Real Estate Marketing: Valuable Advertising or Expensive Fluff?

You could be reading a newspaper, magazine or book right now…but you’re not. Every real estate company in Conway Arkansas utilizes advertising mediums to promote their “For Sale” listings. The term “advertising medium” could be simply defined as any vehicle used to communicate a specific advertisement to a specific audience. It’s no secret that real estate companies go to great lengths to advertise their listing services to sellers. In trying to set themselves apart from their competitors, many companies focus on the plethora of advertising mediums they’ll use to advertise your home to buyers. On the surface, it seems like you’d want to list with a company that uses more advertising mediums than anyone else. The more the better…right? But how much are you paying for all of those mediums? And, is more really better?

Real Estate Advertising before the Internet
In the past, before internet listing syndication and social media, the advertising mix from one company to the next was actually a significant distinctive. For instance, back in the days when you had to physically go to a real estate office in order to find out where all of the “for sale” homes were, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine that a company offering to place their listings in the newspaper, regularly, would be a lot more appealing to a seller than a company that didn’t offer that advertising medium. Between then and now, the industry has evolved. Like most industries, in real estate, when one company has a good idea, it isn’t long before other companies have followed suit. Over the years, as real estate companies have been vying for listings, they’ve been adding more and more advertising mediums to their portfolio–each new medium promising to give them an ‘edge’ over their competitor in the battle to attract sellers. For a while, this was an effective strategy. However, on August 6th, 1991, everything changed.

Real Estate Advertising 23 Years Later
Since the public birth of the internet, real estate companies have largely continued with the old-school advertising strategy. In many cases, real estate companies in Conway Arkansas have simply added “internet” to their existing laundry-list of marketing mediums that they offer sellers. So, that’s good though…right? Well, yes…and no. It’s good that they’re actually using the internet. The problem is that the internet completely revolutionized the way buyers find homes, and some of the real estate companies in Conway Arkansas are still advertising their listings–and charging sellers for that advertising–as if the revolution never occurred. In my opinion, this present-day phenomenon comes from companies continuing to operate with pre-internet advertising philosophies. In a nutshell, they’re behind the times.

Pre-Internet Real Estate Advertising in an Internet-Saturated World
You have to understand that before the internet, each new advertising medium actually brought something new and valuable to a company’s overall advertising mix. Think back to the newspaper example. Before the internet, a company could obviously advertise their “for sale” listings to anyone who walked through the doors of their office. If they did nothing else, they’d at least be able to do that. However, if that company added newspaper advertising to their advertising mix, they could put their client’s listings in front of so many more potential buyers–who otherwise might never walk through the doors of their office. Direct mail, magazine ads, home books, flyers, TV shows—they were all valuable additions to a company’s mix of advertising mediums, because each one enabled the company to reach new and different buyers that they hadn’t already reached by one of the other mediums in their mix. The internet though, is in a league of its own. When the internet started making inroads into the real estate industry, some of these pre-internet companies in Conway Arkansas simply took the approach of adding it to their mix. The problem with that approach though, is that it assumes that the internet is just another tool to market their listings to buyers they’ve not already reached. Or, you could say it this way: The problem with that approach is that it assumes that the other non-internet advertising mediums (newspaper, home books, magazines, TV, etc.) are still essential; because they enable the company to reach buyers that they’d otherwise not be able to reach. With today’s internet though, that advertising premise is simply becoming less and less viable. Understand, 25 years ago there might have been clear lines between people that would read a newspaper and people that would read a magazine. So, each of those advertising mediums had a valuable place in a real estate company’s advertising mix. In 2014 though, the value of these non-internet advertising mediums has diminished–significantly. Consider the chart below. This data is from the National Association of Realtors 2013 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers.

In July 2013, NAR mailed out a 122 question survey using a random sample weighted to be representative of sales on a geographic basis to 148,011 recent home buyers. The recent home buyers had to have purchased a home between July of 2012 and June of 2013. A total of 8,767 responses were received. Consumer names and addresses were obtained from Experian, a firm that maintains an extensive database of recent home buyers derived from county records.

Advertising Based on the Facts
Some of the oldest real estate companies in Conway Arkansas are some of the biggest proponents of non-internet advertising for their listings. From the chart above, non-internet listing ads (direct mail, newspaper ads, magazine ads, local tv shows, flyers, home books, etc.) were effective in selling homes to a whopping 2% of buyers. Did you get that? Only 2%. Compare that to the 43% of buyers who found their home through an internet ad. To be clear, sellers who list with companies that are targeting that 2% are paying for all of the additional advertising fluff that, statistically-speaking, probably won’t bring you a buyer–especially not in a town like Conway Arkansas where the median age is 27.3. If you like the idea of seeing your home in a fancy magazine, that’s fine…but don’t expect that magazine ad to sell your house. The majority of buyers simply aren’t looking there. At Geraldson Realty, we understand this. In fact, this is the very reason why our specialty, our forte–since we opened our doors in 2009–has been internet marketing and advertising. When a seller lists their home with Geraldson Realty, they’re partnering with a company that invests 100% of its market research efforts into understanding and communicating with the online market audience. We’ll be the first to admit that if you want us to put your house on a postcard and mail it to a bunch of folks, well, we simply don’t have the savvy to know which designs or colors will get folks to read the postcard before they trash it. However, if you want to reach beyond your friend list and connect your home with buyers in Conway who are checking their News Feed on their lunch break, in line at the store, or during a commercial break, we can help with that. This is the thing we do. Try this: pick any real estate company in Conway, go to their Facebook Page, scroll to the bottom of their timeline and look at what year that company joined Facebook. Then, go to our page and compare.

Are we the oldest real estate company in Conway? No. Are we the biggest real estate company in Conway? No. Do buyers ever ask us those questions after finding a home they love through our internet advertising? No.

We focus 100% of our efforts on marketing your home where the majority of buyers are…and we won’t charge you for a bunch of ads aimed at the 2%.