Educating homeowners on Internet marketing
Posted Feb 11, 2007 @ 4:02 pm, Viewed by 868 Visitors, Read 872 Times.As a web savvy agent, obviously my primary marketing tool is the web. I have had tremendous success so far. My website has achieved first page results on all major search engines, every one of my listings is automatically added to Google Base, my site gets 1.5 Million hits a month, and I sell homes via the website all the time.
So, when my clients ask me why they didn't see their house in the classifieds and then go on to acuse me of "not doing anything to sell their house", naturally I don't take it too well!
To me it is obvious, 78% of homebuyers start their home search online, and I'm pretty confident that when they go to google and type in what they are looking for, they will find me. What I need to remind myself though is that many of my clients have never even been online! I know that is hard to imagine, but especially here in Florida where we have an elderly population, there are still people who don't use the internet. They are the minority, but when they hire me to sell their house, I have a problem.
It kills me to spend time and money on a classifieds ad, when I have NEVER in my entire career sold a home through the classifieds. I suppose if you run 10 ads a week for a year straight, you may get a couple of leads, but that is a waste.
To address this issue, I came up with a solution. I maintain a full page color ad in one of the local real estate magazines, where I list 15 of my listings every month. This way, I can point to the ad and say "see, here is a nice color photograph of your house, and you can pick up this magazine at your local news stand". For the most part this works, it makes the client happy, but the truth is, after a year of doing this, I have not had less than 5 calls in total and have never sold a home this way.
I've sold million dollar homes on craigslist. I have sold countless homes through my website, and others through email marketing. I can track exactly how many people have viewed a particular listing on my website and even see who has viewed it and what else they have viewed and favored over my listing. This information allows me to better understand how my marketing efforts are working (or not) and adjust accordingly.
So should I abandon print advertising altogether? well, I figured that aside from the magazine which is just to pacify my clients, I would reserve my print advertising budget to brand advertising. I tried that, ran a full color quarter page ad in a popular paper for 5 months in a row. I recieved one phone call frome someone with way too much time on their hands and no interest in buying property.
Either I'm really bad at traditional advertising and really good at online marketing, or it simply works better. Either way, I'm convinced that my efforts and dollars going forward need to be applied to my online presence.
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That may be true. What I do know is that there are plenty of agents are are no better than I am when it comes to traditional advertising and they are even more clueless with the Internet. There are others who have been successful with traditional ads and are clueless with the Internet as well. Right now, I'd rather be the internet guru that I am than be in either of the other 2 categories!
James Boyer
Zev, Print advertising is a waist of time and money, 99% of the agents out there know it, but many are afraid to admit it. The only phone calls I have gotten this year have come from Craigslist, Realtor.com, Sign Calls, and Farming Mailings sent. Newspaper has generated 0% nothing, I have advertised in the newspaper 5 times for a total spend of $700+ Now just think what you could do with $700 spent on Internet marketing. James Boyer Keller Williams Realty Summit, NJ 07901
I couldn't agree with you more! CalgaryRealtor says I don't know what I'm doing, that is fine, I get the last laugh! I recieve about 2 Million hits a month to my website, 0 phone calls from print advertising, the choice is clear.
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Zev Freidus is the Broker / President of Boca Executive Realty in Boca Raton, FL. With a prior experience in web design and development, Zev also serves as the WebMaster for BocaExecutiveRealty.com. Read More
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Zev - face it, you're bad at traditional (print) advertising. So am I, which is why I stopped doing it. We both know the internet is where the buyers are, the only challenge remains convincing some of our sellers of that ....