Hi folks,

Even though it’s Winter people are still listing and selling homes and a number of issues have to be addressed prior to coming to the market including marketing so this week I thought I would discuss putting your advertising dollar to work. In the US, eight out of ten people (in Australia and New Zealand seven out of ten) make their initial foray into the market via the Internet. After all, the net is convenient, inexpensive and wide-ranging and it allows purchasers to be anonymous until they are ready to buy. What do the Internet and other technologies mean for the more traditional advertising vehicles and how does a vendor work out how to get the best value for advertising dollar with so much out there to choose from?

Should vendors spend their advertising dollars by concentrating on saturation advertising in a few advertising vehicles or should they spread it more thinly over a wider range? Traditional advertising vehicles (window display, local paper, signboard) are still popular, but the Internet is not the only recent advance in real estate marketing. In the United States and in some parts of Australia and New Zealand, the use of Mobile or SMS marketing is also an option as well as social networking sites. Most professional agents conduct bona fide local research to establish what media work best in their area. Informed vendors would do well to ask if agents have done that research and what the results show, rather than making the assumption that the more widely (thinly!) they spread their advertising dollar, the more successful it is likely to be. While the successful media vary from location to location throughout Australia and New Zealand, the number of media that generate 80% of enquiry is usually no more than four. The main three are usually internet, newspapers and for sale signs.

Confusion arises because some less professional agents recommend a wide range of advertising vehicles that sound good to the lay consumer even though the statistics about where the purchasers come from don’t actually support them. It is easier for some agents to offer to advertise in a large number of media rather than do the research that isolates where the vendor’s dollar is best spent.