The Top 10 Miracles of Real Estate Research

Real estate agents who ignore research are quite dangerous. They are about as dangerous as real estate agents who neglect business plan, who neglect marketing strategy.

Drunkards Leaning on a Lamppost

Sometimes this ignorance is born, well, from ignorance. They don’t realize that there are methods they can use to see which size postcard pulls in more responses, which email subject line rocket-launches open rates.

Some ignore research because they are afraid of it. It’s something new to them and so they ignore it. They excuse themselves from their responsibility by saying, “I’m not exactly sure how I’d go about finding out how home buyers think.”

What they don’t realize is how easy it is: grab a piece of paper, a pencil and the phone. Dial. “Hello, what are you looking for in a real estate agent?” That’s the easiest way to go about it.

Others ignore it because of “research pitfalls,” like Liars: If you interview someone, they won’t always tell you the truth. [Of course, there are ways around this: one enterprising St. Louis pub used a private room and served patrons a free beer if they answered a questionnaire.]

Then there are those who abuse research. They use research as a drunkard uses a lamppost–not for illumination but for support. They use research to prove that they are right.

10 Miracles of Real Estate Research

On the whole, however, research can be of incalculable help in producing more effective advertising.

Here are the top 10 miracles real estate research can perform for you:

1. Research can help you decided the perfect positioning statement for you.

2. Research can help you define your target audience. Seniors or Gen Xers. FSBO or foreclosure. Education. Lifestyle. Habits.

3. Research can help you determine what’s the most important point in a purchase for a home buyer or what sellers want to hear from you during a listing presentation.

4. Research can warn you when buyers and sellers needs change, when trends in buying or selling occur, when a competitor may be taking market share. It can help you find these things out before it’s too late.

5. Research can help you keep track of a competitor, whether he’s cutting his commission to get listings or simply warming up to every home builder in the area–a thought that hadn’t occurred to you.

6. Research can determine the most persuasive promise. Samuel Johnson said, “Promise, large promise is the soul of an advertisement.”

When he auctioned off the contents of the Anchor Brewery Johnson made the following promise: “We are not here to sell boilers and vats, but the potential of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice.”

Advertising that does not promise a benefit to the reader does not sell, yet the majority of ads out there contain no promise whatsoever. [That is the most important sentence in this post. Read it again.]

7. Research can tell you which headline will work the best. Dig this: Write two ads, with two different promises in the headlines. Insert a call to action. Run the test so the ads rotate. And bingo. You have a winner. This technique is called “split run” and was invented by Richard Stanton. Its merit is that it tests promises in the context of a real advertisement versus an interview.

8. Research can tell you not only are you sending the right message, but any message at all. Remember E. B. White’s warning, “When you say something, make sure you have said it. The chances of you having said it are only fair.”

9. Research can measure the wear out of your advertisement. For five years the theme of Shell’s commercials were mileage, and tracking studies recorded increasingly favorable attitudes to this promise. When attitudes stopped improving, and only then, the ads were changed to consumer testimonial, and the upward trend resumed.

And finally.

10. Research can settle arguments. If your broker is dead set against trying out new technology or an unconventional marketing strategy, tell him this: “Let’s just test it for 30 days. If it works, we keep it. If it doesn’t, we’ll ditch it.” If 30 days is too long, offer 21 days. And so on. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

For an in-depth study of research I recommend Charles Young’s, The Advertising Research Handbook, Ideas in Flight.

Skim the chapters and skip the case studies and you’ll be done in an afternoon, yet armed and dangerous. Dangerous in a good way this time.