Home : Blogs : Spencer Rascoff : Spencer's Blog

Realtors cutting advertising spending and shifting more online (per Bank of America survey)

Last week I blogged about a Bank of America survey of real estate agents’ sentiment about the housing market. Today, Bank of America released their November Real Estate Agent Ad Survey which looks at advertising spending among Realtors. The results (for some) are grim:

"Results from the November survey indicate that the number of real estate agents cutting ad spend is greater than those increasing their expenditures. Furthermore, the trends have weakened from October and September. In November, 37% of respondents reported decreasing their ad spend (versus 32% in Sept and Oct), while only 22% reported higher spending (versus 26% in Sept and 25% in Oct). Since the survey does NOT include real estate agents that have left the business in recent months, there is likely a positive skew to the results – i.e., total real estate ad spending likely is falling more sharply than results indicate."

But here’s the good news (at least for Zillow and Active Rain):

"The commentary by agents is interesting, as it highlights a continued transition towards more Internet dollars (away from traditional)...what rings quite clear is the continued share shift to non-traditional advertising. Approximately 60 of the respondents (or ~13% of the respondents who included comments about their advertising plans) noted an increase of non-traditional advertising despite the overall weakness in the real estate market."

I’ve been blogging about this theme for a while, but it's always interesting to see more data come out that backs up what we all already know: online advertising is where Realtors are going to be spending most of their marketing dollars going forward.

You can access the full Bank of America report here.

Like what you're reading? Then subscribe to my blog to receive updates.

Posted by Spencer Rascoff on 12/03/2007 07:40 PM

Comments (13)

online advertising, zillow

13 Comments on Realtors cutting advertising spending and shifting more online (per Bank of America survey)

DEC

2007

The consumer is online...if we Realtors are not where the consumers are, what business will we have?

Even the newspapers admit that readership is down...and who keeps a newspaper in the house longer than overnight?

Gail Gladstone, Long Island Realtor

I stopped the print 4-5 years ago and have noticed no ill effects. Better to spend money on business cards.

The majority of my marketing dollar is spent on the internet, but the key is to where to spend on the internet?

Print is just about dead in our area. I've turned my money to internet and creative marketing options.

Spencer,

As a consumer, I now go instantly to my laptop to lookup a business or phone number before I pull out the phone book. It's definitely a trend towards meeting the needs of the consumer. I think the harder thing for many agents is having to explain to this to their clients.

www.ColleenFish.com www.MapleValleyRealEstate.com

I totally agree... a simple email blast or blog posting gets more results than an expensive ad placed in the paper that runs for only one day. Its amazing our local Saturday Real estate section in the local paper, seems like it has about 25 % of the pages or advertising that it had two years ago.

HOWEVER- what I would like to see is an analysis by age groups of those using the internet to shop for real estate, like a comparison of retiring baby boomers compared to the 30 somethings? I wonder if those less computer literate still rely on traditional print advertising?

Yep that's the wave of the future So get your surf board and ride the net waves.

Good post!

Your right, I spend very little on print and almost all of my marketing cash goes on-line with that amount growing every month.

Take care!

RJH

I think we have all figured out, from the thousands that we have spend in print that print does not work....or at least worth its while...

So where do people get the best results on the internet?

The good news: We're ahead of the curve because we got here early. The bad news: Most agents are catching on and the competition will get stiffer as everyone jumps on the bandwagon- as Realtors generally do.

DEC

2007

I agree and have focused most of my efforts online. In my market, jumbo sized postcards still get a pretty good response. The call-to-action message is usually "internet related". Traffic to my website is 30% higher after a mailing.