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"NASA" Real Estate Market: Print Advertising Phases Waxing and Waning While the Internet is Taking Us Straight to the Moon

THE AGE OF PRINT ADS DOMINATING THE REAL ESTATE MARKETPLACE IS WANING

Print advertising has gone cloudy and stale, as has blind advertising. Beyond that statistically proven objective evidence, I truly believe subjectively that the happiest and most successful agents are actively involved in their community. Referrals come when people know you are the kind of person who genuinely cares about other people's needs--and that you are the kind of person who they can rely on for consistent performance and quality service. Attending brokers opens might not get you the next sale, but it is a great way to getting to know your area homes and to interact with fellow agents. Hosting open houses helps you meet new buyers in your area, and allows you the opportunity to get better sense on buyers takes on property values, buying motivations, and sales killers. The Internet allows you to interact with the well educated of our community from luxury of your laptop home. As such, being a part of your community includes making your niche market web presence known.

INTERNET PORTALS ARE WAXING

Advertising in our area has dramatically changed in the last two years, with printing costs easily escalating over 300% of where they should be, paper ads are statistically producing incrementally smaller and smaller returns. Only a few short years ago, agents relied on print ads to make them money. Now, their advertising dollars are going to waste unless they are lifestyle marketing (making sure the company name is known and giving portal contacts to information on specific properties). With so many great tools like Active Rain at our disposal to connect real estate agents to clients and other industry professional over the Internet, the tech savvy Realtor is ideally placed in the global market.Factor in the portability of Internet ads and the eco-value, and you have yourself a safer, environment friendly marketing medium that utilizes search features to cater to a local market while allowing content to touch worldwide homes.

80% FULL CYBER-MOON

In 2007, over 80% of home buyers and sellers utilized the internet to find properties or research area comparables. If you or your company is not aggressively working the web, you are letting your business slip by; invest in http://www.superpages.com/rather than a print phone book and sign with a company that gives you and your business ample Internet support. The longer you have been in and around the real estate market and observing from an analytical business perspective, the more you realize phases, like the waxing and waning of the moon, happen in the global marketplace. I had a call just yesterday from someone asking me to contribute to their Christmas fund buy buying a print pack that would go to only 4500 homes for the low, low cost of 500+ per month with a 2 year contract commitment. DON'T BE DUPED INTO BUYING LARGE PRINT CONTRACTS DURING THIS CHANGING MARKET; don't let the sales pitches of slick schiester advertisers try to con you out of your money; use what the gods and muses of the Internet have made available to you.

REAL ESTATE AGENTS STAR GAZING

With a cyber-moon on the rise, there is little time before old school grounded agents will be left in the technological dark ages.To be a rising real estate star, post those blogs, get your profiles up, and spend your face time out and about getting involved with your community.The faster people in various markets and regions get to know you, the stronger you are able to make alliances that will carry us through this metaphoric rise of the Internet moon. Once the blog portals begin to dull (the way the print markets began to fail us 10 years ago), we'll all have to be on the lookout for the next great thing to orbit. Until then, however, agents need to think like astronauts: let your "NASA name" and Active Rain profile help you be known (the Next Advertising Solicitation Avenue).

I want to be the "Man in the Moon" when people use the Internet to search my area for an agent. How about you?

Regards, as always.

Kae Davis

Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage Ashburn Dulles

www.cbmove.com/Kae.Davis ~ http://www.everythingashburn.com/

GIVE BACK TO YOUR COMMUNITY... HAVE A SAFE AND HAPPY HOLIDAY SEASON

Posted by Kae Davis on 12/07/2007 11:47 PM

Comments (5)

advertising, marketing, internet, coldwell banker, community service, volunteer, charity, benefit, traffic

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5 Comments on "NASA" Real Estate Market: Print Advertising Phases Waxing and Waning While the Internet is Taking Us Straight to the Moon

Good post. You are right, print is dying and Internet is where it's at. All the best.

12/08/2007 12:15 AM

by Bob & Carolin Benjamin - E Phoenix Arizona Real Estate (Benjamin Realty LLC)

Wake up darling. You are not only green in the real estate field, yet in the advertising field as well. Monsters are long and gone, get more exposure. Fifty percent of the market you want to focus on do not know how to use a computer. Wise up darling, spread it around. By the way, why would you get a license in such a falling careet at this time? THe market was booming 3 years ago, why now?? Just a question..

12/08/2007 08:58 PM

by private

Santa Bottom

12/08/2007 09:48 PM

by Kae Davis (Connections Prep)

Kae, pay the Private no mind, which I am sure is illustrated by the image of Santa's Bottom (but I can't see it on my end). We are all entitled to our opinions, yet some confuse free speech with the ability to spew any mindless arrogant drivel that first comes to small minds. Oh well.

As to your post, the subject of Print Ads not working has been coming up an aweful lot as of late, even on AR. I probably have a somewhat different opinion on advertising than most people actively involved in Real Estate. It seems that a lot of times we equate the concept of advertising or marketing with the venue, which is not the most accurate way of looking at it. Some print ads still work, and they work remarkably well. If you open a copy of Vanity Fair or GQ or the New Yorker, you will find plenty of ads that work, even some real estate related ones. It is an issue of knowing who your audience is and the best way to reach then, and how to get them to emotionally commit to what you are selling. Very few ads manage to do that, whether on the net or TV or in print.

Advertising on the net certainly has its advantages, especially the type of advertising that we can do for free, but there are also limitations, and credibility is one of the limitations, and tremendous competition in some areas is another. There are all the shades of gray in between where the answer can be found if one is willing to fish for it...
Sorry for the long comment, and again, don't let any dope wipe that awesome smile off your face. You will be totally fine!!!

inna hardison
ha media group

12/08/2007 11:27 PM

by Inna Hardison-ha media group Design, Printing, Web (ha media group)

Kae,

The genius of creativity is in the perspective. That's what great advertising does--it shows ordinary things in a new perspective, which causes the viewer to stop and look a little longer.

The internet is a fantastic medium for that. Go forth, and hold new worlds in your own two hands.

Mike in Tucson

12/09/2007 08:29 AM

by Mike Jones (Tucson Mortgage Company, LLC)

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