do on mortgage marketplace to really blow that product out. And we have a few other things up our sleeves as well so, we're busy

Ok so obviously these are a just nice simple answers to softball questions. But perhaps they could serve as a starting point for asking more pointy questions if someone wanted to determine if Zillow really was "troubled." Things that come to mind might be:

• Just how patient are the investors?
• What amount of the ad inventory is taken up by larger nationals or other types of clients who are likely to continue advertising through our current financial situation?
• Insert your question here.

My guess is that, if pressed, we could have answers to these questions. And then, based on those answers determine whether Zillow is "troubled" or not. But calling them troubled because they are a content play doesn't quite seem worthy of the "troubled" moniker. As my brother-in-law might say: that's just calling a dog a dirty name and hanging it.]

[Update Again: Today Zillow let go of 1/4 of its workforce. From the Zillow blog Rich Barton says:

This week we are reducing our workforce by 25%. This was an incredibly painful decision for me and the leadership team, but, in the end, we concluded that we had no choice but to securely batten down the hatches as we sail into a major economic storm.

He goes on to say (repeating some of the information Rascoff gave during his phone call the day or so before):

One of the reasons this is so difficult is simply because the business continues grow. In the midst of the madness that surrounds us, we counted 5.4 million unique visitors to Zillow.com in September, which was a 42% increase in traffic over this time last year. Fear, value-shopping, and curiosity are driving people in record volumes to our site. ... While our revenues do not yet cover our expenses, those revenues have been growing at a rapid pace and we will continue to have open positions in areas that are directly tied to revenue, such as advertising salespeople.

Best of luck to the Zillow team past and present.]

All that said, I’m [ed note: clearly] no business forecaster, I have no insight into how Zillow is run or managed and I’m sure I’m missing something. Please correct me in the comments.

Tracking print advertising with ListingNumber and Google Analytics

A common question I get involves tracking print campaigns. It came up during my panel at Inman Connect but we didn’t have time to get into the deep how-to on print advertising tracking. This post is here to remedy that oversight by giving you some step-by-step on tracking the performance of your marketing activities.

Read more

Localism sponsorship Land Rush schedule posted

Real estate social networking site, ActiveRain has posted the schedule for sponsorship opportunities on their neighborhood site Localism.com.

Vermont is August 8th, NH and NC are August 6th, Massachusetts and Illinois are August 5th.

People who have amassed more ActiveRain points will be able to have access earlier in the day.

Real Estate Agents – Time to Refocus Your Ad Budget

If you’re a Realtor looking to justify the investment of time and money that you’ve made into your website and/or blog, this article from RISMedia about Yahoo!’s recent study of real estate consumers’ online behavior should give you some reassurance. It might have you considering shifting your budget even further towards support of your site and/or Pay-Per-Click campaigns.

In a recent study of 500 consumers, Yahoo! confirmed that people use the Web to ensure that the selected agent will best meet their specific needs.

Key findings include:

• Home buyers and sellers consider approximately two agents on average before making a final decision
• The Internet impacts consumer trust. Forty percent of respondents credited a site in increasing their trust in the agent
• 74% of people who accessed an agent website got there with the help of a search engine
• The online research process is quick and intense: consumers spent an average of 12 hours online researching agents and 75% selected an agent within one week of starting their search

Online resources provided introduction to new agents as well as promotional deals:

• 45% of respondents used the Internet to learn about agents they didn’t know existed
• 41% discovered special deals and promotions offered from an agent through the Internet

However, there is a disconnect between advertising dollars and consumer behavior. Based on Yahoo!’s study, 77% of respondents used an online source for information during their research process compared to 34% for print. But, according to a recent analysis by Borrell Associates, Realtor advertising dollars have yet to catch up to where home buyers are going – the Internet. While this year’s online media spend did in fact double from 2005, capturing 32% of the overall advertising spend, newspapers continue to get more share of dollars with 40%.

So, if you’ve been struggling with where to focus your advertising budget, these numbers should help resolve the debate. While print-advertising will always be demanded by your sellers, you’ll find your buyers via a well-optimized web site that is found easily on search engines. If you want some support, Union Street Media’s Internet Marketing Team is here to help. You can choose from a variety of services that suit your budget.

Short followup on Craigslist and HTML

The HTML that will allowed on Craigslist should be enough to make a nice layout. You get images, tables (as much as I abhor table-based web development), headers and the font tag. Sure it’s like we’re rolling back the clock to 1999. But it won’t be too difficult to make attractive ads with the tags allowed.

I would consider the outcry to be pretty much a false alarm (let me know if I’m wrong here). But it still provided a great opportunity to listen to customers and hear what they think about real estate marketing efforts.

Paid Search vs Organic Search for Realtors

If you’re a Realtor who has been hesitant to dive into Google AdWords, today is the day to get started.

First, you’ll want to be clear about the difference between “organic search” and “paid search.” Organic search results are a product of a Search Engine’s algorithm (a fancy word for method), rather than paid advertisements. Search engine algorithms are a bit of a mystery and always changing – and Google and Yahoo like to keep it that way. Until you’ve spent some time (and perhaps money) to optimize your site content and understand the variety of elements that contribute to the algorithm, ranking high on a Google search engine results page (SERP) with “organic” search can be frustrating and challenging.

Another way to get traffic to your site is by setting up a “paid search” campaign with a tool such as Google AdWords to generate more traffic to your site. If you’ve done a good job delivering those people to the right part of your site for their search terms (known as a landing page), those new visitors will hopefully “convert” by contacting you and/or registering on your site to make best use of the search tools the next time they return. You can also use what you learn from your advertising successes to help inform decisions on your site content, but that’s a topic for a different post.

You can get started with online advertising on your own or get in touch with the Internet Marketing Team at Union Street Media. You can also keep following this blog for more information about internet marketing for Realtors. In particular, follow G. Dewald’s series on Website Optimization for Real Estate.