How to spend our marketing dollar.  Who among us does not ask that question several times per year?  We know we will spend money on our websites.  That's a given.  Then there is a long list of items we do year after year without asking questions, among them:

•  'Just Sold/Just Listed' postcards.
• Farming
• 33 or more client touches
• Sponsoring the local Little League team
• 1st time home buyer seminars
• Open Houses
• Broker's Opens
• Bigger, better signs
• Riders for the signs

And the list goes on.  The soliciting from vendors wanting our advertising dollar is relentless.  REALTORS make a lot of money and so we have a lot of money to spend on advertising, right?  Some of the most relentless are the local newspapers and real estate magazines.

I personally have cut back on much of what I am willing to spend. Back in the days when I had few listings, I thought the small inventory was the reason my ads did not cause the phone to ring.  Now that I carry more listings, I can see that maybe it was not about the number of listings. I recently went on a listing appointment and when I pulled into the driveway of a high end home, there were about 4-5 Sunday papers laying there.  I remember thinking, "It won't be difficult to convince these people that folks don't take the time to read the Sunday paper anymore."  One of my selling points for the benefits of listing with an agent with a highly ranked site. I got the listing.

The IBJ (Indianapolis Business Journal) states that 80% of their subscribers prefer to receive advertisements in the IBJ rather than direct mail.  Well, maybe so, but if they could choose not to have any advertising at all, would they?  I am asking because I don't know.  I do know my own clients have asked me to e-mail their bi-monthly reports rather than mail them.  Less paper to deal with and less to throw away.

Our local paper, The Indianapolis Star , has a very successful website and I do advertise my listings there.  However, most of the people searching there must have their own agent because they seem to request a map to the house more than anything.

What I see locally is that the same top producers spend money on full page ads in the newspapers and real estate inserts. Out of over 7,000 agents in my local board, these advertisers are maybe 3-4 agents with another 45 or so running 2" X 2" ads.  Are they doing this because it brings them buyers for their listings or are they doing this because this is what the sellers expect and they are trying to keep the sellers happy? Maybe in reality it is bringing them more sellers? Has the NAR or anyone else done a study or taken a survey to find out what kind of results REALTORS get from these ads?

Perhaps those who comment on this post can also share their results?  Should we keep throwing in the money on print advertising or are we throwing it away?