Real Estate Marketing for the Internet Age

As more and more homebuyers search for homes online, the real estate marketing industry has been forced to adapt to a new set of rules. While some firms are dragged, kicking and screaming, into the Internet age, others have sought to embrace it, and to find ways to better serve their customers.

Let’s face it: we all suffer from advertising fatigue. In the past few years, marketers have begun to talk about the “three screens” that exist in our lives – Internet, television and blackberry/cell phone – and how they’ve become interwoven. Yet the proliferation of media outlets, and the fact that advertising has attached itself to everything in our lives, has also made the standard “push” method of marketing less and less effective.

The reason is this: When you’re trying to reach customers who know what they want, and know how to get it, then a barrage of sales pitches doesn’t work. Instead, marketers must subtly convince them that their firm offers the best service and product. They need to provide consumers with the information that will help them to make informed decisions. Advertising experts call this “pull” marketing.

Real estate marketing firms are no exception. The companies that survive these daunting times will be those that adapt to this changing environment. Consumers want information at their fingertips. They also appreciate realistic market information – not the doom-and-gloom prophecies of the cable TV money gurus, but neither the buy-now-or-lose-out mentality of the boom times. Call it a new kind of middle ground – a healthy mix of market skepticism, informed decision making, and a renewed search for opportunities in the marketplace.

That’s the purpose of this blog – to provide our customers with the kind of information and analysis that will help them to make informed decisions in the marketplace. If you have feedback about topics that you’d like to see addressed and covered, please send it to us at pure@progressiveurban.com.

Happy reading.