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Newspaper Advertising for Real Estate Over With?

By
Services for Real Estate Pros with R. Michael Brown LLC Digital Marketing & Public Relations

I was talking to one of my former employees today and they are using an analytics and measurement system I put in place to measure traffic via 800#, web, and email for all advertising components. 

He said they were getting less than 5% of their traffic from local newspaper.

I had already cut 40% of the newspaper advertising before I left.  It was only that high because my boss, the President, came to the dance with newspaper in the 1970's and he was planning on leaving with her. 

So after he got the boot, newspapers tucked under his arm as he left, they cut a remanining 20% of local newspaper from the budget, which was still a lot in real dollars because they didn't hesitate to advertise - which is a good thing especially in a down market [get the buyers that are out there!].

And the results after 1 year are in... measured traffic numbers for newspaper are so small, according to him, it isn't worth the investment at this point.

Is that what you are finding?

Wallace S. Gibson, CPM
Gibson Management Group, Ltd. - Charlottesville, VA
LandlordWhisperer

I stopped print newspaper advertising Oct 2008 after struggling with online edition and broken links to my website....they LOST $5,000 per month in RENTAL ADVERTISING at rateholder contract by NOT paying attention to this very important component of their business.

They are dying and they don't know it yet.

Feb 26, 2010 08:33 AM
R. Michael Brown
R. Michael Brown LLC Digital Marketing & Public Relations - Lake Placid, FL
Communication that increases sales!

Thanks for the comment. My wife sold real estate advertising space for years for 2 different papers and it was a money tree.  She got out when it was obvious what the future would be.

Anyone else have experience with newspaper advertising lately?

Feb 26, 2010 08:45 AM
Leslie Ebersole
Swanepoel T3 Group - Saint Charles, IL
I help brokers build businesses they love.

Done, done, done. In just about a year BW has gone from being the #1 advertiser in the Chicago Tribune to almost nothing. Our transactions were up 8-9% in 2009 and we had a huge investment in technology. Sellers don't care in 90% of the markets when you show them what you're doing for max exposure: syndication on hundreds of aggregator, media and broker sites. Because of a contract I still run in a local paper and I got exactly one ad call last year but that is almost done, done, done!

Feb 27, 2010 04:48 PM