Your choices of advertising media depend on your goals, your target market, and your budget. Weigh the pluses and minuses of various types of ads.
Newspaper Classified Ads: Good for promoting listings, recruiting.
Pluses:
Targeting: Content can be can be written and publications can be chosen to appeal to specific audiences.
Exposure: People who are interested in buying actively seek out classified ads.
Cost: Classified ads are less expensive than direct mail, telemarketing, full-color brochures, and many other forms of advertising.
Minuses:
Space: The shorthand style of classified ads limits how much can be said.
Success: Only a small percentage of buyers come to a real estate company in response to classified ads.
Efficiency: Classified ads can attract unqualified and uncommitted callers that sales associates must talk to and screen.
Effectiveness: Classified ads are better suited to promoting individual properties than to building a company’s identity and name recognition
Newspaper Display Ads: Good for promoting groups of listings, building corporate recognition.
Pluses:
Exposure: Larger display ads are more likely to get noticed than small classifieds and are a good way to promote your company at the same time that you are featuring individual listings.
Targeting: You can reach a variety of audiences by placing ads in different sections.
Convenience: Ads can be easily and frequently changed if you want to add or delete information.
Minuses:
Shelf life: Newspapers generally are read once and kept in the house only one day.
Quality: Print quality of newspapers is usually low, limiting the use of graphics and photos.
Competition: Your ad must compete with other ads on the same page for a reader’s attention.
Magazine Ads: Good for building corporate identity by grouping all listings into a block, promoting individual properties.
Pluses:
Targeting: Many specialty magazines, such as home magazines, apartment locator guides, city magazines, visitor guides, and relocation guides, are aimed at desirable market segments.
Shelf life: People tend to keep magazines at least until the next one comes out.
Quality: Ads reproduce well and photos look professional; color quality especially is usually much higher than possible in newspapers.
Minuses:
Exposure: Circulation of specialty magazines can be small.
Production: Producing a magazine-quality ad usually requires hiring a graphic artist.
Cost: Color ads, especially those with photos, can be costly to run.
Direct Mail: Good for building name recognition and identity, especially in new markets.
Pluses:
Personal communication: Direct mailings give you the chance to communicate your message to people one-on-one at their leisure, in the comfort of their home.
Reach: You can contact people by mail whom you might not otherwise encounter or who might not welcome other forms of contact.
Flexibility: You can mail everything from short announcements—such as the hiring of a new sales associate—to slick brochures about your company or a high-end property.
Comprehensive: A direct-mail effort can include several pieces—such as a company brochure and tips that allow you to give prospects a sense of all the services you provide.
Minuses:
Cost: Some forms of direct mail can be expensive, so campaigns must be planned carefully around your budget.
Effectiveness: Response rates to direct mail can be low if mailings are not followed up by phone calls and other forms of contact.
Saturation: Consumers are flooded with direct mail appeals—up to 4 million tons each year, according to the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency—and may discard them without reading them.
Radio Ads: Good for building name recognition and market share, only good for promoting properties if a large group are located together (such as a newly opened development). Pluses:
Exposure: At least one radio can be found in 98 percent of all households, and the average adult listens to three and one-half hours of radio a day.
Targeting: Radio can reach selected audiences both geographically and demographically with great variety in scheduling and programming.
Flexibility: Radio ads can be changed easily at the last minute.
Minuses:
Finality: A radio commercial can’t be reviewed like a print ad. If people miss it, it’s gone.
Clutter: Listeners may mentally turn off because many commercials are jammed into a short period.
Company Web Site: Good for building name recognition, promoting relocation business, promoting actual listings. Pluses:
Positioning: Through content and design, you can build your company’s image and showcase the solutions it offers.
Competitiveness: The Internet enables small firms to compete on equal footing with large firms.
Flexibility: Content can be modified at will without limitations.
Low ad cost: Once the site is created, properties can be presented in detail, with multiple photos and a long description.
Exposure: The Internet reaches a huge audience of prospects.
Minuses:
Production: Unless you’re skilled in Web design, you’ll need to hire someone to create and maintain your site.
Passivity: A Web site is a passive marketing tool—instead of pursuing business, you wait for business to come to you.
Effectiveness: Online ads may be seen by many people, but they don’t necessarily generate productive leads.
Technology: Not everyone has access to or is comfortable with Internet technology.
Television: Good for establishing and reinforcing company identity as market leader. Pluses:
Immediacy: TV ads give you instant validity and prominence.
Targeting: It’s easy to reach your target audience by advertising at certain times and during certain programs.
Volume: Greater availability of air time enables you to buy larger blocks of time and advertise more often.
Minuses:
Cost: Broadcast TV advertising is extremely expensive and may be out of reach for small businesses; cable ads cost only 20 percent of broadcast costs.
Production: Professionals must be hired to produce a quality TV spot.
Exposure: Unless you buy a number of spots, your ad will be seen only once for a short time.
Yellow Pages(Directories) Good for attracting motivated customers, reinforcing market dominance through ad size. Pluses:
Value: One ad works all year long.
Budgeting: Because the billing for these ads is spread over 12 months, it can be easier on your budget.
Exposure: Clients can easily locate or contact you, even if they didn’t initially know your name.
Minuses:
Cost: You must commit to an entire year of advertising.
Competition: Your ad is placed with those of your competitors, encouraging clients to comparison shop.
Location: Clients must look up exactly the right classification to find you.
Outdoor Ads: Good for establishing company identity, setting the company apart from competition. Pluses:
Exposure: People can’t throw outdoor ads away or change the channel.
Frequency: People who drive or walk by the ad site see your message numerous times.
Location: Outdoor ads can be placed in strategic locations, such as near your office or a new development.
Minuses:
Attention: Readers typically glance at an outdoor ad for only two to three seconds.
Content: Messages must be very brief to communicate effectively from a distance.
