Sometimes you look back and think that the way it was, was so much easier. This is so true with marketing. Although there were many intrinsic downsides that was associated with it as well. It was a real scatter gun approach to get to your potential clients, in that you had to put your message in front of everyone in the hope of getting to a few who were interested. It also came at a great cost in printing which was so essential but the biggest issue was that you had no idea as to how many people actually read it and were interested.  

The old way in Marketing Property or Marketing anything was just getting in their face and telling them the obvious. It was so easy in many ways; I still remember at the end of the last century that similar to many small business owners at the time, I used the following marketing strategies, which were The Yellow Pages, strategic advertisements in the paper, on TV or radio, and cold calling or an email campaign from a purchased list of potential clients. 

But by the turn of this century, we all had our web sites that we were very proud of. We didn’t really know what to do with it, but we knew we had to have one. We had realised that those expensive Yellow Pages adverts were not bringing the contacts that they use to. Now we had to work harder. But as a small company, it was very expensive to have those IT people working on your web site, to ensure your company site was on that first page to get to your potential customers. As a small business owner, we were lost in the wilderness of modern day marketing, in trying to understand what to do.

The consumer became more informed. They did not just take words in an advertisement or in a website as gospel any longer. They checked it out for themselves. Now they had all the information that they required with the internet; they just had to go to Google and ask a question to make an informed decision.

Now the power has been transferred to the consumer and has changed marketing forever. They don’t want the hard sell; they want information about how to overcome their issue. It is up to all companies now to demonstrate to the consumer that they are the helpful company in assisting them to get the right information to make an informed buying decision and in that way you demonstrate that you are that reputable company to deal with. This is the modern day Inbound Marketing.

But this is a real opportunity for many companies. The opportunity exists because it is not dependent on large amounts of funding and instead requires large amounts of sincerity and a real desire to help and look after your future customers. No matter how small you are you can afford to do this type of marketing and you can demonstrate your knowledge and passion by distributing important information about your industry to assist those people wishing to buy or sell in the market. It is much more difficult now for the disreputable companies to fake their sincerity; it was easy to design an advert but now they need to talk the talk (sincerity) on a regular basis and expect no more in the short term other than the satisfaction of being helpful. You do it well and the sales will follow.

But what amazes me is that it is so strange that in the Real Estate Industry, it is still very much reliant on the old way of marketing which comes at a great cost and in most cases is being paid for by the poor vendor who after spending on the marketing, has no guarantee of a sale and more importantly, a sale at the price they want.

This is an exciting time of change, with technology allowing us to monitor the effectiveness of real estate marketing. But the industry needs to start taking up the innovative ideas.