WebsiteBox survey respondents spend $500+ annually on postcards, signs and fliers that steer customers to websites.
In this era of online marketing, why are business cards, fliers, postcards and lawn signs still essential tools of real-estate sales campaigns, even though there isn’t overwhelming evidence for a return on investment (ROI)?
Print-marketing tools appear to produce fewer sales leads than online marketing, 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,” said Peyman Aleagha, chief executive and founder of WebsiteBox, a provider of do-it-all websites for real estate professionals.
It’s no surprise then that 99 percent of survey respondents said they include website addresses in their print marketing. Use of social media information—Facebook or Pinterest, for example—was reported by 54 percent of respondents.
While they continue to rely on print, respondents said that only 13 percent of their sales leads come from traditional print promotion versus 21 percent of leads that originate from online marketing. This seeming contradiction may result from misunderstanding in how print can work in concert with online marketing, according to Aleagha, and that less than half (42 percent) of respondents calculate the ROI for their print marketing.
On the other hand, it might not matter: The survey found that 60 percent of real estate sales leads come from good old-fashioned referrals.
DIY Design
The majority of respondents, 66 percent, said they designed their print pieces using graphics software packages, such as Adobe Photoshop or web-based tools, such as those from Vistaprint. The top self-designed items, according to the survey, are business cards, fliers, postcards, lawn signs and letterhead.
Despite saving on design costs, 60 percent of respondents reported that they typically spent more than $500 annually on print promotion. A sizable majority—80 percent—said they felt they should be spending even more.
What would these respondents print if they had a bigger print marketing budget? More postcards, naturally, along with branded presentation folders, promotional coffee mugs, key chains and flash drives, according to the survey.
Free Advice, Low-Cost Tools
WebsiteBox’s free e-book, “Real Estate Print Marketing for the Digital Age,” has information for those who want to integrate traditional marketing and advertising with digital promotion.
This article appeared in REAL Trends Newsletter and is being reprinted with permission of REAL Trends, Copyright 2015