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Customer service vs. mass marketing

By
Real Estate Agent with RE/MAX Properties of the Summit

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??

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Jonathan Greene
Team Greene Realty - Tampa, FL

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.

Aug 23, 2006 12:51 PM
Pam Hofmann
Third Tennessee Realty & Associates, LLC - Crossville, TN
Your Crossville, Lake Tansi & Fairfield Glade Specialist
Here in Crossville,Tennessee we use Homes & Land, which is great because all of the ad's are also on the internet and we get a ton of referrals from them. We also have a glossy homes book which is published by our MLS. These books are bi-monthly and alternate so there is new one each month. Our local newspaper has a lot of ads, which we all use, but I'll tell you we don't get much from them but like everybody else we do it for our sellers. They like to see their homes in the local paper coming to their door. Go figure
Aug 23, 2006 01:32 PM
Peter Andres - Lic. in FL & NY GRI,SRES,CNE
REALTOR - The Villages, FL

I love marketing. Try niche marketing instead of marketing to the mases. You wil find your conversion rate a lot higher. Like anything else you may have to go through several test market options before you find the right fit for your business. 

 

Aug 23, 2006 02:20 PM
Christopher Johnson
RE/MAX Properties of the Summit - Frisco, CO

Thank you everyone, for all your comments. I am going to focus on niche marketing to people who know us already, and dump most print ads.

Thank you!

Feb 27, 2009 05:28 AM