Tucson Home Sellers are you Fishing in the Desert
As I drive around Tucson I never see anyone with a fishing pole along the banks of any of Tucson’s rivers. They know this isn’t the place to fish.
Have you even seen a cartoon of someone fishing in a barrel on their front porch? They know there aren’t any fish in the barrel but they like to fish.
Imagine for a moment they were fishing in a barrel on the porch and there was a single fish in that barrel. But just 100 steps away is a large pond filled with fish, lots of fish to catch. But there they sit fishing from the barrel.
“Why are you fishing from a barrel when there is a pond right behind the house?”
“Because we have always fished from this barrel.”
“Did you have a pond before?”“Nope, we just put that in two years ago.”
“Why don’t you fish from the pond where there are 1000 more fish than in the barrel?”
Now you might think this is a really dumb story. But it is one that is true, just not about fish.
Where are the Advertising Dollars being Spent
Once you get your house on the market you want it advertised. If a tree falls in the woods . . . If a house is for sale but no one knows it. . .
Often Tucson home sellers want to see pictures of their homes in the newspaper. Most of the time I think it is because they want to show the neighbors, co-workers or family the nice ad that is in the paper. Have you ever thought about how effective the newspaper is in actually advertising your home for sale? A typical ad in the weekend section of the Arizona Daily Star TNI runs about $250.00. Sometimes those ads are run multiple times. Advertising in the newspaper and other local publications can be very expensive. Why do most agents do it? Because sellers request it and expect it.
The Mixed Message of the Newspaper
Does the Beef council advertise in the PETA publication?
Think about it. When was the last time you saw anything positive about the Tucson real estate market in the newspaper? Readers get a steady stream of negative media attention about real estate. They are being told how terrible everything is related to Real Estate and this is where you want to advertise your home for sale.
Honestly, that’s like fishing in a barrel. The local newspaper is not where the buyers are anymore. The buyers are on the Internet.
Where are you looking for your next home
If you are selling your home in Tucson and looking to move to another part of the country. Are you subscribing to the local newspaper where you are about to move to look for a home? I’ll be very surprised if that is how you are looking for a home. You are looking on the Internet aren’t you. So why wouldn’t you want your home advertising dollars going to the Internet instead of the local newspaper? Is it because that’s how it has always been done? The Internet hasn’t been around that long. But believe me it is how people shop for almost everything these days including their next home. You are shopping on the Internet for your next home aren’t you.
Nine Hundred percent more bang for the buck
Buyers aren’t just looking on the Internet, they are finding the homes they are purchasing on the Internet.
What is the advertising strategy for your home? Believe me, there are limited dollars for advertising your home. Doesn’t it make sense to spend those dollars where you can reach the most people.
Do you have an Internet marketing strategy?
If you want to really grab the attention of neighbors, co-workers and family show them how to see your home on the Internet. Where they can find lots of information and pictures that look good and not just a single grainy picture in the newspaper for a single weekend.
For more information read Real Estate Trend: Web traffic officially replaces walk-in-traffic
Technorati Tags: internet real estate advertising, tucson homes, tucson real estate[where: 85737]
Dave Smith | Tucson Real Estate
Hi Dave,
Where do you advertise your listings on line beside the MSL? I know some agents use craigslit.org
Margie,
We use Craiglist as well. I build each listing a personal website and do it in such a way they are easily found on Google and other search engines.
I author four blogs and put those listing sights in the navigation of each blog. You will find them to the right on this blog under Tucson Listings. This gets a lot of traffic and helps the individual listing sites be found.
A lot of buyers find our listings from Google searches on the subdivision or area of town they are looking to move to.
I also create video montages for each of those listings and put them on the listing website and I convert those videos to YouTube format and post them there as well.
Each is also included in Trulia, Zillow and Realtor.com.
I’m always researching and adding new ways to get our listings on the internet, but not just on the internet, on the internet where they can be found.
We have sold quite a few of our listings this past year from buyers finding them on the internet. They also share the links to the listing sites with relatives to view the property also.
Finally, we wrote three offers, all accepted this past year for homes sight unseen. In each case we created a video montage for them of the particular home they were interested in and posted it on one of our blogs for them to view and share.
The internet is a wonderful tool for both sellers and buyers.
It does help that I have a programming and photography background.
What buyers really want are photographs and lots of them. The internet is the best and easiest way to provide them so they can be viewed and shared anywhere in the world a potential buyers has an internet connection.
I stopped advertising in the newspaper over a year ago. The newspapers is like zillow, with only a small percentage of the listings in it. I tried video but have not found it to be more effective than slide shows and pictures.