Newspapers and real estate advertising – there’s no excuse
In real estate, we seem to believe we’re a different animal from the rest of the business world. Yet, we make crazy decisions the same as many other businesses might.
Example: newspaper advertising. I can name dozens of (major) brokers around the country who have decided that the newspaper is no longer a valid avenue for advertising homes for sale. The reasons?
“Readership is down.” “We’ll advertise where the buyers are.” “The newspaper business is dead.”
Funny – my paper still arrives at my house and most of my neighbors’. Funny – our Indianapolis Star is printing 312,000 papers on Sundays. Sounds like they’re still in business with circulation up 10%+ over the past couple of years.
Admit it people – it’s an excuse to cut a lot of money out of a newspaper advertising budget, replacing it with a little money in an online ad budget. A bottom-line decision versus a legitimate reason.
Did Carpenter Realtors® follow the trend? Just the opposite. We’ve increased our presence in the Indianapolis Star, creating a dominant position for the company at a time when real estate is turning the corner on the recession. Every day we feature a “Home of the Day,” a single family home for sale around Indianapolis. On Sundays, we feature three top Carpenter agents in three branding ads that drive readers to the HomeFinder real estate section. Our ad in that HomeFinder section absolutely dominates, with two-three full pages of open houses for sale compared to a few other scattered open house ads.
Simply, we’re making a big investment in an advertising option that delivers a huge number of potential Indiana home buyers and home sellers. Reach and frequency = 300,000+ homes every week. Also, understand that it’s not just the Indy Star we’re in. We also have a big presence on many online sites and other media. Ours is a wide reach with a dominant presence. There’s no excuse for blaming basic cost-cutting on non-truths and we won’t do it.
Is newspaper dying or dead? Even if it were, it’s not the reader that’s responsible, it’s the newspaper business itself. Read this from the slanted (apparently … due to its name) newspaperdeathwatch.com. Headline: “Audience Expands as Business Contracts.” According to the audit bureau, readership is increasing as newspapers continue to slash and burn – sorry, “make necessary reductions in costs.” Maybe the newspaper business model is collapsing and its long-term prognosis is not good. I don’t care. What I care about is reaching affluent buyers of my product (homes for sale, real estate) today. My product is real estate and my local daily can reach 300,000+ homes on a typical Sunday.
Business model of the newspaper industry – viable or damned? Don’t care. Reaching 300,000 households every Sunday to advertise my open houses for sale? Care.
Posted by: Jim Newell