Where are Real Estate Agents Spending Their Advertising Dollars?

According to the newly released Real Estate Advertising 2006 report by Classified Intelligence, real estate agents are spending less than 20% of their ad budgets on print ads in newspapers. That money isn’t going to online newspaper ads either.

So where’s the money going? Clickz.com reports that many agents are spending money to improve their websites - just 6% didn’t spend at all on their sites.

Traditional marketing venues are also still getting ad money

The numbers show realtors are still spending in traditional marketing venues. Thirty-six percent of participants spent 10 percent of their ad budgets on print papers, 19 percent spent 20 percent there, and 8 percent put 40 percent of their dollars into print papers. Direct marketing and local niche print publications are also still garnering a relatively significant chunk of spending. However, tried-and-true yard signs, flyers and billboards still fare well compared to other media. 36 percent of respondents put 10 percent of their dollars in such places, and 28 percent placed 20 percent of their ad spends on flyers, signs and billboards.

Of course, the study’s sample size was extremely small - at about 100 real estate agents - and it’s based on responses from real estate agents who self-selected to go online and fill out the survey, so it’s entirely possible that these results are skewed to the more tech-savvy real estate agents.

I’d also be interested in the results. The article doesn’t mention tracking measures at all, so it’s impossibe to say which are working the best.

Finally, Jim Turner has an interesting commentary on marketer Andy Beal’s hypothesis that realtors are turning to blogging to market their services. Personally, I think that would be a smart move given the explosion in blogging. Heck, there’s now an official blog for the real estate industry.