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What are REALTORS spending their marketing budget on?

For a few months now I've been watching more closely the listings in my primary service area. For new listings that came on the market since the second week of December I'm seeing a huge drop off in the number of listings using premium marketing services such as floor plans, professional photography, and virtual tours.

I know the winter months can be slow, and there are less listings, but the decline in listings using floor plans and virtual tours seems to far exceed the decline in the number of listings.

For those of you that usually use professional photographers, virtual tours, and floor plans can you shed any light on this?

I have a few theories, but don't want to influence the responses yet...

Alan Myers

www.BostonImageMaker.com

Posted by Alan Myers on 12/30/2008 05:01 PM

Comments (5)

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5 Comments on What are REALTORS spending their marketing budget on?

DEC

No theories other than people are trying to spend less. I think that now is the time that you need to put a virtual tour on. The more you can do to enhance your listings probablilty of selling the better.

It is taking longer to market these properties and we have to stretch our ad dollars so much further that it is impossible to do it all for the double the time it takes to sell them. The sellers want to see marketing, they don't really care how much it costs!

JAN

You would think that Realtors are cutting back and spending less on marketing all together, but I continue to get mailers, letters and see ads placed by local Realtors.

Virtual Tours are not a tangible item, and when panic sets in people feel they have to action and when they do it needs to be a psychical thing so they feel they are in control and are being proactive.

With this thinking we need to come up with a marketing concept that combines the tangible with the virtual.

Cathy

Virtual Access Tours

FEB

It is funny because the best Realtors spend more when times are tough not less. As a group Realtors are short sighted and cheap. Probably one of the reasons I do well is because I don't share this mentality.

MAR

Boston isn't a 'virtual tour' town. Most realtors don't use them. I would guess that less than 10% of all listings in the greater Boston area have a virtual tour.

And the biggest reason is that - as a group, Realtors are some of the cheapest people on the planet. They think they can do everything themselves. They can design their own websites. They can take their own photographs. They can design their own flyers. They can do their own marketing.

The reality is - 95% can't do ANY of these well. Thus, the end result it Mickey Mouse marketing and a black eye to the real estate industry. I've seen websites that sell SHOES that have more photos on a little $40 shoe than most realtors will put on a $900K house. And they're BETTER photos.

Just because you have ten fingers does not make you a concert pianist.

Just because you own a camera does not make you a photographer.

Just because you have access to $100 a year "virtual tour" software that generates worthless slideshows does not mean you know how to market.

Seems to be the consensus at the Boston Globe as well.

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