Print - Sharing The Load

I have to say that I am pretty pumped up about the print advertising that I have been doing lately! I am in a local free paper with an article plus an ad, the Pinellas Home Search and also the Real Estate Book....I can hear the groan from you all now - I can't afford that, print advertising doesn't work, there are no buyers right now so why spend the money, yada yada yada.

Well let's go over this step by step and see what all this print is costing. Timez Out (small local paper) The article is free and allows me show that I am a "real estate expert" in area. Small local papers are often looking for good, reliable submitters and you might just fit the bill. Here is this month's article. As you can see I was able to quote other industry sources like my Homebanc partner, Brian P. Forrester and also another agent from the office in the article, spreading the love around. I also paired up for the ad with my high end listing partner Sheila Santini so the cost was cut in half. $100 total (you also get a discount on the cost of the ad because of your article submissions!)

Pinellas Home Book This seemed somewhat cost prohibitive when I checked it out orginally, $500 a page per month. But what I did was buy two pages and sell the other ads to agents in my office who got the benefit of the lower price and "all" it took was my time (I had to commit to 6 inserts per year and have to do the individual agent billing myself). I figure I have about 10 hours in designing the ad and laying out the first spread. This month we added pages 3 and 4 which added another 6 or 7 hours to the process, BUT as they always say, when you are a newer agent what you have is time rather than money so I consider it time well spent!!! $38/ad

The Real Estate Book I went in with 2 other agents (Lori Crawford and Bill Sullivan) for this one. There is a year's commitment, but we all vowed to stay the full year or to find someone to buy us out if we were unable to do it. I got it in from the printer yesterday and it is GREAT!!! This one features 3 properties for each of us and is a month long publication (I just noticed that they all are month long - even better! Cha-ching). They also have an extensive online presence that comes for free with the listings. $136/month - 12 month committment.

So my monthly costs are about $312 to get in three separate publications. Considering I was spending well over that to be in one high end print magazine, I am VERY pleased that I have gotten my advertising costs under control and I am achieving a pretty high visibility.

Let's talk about print not working - I have heard from three separate agents in our office that they have gotten calls already from the Home Search magazine. I just started the Real Estate Book so I don't have any data on that one and the Timez Out is more for visibility and to show my listing clients I am advertising for them than to make the phone ring. Would I like more calls? YES! But....I also find it much easier to sell my services at a listing appointment when I am able to show them all the places they will be featured.

As for there being no buyers - I always am reminded of Henry Ford's quote "Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right." If you are sure that there are no opportunities and that doing nothing is the safe bet, the results you get should be commensurate with your effort!