Where to Advertise? The Realtors Dilemma.

Realtors are constantly being bombarded by hundreds of vendors trying to get a piece of the multi billion dollar pie. Classified Intelligence recently did a Realtor survey about the proliferation of media choices.

Here were some of their findings:

47% of the Realtors surveyed said they are spending more for advertising this year than they did last year.

15% of respondents said they still advertise in print. These respondents also voted newspapers 3rd out of 11 categories for driving leads.

Half said the results from national websites are below their expectations and are not generating enough leads. There are new websites entering the forsale and forrent market everyday. This fragmentation is gradually overwhelming Realtors and when consumers are overwhelmed, they tend to go with what they know, which may not be the best option for them.

One question, “Given the recent proliferation of new forms of advertising / marketing, which of the statements belowbest describes the difficulty you face in determining where and how to effectively advertise and market your services?” was answered as the following:

56% were fairly confident that they did a good job of knowing where to advertise. 39% were overwhelmed by the number of choices. And 5% said, “no problem, I got marketing down to a science.”

As there are more and more choices for buyers and renters to go to, new business models like Postlets, VFlyer and RentMarketer will continue to emerge to offer realtors, property managers and owners one central place to market their listings. At the end of the day, buyers and renters will never be on one site, they will be surfing the net across many sites looking for their dream home.