Advertising works

The fact that advertising works is indisputable! You just have to put up a sign or an advert on the telly and watch as the customers flock to your door, so easy huh, actually no!

Advertising is not a super mind warping ‘build it and they will come’ brainwashing beam to zap consumers with so they will purchase your wares. It all depends on various factors such as research and strategies etc. (I won’t go into these now as there have been many previous blogs about this
subject already).

Yet it would seem that real estate agencies believe through their own stupidity or because some ‘advertising guru’ has told them, that their clients are dumb and as long as you put up a sign with a pretty picture it will work.

My reasoning for this theory is that I have noticed along my street two new homes for sale (each listed with a different company). Each has a big shiny new sign outside with a large photo, headline and some contact information. Pretty standard stuff, except the picture in each case is an absolute waste of valuable advertising space.

Each sign has a beautiful photo of the beach, which of course is the biggest drawcard for the properties because they are both on the beach front of Geographe Bay.

So why the hell are you showing me a photo of the view I am actually seeing right there at the same time I am looking at your sign?

This is just plain dumb. Sure use the photo in the online and press advertising when the potential buyer isn’t at the actual property.

With the sign however use the ‘advertising real estate’ of the sign to show me the features I can’t see: like the back yard or modern kitchen etc. It is the same when real estate agents put a photo of the front of the house on the sign and then put the sign up in front of the house – duh!

Fact is if a real estate agent was selling my house and put up a dumb sign like this I would rip it down. Why should I have to pay for a sign that doesn’t send a strong message, I know both the cost and value of advertsing ‘real estate’ so it needs to be right and work.

Let’s face it, a sales sign outside of a property has two main objectives: firstly notifiy a potential purchaser that yes indeed this property is for sale, and then create a call to action to get more details either directly through the real estate agent/company or solely via the web.

So my advice to anyone advertising (especially real estate agencies) is simply to treat your customer as an intelligent person who dosen’t fall for just a pretty picture on a big shiny sign/ad.