My Internet Advertising Has Been Validated!

For the last 3 years I have been telling my agents, my customers, and anyone else that would listen that print advertising for real estate is on it's way out.  The listings were old, the ads didn't contain the newer listings, and you weren't able to get a feel for the home like you can with virtual tours and online video.

Apparently, I was right.  A new study conducted by Harris Interactive and sponsored by Intel Corp. finds that 65 percent of adults feel they cannot live without Internet access. Additionally, 71 percent consider it important or very important to have Internet-enabled devices, such as laptops and mobile communications on hand almost constantly.

According to the survey, 46 percent of women and 30 percent of men would rather go without sex for two weeks than give up Internet access for the same amount of time. For women ages 18-34 it was 49 percent and for women ages 35-44 it was 52 percent. For men ages 18-34, it was 39 percent.  I don't know for sure, but I would guess that newspapers and other print advertising have NEVER experienced that kind of popularity!

Obviously, the study didn't focus on real estate, but if people are that passionate about Internet access, wouldn't it just make sense that the Internet is where they are going for their information?  The 2008 National Association Of Realtors Profile of Buyers and Sellers says that more than 90% of home buyers 44 years old or younger used the Internet as a source of information during the home buying process and 87% of ALL buyers used the Internet during the process.  It goes on to say that 69% of buyers used the Internet FREQUENTLY to find a home compared to 15% that used a print or newspaper advertisement frequently to find a home.

If you are a professional listing agent, it only makes sense to spend the bulk of your advertising dollars online.  We're in our 2nd year of 100% Internet advertising.  We've invested heavily in our website, SEO (search engine optimization), and listing syndication.  In November we had over 652,000 page views of our 53 listings on just Realtor.com.  That's over 15,000 views per listing in a single month.  If you consider that Hitwise gives Realtor.com a 7.68% market share and our listings are are also on seven of the top ten real estate web sites (as well as hundreds of other sites), we estimate that each listing is viewed an average of 150,000 times each month!

There isn't a publication in the world that can guarantee that my listing will even be noticed in the pages that they print, but with inexpensive (or free) tracking software, I can tell my clients how many times their home has been viewed, how many times the virtual tour has been taken, and how many times, the potential buyer has looked at a video of the neighborhood.  I can even communicate all of this information to the customer on a weekly basis with just a click of the mouse.  It doesn't surprise me a bit that half the adults would rather give up sex instead of Internet access.  This is exciting stuff!!!!