Controlling Your Advertising Costs

Advertising

Controlling Your Advertising Costs
by Patti  Brotherton



It seems at times that as a Manager of a real estate firm we just can’t get a handle on our advertising costs.  What do you do, with sellers and agents demanding more, the dollar only stretching so far, and the effectiveness of the print media waning as well as the cost going up?  You pull your hair out trying to please everyone and the results are not what you want.  There must be a better way.

Analyze

The first step in getting control of spiraling costs is to analyze the effectiveness of your current program.  How many properties are being advertised per week?  Does the image of the company ad need some tweaking?  Would other advertising work better?   Where do we get the greatest return for the advertising dollars spent?  You need to know where you have been before planning where to go.

Special Promotions

A quick “shot in the arm” for an office in advertising is to plan a company or branch promotion.  Come up with something where the entire office participates in sharing the costs because of the benefit of being part of the promotion.  For example, have an Open House Spectacular Celebration for one month where every person who registers at any of the company open houses can win a computer with printer.  Every agent who participates is charged a fee (say $25) and they get special open house invitations sent out around their open houses each week that month, entry forms, and publicity in the local paper.  You can create a special ad for the open houses each week and note each agent’s name.  What is great is that this type of promotion will get noticed and you shared the cost with the agents.

Use Email

Create new open house registration forms for the agents that have email address information requested.  Start gathering email addresses from everywhere!  Ask the agents to give your staff person the email addresses from the open houses.  The Manager should be working on getting all the past and current clients’ email addresses as well.  This is a huge task, but if it is worked on diligently, you can get them.

Email marketing messages about the office to these addresses.  There are several programs that will allow you to do this without having to show the names and addresses so they do not look like junk mail.  Keep the messages simple and concise.  The office can email about special promotions, about new listings, and sales success, etc.  And, it’s absolutely FREE!  Not only that, but they will be read and more than likely you will get a response because no other company is doing this.

Create New Ad Formats

Spend some time with your local paper, Harmon Homes, or Homes & Lands Magazine, and come up with new formats designed so agents can advertise and get a greater bang for their buck.  If the company formats it and collects from the agents, the agents pay the company rate, there is greater exposure because the company looks bigger, the company has a lesser per line charge because there is more advertising—everybody wins!  These ads would be in addition to the company-paid ads so the perception would also be that the company is growing.

This is a great way to gain greater company awareness and not have to spend all your advertising dollars doing it. 

Get Creative

Get a committee of agents going in the office to brainstorm how the office can get greater advertising awareness without spending all their capital.  It will be refreshing to see what they come up with.  There could be participation programs with newly designed just listed cards, find a more reasonable printer for brochures and flyers in the office, etc.

Your agents will help you if you ask for their help.

Office Web Advertising

Find a way to get a company web site designed for you without any cost.  Negotiate with a good web designer that if he comes to an office meeting and sells so many web sites to agents, that the office site will be free.  Make sure that this designer can deliver and that he has a good product or this will backfire.  Then update the office information on the site weekly, maybe with 5 best buys.  Let your sellers know that they are the best buy this week on the office web site.  Advertise the office web site everywhere.  You can be advertising all your office listings 24 hours a day just by having this site.  Make it work for you.  Don’t wait for the agents to get web sites, you can control your costs by taking the initiative.

Bottom Line

The bottom line is don’t throw up your hands and give up.  There are ways to advertise that can be very effective, all you need to do is experiment with ideas.  The tried and true methods that we have been using for centuries, might not be the answer today.  Be bold and try new things.


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Copyright© 2002, Patti Brotherton. All right reserved. For information contact Frog Pond at 800.704.FROG(3764) or email susie@frogpond.com.