I have spent a 4 years looking at the advertising trends of real estate agents and brokers through some very interesting real estate cycles.
What amazed me was that they are backwards.
Real Estate Agents and Brokers advertise more when the market is good and less when the market is bad.
This is inverted with what I will refer to as “professional” advertising. In professional advertising – mass market retail and other, advertising is used to drive business and increase market share to improve slow sales, or launch new products. This is true of all of the worlds largest advertisers.
P & G for example has a $5.5 billion dollar ad budget and is the world’s largest advertiser. When a product needs support – they boost advertising.
Real Estate is backwards. Advertising in San Francisco and throughout California hit its peak in 2005 and 2006 when the average days on market was 5!
That means that the agents and brokers were submitting thier advertising for the newspaper and for magazines when there was a pretty good chance the listing would be sold before the media went to press!
Now that the market is down to “Normal” – agents and brokers have backed off of their advertising – cutting costs at every corner.
Cliche’ of Marketing 101 – Principals of Marketing
1. Increase advertising to drive sales
2. Increase advertising to combat impact of competitor advertising
3. Advertise to prevent cognative dissonance
4. Increase advertising to drive product adoption
Contact Victor Lund at WAV Group Consulting for more inforamtion on this topic.