Traditional VS. Digital

[Phoenix]

Five years ago you couldn't have given me a website if I was no longer going to be allowed to run print ads in our local paper, and do direct mailings etc.

Today, I can't believe it took me so ling to get online and go digital with all of my advertising.

This year I have only run about five ads in our local paper. Last year maybe 30, the year before 70+ and easily 100+ in the years before. This years ads have been very short, to the point and have had my main URL (www.PhoenixHomes.com) in Bold and larger text than the rest of the entire ad. Next year, I may not even run one single ad.

Mostly it is because of the ROI. I barely get any calls from ads anymore, though I am now checking stats the day of and the day after an ad to see if having my URL stand out is driving any extra traffic compared to regular days, and I really think it does drive some. But not enough...

Most of my traffic comes from the major SE's as I'm sure everyone else's does. But I do get quite a bit of traffic from Max's directory and a few other well placed links.

Keep that in mind when looking for links... look for sites that are relevant and will drive more traffic to your site. That is the best way to market your site, plus an extra BL (backlink) or two doesn't hurt in and of itself, but the main reason to get a link is for traffic in my opinion.

What do the rest of you think?

What are you doing to market your real estate practice?

Traditional marketing or digital/online marketing???

[Max]

It is funny you posted this poll, because just a few days ago I was reading an article on very similar topic. Actually, it was mentioned in DigitalPoint forums. Here is the actual artice "Successful internet marketing without a budget". I think it is very good read which motivates other people on the net to promote their online business harder and proves again that there are different ways to promote your business not investing a lot of funds into advertising. We don't need to go anywhere at all - you and I are good examples. Well, my company didn't pay any special prices for the CENTURY 21 domain we have and we haven't paid anything extra to get it where it is (my salary doesn't count ), so I think we are doing very good. The same with your site - no marketing payments, no paid seo services - everything done manually by you, some help from the side and mostly forums

[Phoenix]

It's forums like these where I learned almost everything I know today.

The sharing of marketing ideas, optimizing ideas and so much more!

Forums rule (and they make you money if you implement what you learn)!!!

[LasVegasMax]

Newsprint and real estate ads are no longer a good ROI because 80%+ of the real Buyers are starting on the Internet. It makes perfect sense to spend far less dollars on developing and deploying a good web site. The next phase that is coming on line now is information about a property on web phone. We all need to get our listings in web phone format and advertise the links on our property signs.

[waynelong]

I agree with you guys totally. My main focus now is internet. We have reduced our newspaper advertising to almost nothing. We still do magazine ads and get a fairly good response from those. We also do a mailout newsletter to our sphere of influence and other forms of contact for SOI. We get a good response from that as well.

If I could only do one type of marketing - it would be internet. That said - we think it is better to have a well rounded marketing program. At some point the big guys might take over the SE so that a guy like me can't rank on the first page at all for anything. What if that happened? We would have another paradigm shift. So....I don't want to totally abandon all other forms of marketing. I have listed what I think are the rankings for ROI and therefore marketing dollars spent.

1) Internet
2) SOI
3) Builder Contacts
4) Print Media