I was just wondering how the market has effected everyone marketing mix. Are you advertising less or more? Are you cutting costs and how?

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Neal M
Jackson MO Real Estate, Festus MO Real Estate, Cape Girardeau Real Estate
HouseViewOnline™ is southeast Missouri’s leading site for touring real estate online. See 100’s of properties from Cape Girardeau, Jackson, Perryville & Sikeston Missouri. Properties are displayed in photos taken by our professional photographer. We are proud to work with Realtors and real estate agents through out SE Missouri.

If you're like me, you followed the quality advice from some of the great minds here on the forums. In doing so, your marketing budget for online lead generation was zero; it's all organic.

I've never been a fan of print advertising anyway.

If you need to leverage out your SEO work then that's a different story. You'll need to keep your fixed expenses low without biting the hands that feed you. Cutting the costs of your SEO professional (like REW) is not the way to go IMO.

As agents, I think we spend way to much money on crap; like coffee. Find other ways to lower your expenses rather than lead generation, like negotiating a better lease, or reducing your monthly reoccurring business expenses that aren't related to lead generation.

Edit: Just realized you posted in the selling forum. Oops! In that case, marketing for your sellers, in my experience, isn't really what sells the home. Sure it may help in some cases, but I find that simply setting the right price (most important) and adding it to your MLS will do the job. You're basically hiring all the other agents in your MLS to help sell the home.

Sellers need you to market though; that's for sure. In that case, what I wrote first applies. If you rank well, you'll generate more leads for your sellers (featured properties). You can market until your blue in the face, but having a site that generates consistent traffic (and organically) wins in my book hands down; for both you and your sellers.

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Steve Castaneda, Realtor

Specializing in Houston Real Estate. Feel free to browse Houston homes for sale or read about Real Estate Technology for agents.

I cut my print budget in half based on sales I could attribute to print ads for the past year. That money will go towards internet advertising of some sort. But overall budget will remain about the same.

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Mark Brian
Silver Star Real Estate
View South Carolina Real Estate

Print ads should be for marketing yourself, they do not sell houses, and most of your $ should be spent on some form of Internet marketing, web sites, etc.

Post cards are still great, just listed/sold.

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Michael Trinchitella
Associate Real Estate Broker
e-PRO certified Internet Expert
RE/Max Classic Realty - Yorktown Heights, NY
Putnam & Westchester County NY Real Estate

Mahopac NY Real Estate | Northern Westchester County Condos | Heritage Hills Somers NY

I am personally focusing more on SEO which I see as the investment that keeps on giving. Traditional marketing like print is a big one-time investment that is in the clients face and then their garbage. With SEO you're at your clients fingertips at just the right time.

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Looking for a Minnesota Realtor? Agents Ranking provides provides free real estate agent recommendations in Minnetonka and has recently added agents in Chanhassen and Eden Prairie.

I cut print marketing as well. I still think its important to do the 'farming' cards. Of course internet goes without saying for most of us.. ;-)

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Susan Zanzonico
Morristown NJ Real Estate
Chatham NJ Real Estate
Summit NJ Real Estate
Weichert, Realtors
Morris, Union and Essex County NJ Real Estate

Just this week I have dropped a full page as that we have been running that costs our brokerage $800 a pop. I am going to focus more on online advertising to make up for it.

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Exit Realty is a leading residential Real Estate company that sells Halifax Real Estate and is a part of Exit Realty Nova Scotia.