By Daniel Rome Levine

 

Kathy Casarin, CRS, of Prudential Preferred Properties in Clarks Summit, Pa., knows just how effective Internet marketing can be, but that doesn’t mean she’s ready to abandon print. Casarin focuses her marketing efforts across online and print outlets, and this strategy is helping keep her business strong in a down local market. Last year, she earned gross sales of more than $3 million, a 46 percent increase from the year before, and tripled her number of listings. “By focusing on both types of marketing, I’m able to reach different audiences at different times, which results in more clients,” she says. “It definitely pays off to use both.”

 

Casarin believes print marketing is more effective than the Internet when it comes to promoting herself and highlighting the benefits of her CRS Designation. Last July, for example, a woman called her after seeing Casarin’s ad in the local paper. The ad focused on her CRS Designation, the value she places on education, awards she has won and her status as a top agent. When Casarin arrived at her front door, the woman was holding the clipped ad and commented right away on how impressed she was by Casarin’s ongoing commitment to education. “That listing was a total result of my print marketing and a validation of my overall strategy,” says Casarin, who also markets herself in print using postcards, fliers and brochures.

 

Casarin also realizes the advantage of the Internet as a marketing tool, especially social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn. She recently sold a $345,000 house to an old college friend she hadn’t talked to in nearly 20 years but reconnected with via Facebook. Casarin uses the sites to post messages about her successes, such as strong open-house turnouts or a big week she had for listings or closings. She also shares her views on market conditions and what is happening with home prices and mortgage rates. But since social networking is meant to be fun, Casarin also dishes out amusing stories about her family life. “All this draws people to me and gets them to know and identify and trust me,” she says. “It keeps me in the public eye and subtly reminds people that I’m in real estate. Social media is fabulous for that, and best of all, it’s free.”

 

The Internet has transformed real estate marketing and become an invaluable tool for networking, finding new clients and selling and buying homes. And one glance at any newspaper’s now-tiny classified section (if it has one at all) proves that many agents have stopped purchasing ads in local print publications. But for Casarin and many other REALTORS®, print marketing still has an important place in their overall marketing strategy. Despite years of hearing predictions that online communications and social media will make traditional print marketing obsolete, Casarin and others continue to use it because it gets results.

 

With an abundance of powerful and effective online tools available to real estate agents today, the big question is, where does print fit into their overall marketing strategy? For many, the answer is that both media play an important role, because each is effective at accomplishing different and very specific goals.

 

Fine Print

 

Abby Lee, the head of brand marketing at RE/MAX International, says that although blogs focusing on a local area are becoming a more prevalent way for agents to market themselves, it is still hard to beat print for building name awareness and promoting yourself. “Print marketing is still a key way to connect with your target area,” she says. “Outlets such as local community papers and neighborhood real estate mailers are still very viable and effective at keeping an agent’s name top of mind in a community.”

 

Jani Bielenberg, CRS, of Bielenberg & Associates in Centennial, Colo., agrees. Mailed postcards have been the centerpiece of her print marketing strategy for nearly 30 years, and she says the $9,500 it costs her each year to produce and mail them is definitely still worth the investment.

 

These days, she sends cards to about 2,200 people in nine target neighborhoods each time she and her husband and business partner, Robert Bielenberg, CRS, have a new listing or sell a home. The color cards list the property address and the price, as well as Bielenberg’s name and contact information. “We want to keep people aware of what’s going on in their neighborhood, and it gets our name out in front of them,” she says.

 

Bielenberg says her postcard strategy and other print marketing efforts, such as a quarterly newsletter that costs her $5,800 a year to produce, result in about 40 listings annually and are responsible for 85 percent of her business. The four-page newsletter provides timely information, including news on the local real estate market, advice for buyers and sellers, and other useful tips. Many clients tell Bielenberg they save every copy of the newsletter and refer back to them throughout the year. She’s convinced that an online newsletter would never have that kind of lasting impact.

 

Bielenberg hopes people who receive her postcards set them aside for future reference, but if that doesn’t happen, she still believes in her strategy. “Even if our postcard stays in people’s hands only a few seconds before going in the garbage, I know we’ve reached them because we are providing useful information in a way that is succinct and eye-catching. It reminds them to call me.” In March, for example, Bielenberg sent out a postcard listing homes that had sold in a specific neighborhood over the past year, along with sales prices and floor plans. The next day she got a call from a man who said he had gotten the card and wanted to know the value of his home and had questions about his floor plan. He might not have been ready to buy or sell, Bielenberg says, but he was now a potential client.

 

Bielenberg feels certain that sending out the same information via e-mail would not be as effective. People are inundated with e-mails, she says, and don’t even take the time to open many of them before hitting the “delete” button. She adds that as more companies have moved their marketing efforts online, there’s less printed marketing material to compete with her postcards. “If someone is getting 60 e-mails a day versus six pieces of mail,” she says, “the snail mail has a better chance of at least getting a glance.”

 

Postcards also pay off for Gay Ashley, CRS, broker/owner of Ashley Realty Group in Fairfax, Va. They are the one remaining print source she still uses to market herself. She had been spending close to $8,000 a year on print ads with little to show for it. “We found that they were just very expensive for their shelf life and what you got for your money,” she says. Ashley sends out as many as 650 jumbo-sized color cards for each listing she handles. The cards feature information about the property, photos, and her logo and contact information. “When we started sending out the cards five years ago, our listing numbers went up dramatically,” she says. “The exposure is very good. Clients even take the postcards to work and share them with co-workers.”

 

Producing the postcards costs Ashley about $2,000 a year, and she saves money by designing them herself using Microsoft Office Publisher and doing all her own photography. “One sale far outweighs the investment,” she says, “and they leave a very professional impression.” Ashley knows this because often when she shows up to meet new clients for a listing appointment, they are holding one of her postcards and ask if she can make one for their home, as well.

 

Ashley, who works just outside Washington, D.C., also produces a branded Washington Redskins calendar that has spaces to fill in the score of each game. She sends out about 700 calendars a year to people who live in her target area and other potential clients, and encourages non-football fans to give them to friends. “Anything that keeps our name in front of potential clients, or those who might refer business to us, is effective marketing,” she says.

 

Ashley learned quite by accident just how popular the calendars are. After first introducing them in 2004, she didn’t receive much feedback and decided not to produce them the following year. That was when the calls started coming in from people asking when they were coming out. She has been producing the calendars every year since. “We have been surprised at how many people actually do keep scores on them,” she says.

 

That said, Ashley is also a big believer in social networking sites, such as Facebook and LinkedIn, and says these outlets now provide her with more leads than print ever did. “The thought of each person that we lost touch with over the years knowing at least 200 other people who know at least 200 other people is very exciting and continues to be a source of real prospects for us,” she says.

 

Steven Gillikin, CRS, of RE/ MAX New Horizons in Providence, R.I., stopped marketing himself in newspapers and magazines four years ago when the dwindling return no longer justified the approximate $1,500 annual cost. “It was getting to be too expensive,” he says. “Local newspaper subscriptions were also way down and most buyers were looking online anyway.”

 

But Gillikin still relies on print for a key part of his overall marketing strategy. He creates custom fliers for all his new listings using Microsoft Office Publisher. The fliers include key information about the property and his company, and there are plenty of interior and exterior color photos. He e-mails these to Expresscopy.com, where they are printed in color on heavy stock paper. When he gets them back two days later, he places them in information boxes in front of houses he is selling and passes them out at showings.

 

Gillikin estimates he spends close to $2,000 a year on fliers, and he says it’s worth every penny.“I know this strategy is working, because nearly every one of the prospects who meets me has a flier in their hand,” he says.

 

Whither Print?

 

Jim Paulson, CRS, of Progressive Realty Corp. in Boise, Idaho, says REALTORS® are wasting their time and putting themselves at a disadvantage if they rely too heavily on print marketing. “Print media is definitely going the way of the dinosaur,” he says. Color fliers for listings are Paulson’s only remaining form of print marketing.

 

Paulson started shifting his marketing efforts to the Internet about 15 years ago and today spends about $7,000 a year marketing his business on the Web. He even pays a local video production company to put together virtual tours of each of his listings, which he posts on his Web site as well as on YouTube. Each listing video costs Paulson about $150 to produce.

 

One of the most important steps Paulson took when he entered the online world was to create a specific Web address for each listing. This enables people to type in a property’s dedicated URL and be linked directly to that listing instead of having to search through a Web site to find it. “It directs people right to where they want to be instead of forcing them to find their way there and potentially get lost,” he says. “My clients love it because it takes them directly to where they want to go.”

 

One of the features of Internet marketing that Paulson finds most valuable is the ability to discover where leads originate. “Unlike print advertising, I can track where people found my links,” he says. “You can’t run Google Analytics on print media.”

 

But even an Internet devotee such as Paulson realizes print can still be a useful marketing tool. If he is marketing a home he thinks will have special appeal to retirees or senior citizens, for instance, he doesn’t hesitate to place ads for the property in Idaho Senior News, a monthly newspaper targeting people 50 and older.

 

While the advantages of online marketing are indisputable, it’s also clear that for many agents, maintaining some print marketing presence still makes sense. Finding the right balance between the two will help ensure you are armed with the most powerful and effective marketing strategy possible.

 

Daniel Rome Levine is a writer based in Wilmette, Ill., and is a frequent contributor to The Residential Specialist.