As this site seems to be directed towards professionals within in our community I am hoping for feed back on your marketing. Print advertising seems to be going out of favor, but still effective and expensive. I hope we all agree that the purchase of leads from Lending Tree ect, ect. is not the answer. What do you folks think is the answer for new lead generation, for Buyers and Sellers of real estate.
The internet, web advertising certainly works but the percentage return rate is very low, and we need to play the numbers game. In my humble opinion, the more volume we try to handle, the less personal service we provide. To be blunt I am not a fan of teams, please correct me but I don't think clients like being passed to a transaction coordinator. If you are a informed, experienced Realtor, why would the client want to be passed off during the critical contract period. We make the assumption that the deal is done, but we,also know that contract knowledge and enforcement can be critical to the benifit of our client.
But back to lead generation. My biggest frustration is the balancing act between being a Realtor, and being a marketing machine. I hate marketing and love helping people buy and sell homes.
So what do you think??
;)
;)
I think that the question is sufficiently regional that you should probably try several different things and think of ways to test the effectiveness of your advertising. Print might work well where you're from, but it might stink to high heaven where I am. The costs also vary from region to region.
Also remember that people like the person touch. I use hand-written letters quite effectively, but it will take more of your time and not less. One secret is to use a really good color printer to reproduce the hand written note. It only works if it's good enough to fool the naked eye.