Classifieds in Your Real Estate Marketing Plan?

Came across this article last night from an April 2006 ClickZ article on online real estate ad spending:

“There’s still a lot of room for online spending,” observed Borrell Associates VP Pete Conti. The research firm found that while 77 percent of real estate buyers use the Internet for home searches, just 15 percent of the 535 agents surveyed place ad dollars there. Forty-seven percent of agents said they’d spend more online this year than last, and 45 percent said they’d spend the same amount.

The “2006 Update: Online Real Estate Advertising” report puts this in context, noting, “In May we met with the owner of one large brokerage firm who expressed frustration that while potential customers had moved online en masse, his agents hadn’t changed their advertising habits correspondingly.”

On the whole, newspapers will continue to experience a decline in real estate spending. The report predicts that the 37 percent share attributed to newspapers this year will move down to 30 percent in 2010. These numbers can be deceiving, though; some won’t necessarily feel the burn. According to the report, more real estate agents said they plan to raise newspaper ad spending this year — 42 percent — compared to 40 percent who said they’d spend the same amount.

Because agents typically aim to target small regional markets rather than large metro areas, they’re finding, “They can get a better bang for their buck in a small community paper.” While classified ad spending in large metro dailies will dwindle, those dollars will flow towards less-expensive but more targeted suburban and community papers and alternative weeklies, according to the Borrell report. “Agents are running from the metro dailies,” said Conti.

It’s August 2007 now. My question to you: do you plan to spend more on newspaper classifieds next year?

Are newspaper classifieds even relevant any more? Do people even read newspaper classifieds in weeklies or dailies any more? I don’t.

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Click Here to Leave a Comment Below 3 comments

Ruby Zuniga

Yes, I do am planning on spending a little more money on Classifieds this comming year.

Yes, I do believe that people still read the newspaper and ads. I personally don’t, but do now of several people who still do.

Well placed, well written ads Do attact many Buyers and Many Sellers to call for Information. The industry is changing, People do Change – But… we all still want information. So it is our Job, as agents to Capture those leads. We must still stick to the Basics. The Wheel continues to Roll…and yes while it is rolling we must pick up on other types of advertising, and not skip or drop the basics, that is our foundation, My foundation in this Business.

Ruby Zuniga

oops, had a lot of typos on my response. Sorry. Hope you understood what I was trying to say.

Gary Elwood

Ruby, no problem at all reading your post. And I like your attitude about the basics. Technology may change, the market may change, but whether it’s a big or small city, rural or urban, people still buy and sell houses. And human psychology remains the same.

Classifieds in Your Real Estate Marketing Plan?

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