Is Print Advertising Dying?

One of the hot questions in real estate is this: “Is print advertising dying?” While many think so, I don’t. What is dying is “traditional” advertising. What’s the difference?

Traditional advertising is more of a mindset rather than a medium. Take the standard glossy real estate magazine. It will have 48 pages of ads from different Realtors, each page filled with a small photo of a home and 20 words or so of text. The debate rages about whether addresses should be added or withheld in order to get the buyer prospect to call the Realtor. Can a small photo and 20 words of text, address or not, really help to sell a house?

Similarly, many agents use a local real estate cable channel to advertise their listings. Ours uses 3 photos and a 21 second voiceover. Certainly 3 photos are better than 1, but could you adequately describe your home in those confines?

I practice “Non-Traditional Traditional Marketing,” a concept I’ve developed to use traditional media in a non-traditional way. With the advent of the internet, I can use a traditional newspaper ad, a Home Magazine ad, or a real estate cable ad to direct potential buyers to a custom website of your home, where we have all the time and space and photos and floor plans and virtual tours and voice-overs…anything we want to tell buyers about your home, we can tell them! And all beginning with one photo, a couple of selling features, and a web address in a print or broadcast advertisement. Heck, I can put more information about your home, via a web site address, on the back of a business card than a “traditional” Realtor can put in a full page magazine ad!

So the question is, “What kind of mindset do you have?” Are you happy with “traditional” real estate marketing, or do you and your home deserve cutting edge, “Extreme Marketing?” I’d love to visit with you and share more of the difference.