Advertising Hints

In today’s slower market place, making sure you advertising is working is critical. If it isn’t working, you either change it until it works or drop it. You cannot afford to make expensive mistakes in your advertising.

Here are some ideas to keep you from making mistakes.

Hint #1: Way back in the “old days” (early to mid-80’s) an advertising representative from the local newspaper told us since most homes were not dual income homes, prospective buyers do not have the time to call on every prospective homes. Instead, they look at the ads with an eye to eliminating homes from their search. So if you ad does not tell them the basic things they need to know, such as price (or price range) number of bedrooms and baths, etc, they will NOT call for more information. And since people seem to get more and more busy with each passing year, the buyer prospects are probably becoming even more selective on what they call on. That is probably the main reason that floor duty “property calls” have been decreasing over the years, making floor duty less valuable to agents!

Hint #2: Besides putting in the important facts in an ad, you need to sell the benefits to prospecting buyers. Don’t ever try to sell on features.

Hint #3: Establish why you are advertising. Is it to sell your listing to prospects? That will not work. Is it to get the phone to rings? You’ve got a good reason and you can track the effectiveness. Is it to let other prospective home sellers know how hard you work to sell your listings? Although that could be a good reason, it is not easy to track the effectiveness. It’s better to have the reason that is easy to track and have this be a side benefit.

Hint #4: Learn how to effectively work with property calls before you advertise at all. When you get a call you need to remember that you will never be able to sell the property to them over the phone. You will also never be able to sell then on working with you. The only things you can do is start getting acquainted with them (and them with you) and get their contact information. Occasionally, you can even get an appointment over the phone. Normally, a property call is only a starting point.

Hint #5: Avoid terms in your add that have a negative connotation with prospects. Some of those terms could be “cottage”, “Fixer-upper”, “Needs a little work”. “Needs TLC”. “small”, “quaint”, “handyman special”, etc. Now if you know that the only buyer will be someone one who can do a lot of work on a home, you MIGHT be able to use some of those terms.

Hint #6: Put some form of a “call to action” in your ad. This is the one that I have the most trouble with. It seems to take a special skill for that, but I keep working on it.

If you follow these hints, you will have a better chance of getting leads from your property calls on your advertising. And the more leads you have, the more chances there are of making a sale.

The author of this article is Linda Grissette. Some of you may remember her as Linda Grayson. Linda is a Broker-Associate with River City Real Estate. She is also the company trainer. Learn more about how River City Real Estate can help you make more money...even in today's market...browse through this site.

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