Real Estate Advertising Gets a Move On
Important Details: Think real estate advertising has already changed a lot? Think again. Much of the real estate ad revolution is yet to come. Realty companies have seen the Web changing buying and selling relationships. In the early years of the Web, though, they were concerned about the erosive power of the open Web. Now as their customers start their real estate searches online — some stats show 80% of would-be buyers now start there — they’ve come to acknowledge the inevitable. And that means they are now moving significant amounts of advertising dollars from traditional media — mainly newspapers — into more interactive media and opening up their information storehouses.
Take the case of Edina Realty, the #1 firm in the Twin Cities realty business. A recent article in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune on Edina Realty’s marketing transformation, highlighted the major movement of advertising dollars:
- Edina plans to cut in half its newpaper ad spending of $7.5-8 million annually. It is moving those dollars to other media: Internet advertising, electronic billboards, radio and alternative weeklies;
- It plans to supersize its own Web site, further adding a searchable database of all local real estate transactions, an instant Zillow-like home pricer, and historic information on real estate prices;
- It’s now targeting Gen X and Gen Y, those more used to non-daily newspaper sources. Among those distribution channels it plans to use: Google, Yahoo, MSN and such upstarts as Trulia.
"Information is free and plentiful," summed up Edina president Bob Peltier. "So [hoarding it] is no longer an option."
In Outsell’s Opinion: The Edina Realty story is a great microcosm. For more global reading on real estate business changes forced by the Web, a New York Times piece, "Forget Gimmicks: Buyers Want Numbers", reinforces the point of more consumer information. What do they want? Information on everything from neighborhoods to school quality to pricing information — and they want it all in one place, easy to get at.
Publishers have seen these changes coming and some have responded by investments in their home sites or real estate networks. They’ve hoped they could maintain a strong print buy among real estate companies, but those companies — pressured by disruptors on the web — are now moving marketing money quickly to meet the challenges. Edina’s case is not an isolated one; it’s been played out all over the country at differing paces.
Outsell’s own research — just published in our Second Annual News Users study — showed that 60% of Americans use the Internet for apartment or home shopping, while 31% use daily newspapers. Forty-five percent (respondents could cite more than one source) say they use "other sources," which would include free publications, Realtor magazines and word-of-mouth.
The lessons to publishers are:
- Information is really king. Consumers want it all and now expect flowing maps and lots of current data. Presentation and functionality are key.
- Whoever corrals the best mix of content and tools under their brands will win customers. Real estate buying is highly episodic, adding to the fickleness of these consumers. While sites like Trulia and Zillow are the flavors of the day, buyers will move quickly to others — owned by newspaper companies, by Realtors, by aggregators, specialists or anyone else able to give them what they want when they want it.
- Lead generation is key in this business. Publishers inevitably will be sending traffic to such emerging "super-sites" as the Edina one. They’d better price for lead generation, not just the market rate for clicks, and then design their sites and content to send lots of traffic to customers.