Although the power of the web continues to grow, print media will always be a staple of real estate marketing. Unfortunately, not many real estate agents understand how to get the most out of their print ads or track results. Instead, they run the same type of ad that 99% of the other agents in their market are running and pray that the reader notices the ad and takes action.

The two greatest challenges in print media advertising are:

• Ad Cost
• Ad Size and Content

Of course, both of these are related - the bigger your ad the more you will pay. And because of that cost/size constraint, agents tend to make two major mistakes. The first major mistake is trying to cram too much into any given ad. In fact action has led to the birth of a new language - Realtorese. You know exactly what I mean - all of those hard to decipher abbreviations that agents use in their ads and listings. Heck, it was probably the kid of some agent that saw this and developed the text messaging lingo and acronymns. This leads us to rule #1:

• Keep your ads clean and make use of whitespace to draw attention to your ad

The second major mistake that most agents make is that they design ads that focus on themselves instead of the buyer or seller. I call it the Toby Keith Syndrome (from his song "I Wanna Talk About Me"). My guess is that with so many other agents buying ads in the same publications, these types of ads are the equivalent of shouting out "Look at me! Look at me!" Unfortunately, that's not a great way to get the attention of the reader.

Take a look at a typical real estate print media ad:

By the way, do you see that line "A great address like yours..."? That is from an actual ad in my local market. Unbelievable! Talk about egocentric agents! Here are some of the other problems with this ad:

• White text on a black background. Occasionally I have seen print ads with this text/background work well. But more often than not they are hard to read and do not grab the eye of the reader.
• The featured homes do not state where they are located. The first thing any potential buyer wants to know is where a property is located.
• All of those silly real estate phrases like "Must See!" and "Won't Last!" In fact, some studies have shown that using phrases like this can actually lengthen the time a home is on the market. Here's one article on that topic.
• The ad copy is all about the agent. Effective advertising targets a specific buyer demographic and invites them to a call to action. There is no call to action in this ad.
• The web address is buried at the bottom of the ad in small print.

While all of these items are critical, I especially want to focus on the last one. At the beginning of this article I talked about the high cost and limited space in print advertising. But your web site is a different story. Unless you have a lame hosting company, you have almost unlimited server space for text, photos, and movies. So don't you thinks its time you started using all of that server space to your advantage?

Now take a look at this ad:

Let's take a look at some of the positive things accomplished with this print ad:

• It leads with the web site address AND provides a call to action letting the reader know they can search thousands of homes (i.e. the MLS listings). I'll talk about the /homes a bit later.
• The ad uses whitespace and color effectively to grab the attention of the reader.
• The ad copy targets a specific buyer type. In this case that type is an experienced, upscale buyer. It uses a catchy paragraph to draw them into the rest of the copy. That "What's YOUR dream?" tag is something one of my clients and I brainstormed a few years ago based upon her target demographic. Truthfully, that following paragraph is not something I would use or suggest. I just wanted to give readers of this article an idea of brief ad copy that targets a buyer.
• The featured homes not only list a location, but they also highlight features that would be of interest to particular buyers (i.e. private dock for boat owners and golf view for those that enjoy living in a golf community). Listing bedrooms and baths is optional. The goal is to highlight one major feature that appeals to a specific buyer type.

OK, so why did I show the web address and then the /homes at the end of the domain URL? The answer is easy - it's for tracking purposes and can also be used in marketing to a specific buyer demographic. For example, let's say I run print ads in the local newspaper and in a high end real estate magazine. I would then create two directories to track the ads. Let's say one is /homes for the newspaper ads and the other is /estates for the magazine ad.

Now let's say that my target demographic for my newspaper ads matches the ad copy on my web site. I would probably create an index.php page in my /homes directory that uses a redirect script to send people to my home page (for SEO purposes I would also utilize "noindex.nofollow" tags or edit my htaccess file). But by using this directory I can go look at my web site stats and see how many people entered that URL to go to my web site. If I just listed my domain without the directory I would have no way of knowing if my print ad was effective in generating visits to the web site.

Now for that magazine ad, let's say I'm targeting upscale clientel, but the ad copy on the home page of my site does not target that buyer demographic. In this case, instead of using a redirect in the /estates sub directory I would create a new page with ad copy that appeals to that buyer demographic and then link that page to my funnel areas of the site (funnel areas lead visitors to action points on the site).

There's actually a lot more involved in putting together a truly effective print ad, but this information should put you on the right track. Again, here are the key things to remember:

• You can put a lot more information on your web site than you can in a print ad. Lead your ad with your web site. Be sure to let the readers of your ad know what "bonus" info they can find on your site. Use ad tracking wherever possible.
• Focus you ad on your ideal buyer demographic. Appealing directly to their needs and emotions will get them to take action and visit your web site. THAT is where you begin the conversion process.
• Keep your ads clean and free of clutter.
• If you present listings on your print ad be sure to include the location of the property and one key item that appeals to a specific buyer. Targeting a specific buyer is the key to conversions!
• Every ad serves a specific purpose and targets a specific buyer/seller demographic. Anything else is stroking your own ego and wasting money.