Newspaper Advertising vs. Internet Marketing

Admit it, we all like it.  We love to see our pictures in the news paper.  If we attend a community event or festival, we scour the crowd pictures in our weekly paper to see if we are in them.   Engagement announcements or wedding notices, promotions at work, or successful fundraisers, we enjoy the 15 minutes of fame that is generated by having our picture in the paper.  Nothing beats having a friend or colleague say  “Hey, I saw your picture in the paper”.   For that moment we are really – important.  And for most of us, it will only happen a couple of times (if at all) in our lifetime.

So wouldn’t we expect that advertising our home in the newspaper imparts some special celebrity to it? Isn’t that what we want?  To make our house famous so that someone will see it and want to buy it? But that just isn’t today’s reality.  According to the 2011 National Association of Realtor’s® Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, only 2% of home buyers found the home they purchased in a print newspaper advertisement.  Think about that.  That is an astounding figure!

In addition, according to the same study we learned the following; 

• 11% found it from the yard sign
• 35% were introduced to the home they purchased by a real estate agent
• 40% of homebuyers found the home they purchased online
• 88% of all home buyers  use the internet to search for a home
• 96% of home buyers aged 25 to 44 years use the internet to search for a home  

So clearly, the internet is king.  You see, the problem with newspaper advertising is that it is only 15 minutes of fame.  When your house is online, it is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week until it is sold. It has multiple photos, mapping, and community information right at the buyers’ fingertips.  It is quite literally a ‘virtual’ showing.

Real estate agencies and agents already know this.  Some of us figured it out quite some time ago, but the industry as a whole now recognizes that internet marketing is the most efficient and effective medium to market residential real estate.

So when you are  interviewing agents, ask them about their internet marketing strategy.  Make sure they have a plan to expose your home online. More importantly, make sure they have the ability to quickly capture the buyers who find your listing.  It doesn’t matter how many people see your home if you can’t capture them.  Also, ask about reporting.  Will they be able to tell you how many site views  your listing gets, and on which sites?  What about your agency’s website(s).  How many unique visitors do they get and where do they come from? These are now the questions you need answers to when determining who is going to most effectively market your home.  Quite frankly, getting it into the local newspaper shouldn’t even be part of the conversation.