About Wexford County, MI

Effective advertising is always a challenge unless you know where and how to generate buyer leads. I see many agents using newspapers with small one line recurring ads. This may help the agent generate a specific type of prospect but it may not help his overall business as effectively as other sources of media.

Sellers love to see their home in print. Is print media the right place. This depends on your market area. Many areas do not have a "Real Estate" channel dedicated to residential homes. So print may be the only choice but the type of print media may be a wide open choice. Direct mail inserts is an option to display space advertising. More costly but more effective. You certainly can hand over some big dollars if you make the wrong choices or use a status quo approach.

If you like the local newspaper or a dedicated regional paper that is one choice, again you can also look at the regional real estate magazines. This may be an option or both. We hear so much about the Internet and the percentages..."Over 80% start looking on the Internet" that is true...but only 60% of American household have the Internet so what happens to the other 40% They don't buy because they don't have the Internet? Sounds ridiculous when you put it that way but that is what some media experts would like you to think.

The answer is a blended marketing approach. You can certainly weight your spending based on results. So if you generate more from your local newspaper keep that and add the magazine. Use different phone numbers and email addresses to track your results. If you do not where your leads are coming from you cannot Change your marketing efforts to maximize results for spending.

Sellers want results...they want their property sold! Can you blame them? Part of giving the results expected by clients is knowing when and what is effective. Don't be pressured into spending money on advertising that you know won't work. All you have done is spent money that could have been used for effective advertising and helped convince your sell that your marketing doesn't work.

I use a multi-media advertising marketing program weighted based on where the buyers are being generated. I don't put all my advertising dollars in one spot and I use actual results to show my sellers why I use what I use. When they say a company uses big newspaper ads on the front page of the Real Estate section, I explain that the results for my company and agents show it is a good marketing program for the company but is not very effective for the seller.

Advertising is very expensive and if you spend your dollars in the wrong media areas all you will end up with is smaller budget to spend in the effective areas. Knowing your market and media is the key to seller, agent and company success. That's my feelings based on tracking results for years.

One other issue is consistency. It takes time to be recognized but once consumers find you and they constantly find you they expect to see you where they have found you in the past. I tested this as well. I also use a give-away in my advertising...it can be a free report or guide. This also creates activity which can turn into buyer and seller leads.

How do you view your advertising model?

Since we are actively looking out for the buyer's best interest we often come across situations where we need more informatioin than an inspector is able to tell us. We need a structural engineer.

We've now had excellent reviews from a number of clients on James Standen of Standen Engineering.

http://standenengineering.com/

He looked at a brick garage issue that had our regular inspector confused. After a couple minutes looking and measuring Jim was able to tell us exactly what was going on and why. And it all made perfect sense. In fact it made so much sense that I couldn't understand why I hadn't seen it the way he did.

Helping Home Buyers Locate, Evaluate, and Negotiate great home deals!
Jon Boyd, Broker/Manager
The Home Buyer's Agent of Ann Arbor, Inc.
http://buyersagentannarbor.com/
734-6620-6240
1908 W. Stadium Blvd.
Ann Arbor, MI 48103
Ann Arbor's Most experienced Exclusive Buyer's Brokerage!