A survey by WebsiteBox asks, “In this era of online marketing, why are business cards, flyers, postcards and lawn signs still essential tools of real estate sales efforts – even though there isn’t overwhelming evidence for a return on investment?”
The company says print marketing tools appear to produce fewer sales leads than online-marketing efforts, according to the results of a November 2014 WebsiteBox survey of 369 real estate professionals in the United States and Canada.
“But print marketing continues to be popular because agents intuit – correctly – that print drives local traffic to websites and delivers sales leads to email inboxes,” says Peyman Aleagha, chief executive and founder of WebsiteBox.
Ninety-nine per cent of survey respondents said they include website addresses in their print marketing. Use of social media information such as Facebook or Pinterest was reported by 54 per cent of respondents.
While they continue to rely on print, respondents said that only 13 per cent of their sales leads come from traditional print promotion versus 21 per cent of leads originating from online marketing, the company says.
For information visit www.websitebox.com.
This seeming contradiction may result from misunderstanding how print can work in concert with online marketing, says Aleagha, and because less than half (42 per cent) of respondents calculate the return on investment for their print-marketing efforts.
On the other hand, it might not matter, the company says. The survey found that 60 per cent of real estate sales leads come from good old-fashioned referrals.
A majority of respondents – 66 per cent – said they designed their own print pieces using graphics software packages such as Adobe Photoshop or web-based tools such as those from Vistaprint. The top self-designed items, says the survey, are business cards, flyers, postcards, lawn signs and letterhead.
Despite saving on design costs, 60 per cent of respondents reported that they typically spent more than $500 annually on print promotion. A sizable majority – 80 per cent – said they felt they should be spending even more.
What would these respondents print if they had a bigger print-marketing budget? More postcards and branded presentation folders. They would also buy items such as promotional coffee mugs, key chains and flash drives, they told WebsiteBox.
WebsiteBox offers a free ebook, Real Estate Print Marketing for the Digital Age, with information for salespeople who want to integrate traditional marketing and advertising with digital promotion.
For more information, visit www.websitebox.com .
