Special offer

Here's Why (and How) We Desktop Publish all our Printed Materials at our Madeline Island Real Estate Office

By
Real Estate Broker/Owner with Madeline Island Realty 50317-90

MADELINE ISLAND REAL ESTATE

We receive a lot of compliments on our Madeline Island Realty three-panel listing brochure and our one-page listing flyers. 

Print Workstation at our Madeline Island Realty office

One of my listing clients asked me the other day why we take the time to desktop publish our listing brochures and flyers.  I responded by saying that pre-printed listing flyers are, in my opinion, a waste of money.  They don't allow for price changes or photo substitutions.  They also don't allow for new or withdrawn listings.

We have a relatively short sales season here in the Apostle Islands area, although it is possible to make sales any time of the year.  Our summer sales season is brief but intense.  We start putting out brochures and flyers in early May and by November we are pretty much done distributing them, other than by mail or email.

When I first opened my office here, one area real estate firm was listing their property inventory on a one-page "Insty-Prints" sheet, on cheap 20-pound paper.  I didn't care for the look or the feel of the piece they were handing out to customers.  I thought it looked tacky and as if it had been thrown together carelessly.  We decided to do a two-fold, three panel glossy brochure in our new LaPointe, Wisconsin office.

A three-panel fits well in a pocket or handbag.  It mails well and holds its shape.  To some agents, this seems like an insignificant detail, but I see so many awful-looking print pieces in real estate that I believe it's worth some extra effort.

My daughter Laura created the template for the flyer in Microsoft Word and we established a format for front cover, back cover and interior content.  One of my competitors chuckled about it, saying it looked like something a "city kid" would design.  But we handed out over 600 of them in our first summer.  And within a year or two, we started seeing three-panel flyers popping up all over town, not just from real estate firms but also used by property rental companies and other local merchants to market their wares.

Today, our three-panel is pretty much a tradition, a part of our branding.  We print the brochure on 32-pound HP Presentation Paper.  It's relatively substantial, but has a finish that takes ink well and it gives our high-resolution property photographs the sharpness and fineness of detail that we like.  It looks and feels expensive, which means our printed pieces are less likely to wind up in the trash right away.

The brochures are printed on a workhorse HP Color LaserJet 2600n printer.  The paper and cartridges are a bit expensive, but the result is superior. 

Our one-page property flyer is designed in Microsoft Publisher and an Adobe .PDF version is generated from that.  I've experimented with designing in Scribus (open source software) but I'm sticking with Publisher for the time being.

I have a feeling that members of the public, and clients in particular, are able to tell when you spend a little more on marketing materials and when you go to a little additional effort.  My father was a graphic artist who used to lecture clients on the subject, warning them that marketing materials which look cheap wind up being tossed out many times faster than those with an expensive look and feel.  The same holds true for business cards.  It's been proven that cards printed on heavy stock, with a gloss or embossed finish, are kept longer than those printed on, say 80-pound stock. 

I imagine that some would say these are minor, imperceptible details.  But in successful marketing, details can make a big difference.

 

 

FOR REAL ESTATE MARKETING THAT STANDS APART FROM THE CROWD, CONTACT BROKER ERIC KODNER, CRS, ABR, E-PRO, AHWD, MADELINE ISLAND REALTY LLC

CALL OR TEXT MESSAGE 612.670.2539

EMKODNER@GMAIL.COM or MADELINEISLAND@GMAIL.COM

Madeline Island Real Estate Broker Eric Kodner is licensed in Wisconsin & Minnesota

Comments (0)