Saturday, September 29, 2007

Home Sweet Home

Even when I lack experience in a specific industry, I can usually study existing marketing communication tactics and catch on pretty quickly on the most effective strategies.

But I must admit that there are some forms of advertising I just don’t get.

I mean come on, what’s the deal with real estate advertising?

Every now and then I grab one of those free real estate magazines they have in the racks at the grocery store. In many cases, I really don’t understand the marketing strategy.

Price, of course, is one of the key “4Ps” of marketing. So what’s with this “price upon request” I often see? Why make me jump through hoops?

Because this usually appears in ads for upscale homes, I suppose it’s used to make the house seem more exclusive. But why is the asking price a big secret for this house in Novato, CA?

I don’t see the reason for mystery here. Is this secret price relatively high because the location is “most desirable” and the house is “meticulous”? Or is the secret price relatively low because it’s “the best value in Novato”? Is this house in my price range? I’ll never know for sure, will I?

The copy for the ad above seems pretty well polished, but a copywriter could probably improve many of the other ads. For example, take this house in Santa Rosa, CA:

Yeah, I understand that a bank now owns this house, and they probably want to get rid of it – the sooner, the better. And yes, I know that the house needs some repair and is being sold “as is,” but surely there’s something that might motivate a potential buyer.

There’s certainly plenty of room for more copy. Even that cliché “handyman’s special” would be an improvement.

Here’s another ad for a house in Novato, CA:

Evidently, the best selling features for this $724,500 house include the 1/4-acre lot, the pool, and plenty of room to store vehicles (a boat and an RV – wow!).

Well what about the house itself? How many bedrooms? How many bathrooms? Square footage? I don’t think the agent’s phone is going to be ringing off the hook on this one.

This ad is also an example of the commonly seen technique of including the selling agent’s picture in the ad.

Why do they do this? The agent’s picture in the ad above uses about 15% of the total space for the ad. Wouldn’t it be better for a potential buyer to learn more about the house itself? I’d rather see another view of the house than a photo of the broker.

But this is such a common practice, I wonder – does the photo of the agent really help sell the house? If so, why? Is it supposed to make the agent appear competent? Well, the agent works on behalf of the seller, so I’m happy for the seller that they’ve hired a photogenic broker – but as a buyer, what do I care?

Or maybe it’s the other way around. Perhaps I’m supposed to look at the photo of the agent and conclude, “That agent doesn’t look like she’s playing with a full deck. I’ll bet I can steal this house with a really lowball offer.”

These photos are evidently quite important to selling a home. For example, here’s an ad where there are two selling agents. Getting both pictures into the ad was deemed to be such a critical requirement that actually reduced the size of the body copy to cram everything in:

In addition to ads for homes, these real estate magazines often feature ads that sell the brokerage firm’s services. Presumably, when it’s time to sell my house, I’ll call that firm.

What’s the best way to sell a brokerage firm’s services? It would seem as if the preferred creative strategy is to present an unremarkable series of broker mug shots – and lots of ‘em. The more the better. In fact, if you design the ad to look like a page from a high school yearbook, you’ve evidently nailed the right look. Here’s an example:

Want to call the local Coldwell Banker office? Sorry, there’s no phone number to reach the firm, but you do have a choice of 30 different phone numbers under pictures of 30 different agents (actually 32 agents because sometimes they team up).

I wonder, do they rotate the arrangement of the photos to give everyone a fair shot at being at the top? I guess not because the names in this ad seem to be alphabetical.

If I went to work at Coldwell Banker, I’d change my name to Richard Aa. (No, I’m not weird – there’s actually a Norwegian playwright named Brynjar Aa.)

Here’s another example, but this one is truly a broker mug shot campaign on steroids. This is three – count ‘em three – consecutive full page ads in which Bradley Read Estate congratulates its “top producing Realtors(R).”

These three pages include photos of a whopping 164 real estate agents. Am I supposed to believe that they’re all top producers?

Anything’s possible, so let’s check. A look at Bradley Real Estate’s web site today shows there are 184 agents affiliated with that firm.

So yes, they’re all “top producers” – if the cutoff for top producer is being in the top 89%. Or to put it another way, this is a list of the agents who aren’t in the bottom 11%. Maybe if you make at least one sale per year, you’re automatically a top producer.

I suppose at this point I won’t be doing much work in the real estate industry. Well there’s other work to be done, and I’d better get to it.

So I’ll post this article and then get back to work in my cozy (tiny) home office, that’s set in a beautiful wooded area (plenty of spiders), in a home with vintage (oddball) touches, a rustic (old and crappy) deck, and a dramatic view of the bay (well that one’s true – the view really is incredible here):

Posted by Richard Bloch

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