Real Estate Online Marketing ? Social Ads vs Banner Ads

Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) January 31, 2012

Back At You, a social media marketing company focused on creating and executing online marketing strategies for small businesses, reviews the state of online advertising as it pertains to small business and, in particular, the Real Estate industry.

The Real Estate industry is playing catch up when it comes to technology and online marketing. Like most small businesses, Real Estate professionals are focused on marketing methods of the past. These methods are usually highly competitive, expensive and not very effective, especially when compared to when they were first introduced. For example, ads in the local newspaper, at the bus stop or in the grocery cart, these were all very effective when first started. However, like all marketing channels, change is required to maintain an ad?s effectiveness. Unfortunately, these same channels today are exactly the same as they were 30 years ago.

Fast forward to the Internet. Banner ads are the rage of advertising. Real Estate professionals who were the early movers experienced great success with this new way to advertise. As ad networks became smarter with better targeting, banner ads started to replace traditional advertising. Many of the Real Estate professionals who were the early adopters became the industry?s top sellers of property.

Now 15 years or so later, banner ads are being ignored. Consumers have been flooded with ads over the years and have built up immunity. Today, for an ad to be effective, it not only has to have a good call to action and look sleek, but also it takes multiple viewings of an ad before anyone will click. Meaning, you have to spend a lot of money on design and buying ads in bulk. Even then, it?s a tough sell for most.

Today, Social ads are what banner ads were 15 years ago and newspaper ads 30 years ago. Social ads are refreshing, engaging and encourage a call to action by the consumer to engage with your business. According to Wikipedia, Social advertising is the first form of advertising that leverages ?offline? dynamics, or social influence. Facebook is a great example of where businesses can leverage a social platform and target people according to their stated interests and actions. Imagine targeting people to ?Like? your Page that are interested in real estate, or are following similar businesses as your own, or have stated they are interested in buying a home or investing in real estate. All of this is possible through Social ads. Facebook is the dominant social network allowing for this rich base of data to be mined through targeted Social ads. Real Estate professionals have a significant opportunity to build a targeted base of customers using Social ads and over time, will likely never need to pay for advertising again.

Research conducted by Ignite Social Media looking at the effectiveness of Social ads vs traditional banner ads was quite conclusive. It demonstrated that social ads attracted 5.7x more visitors than display ads, cost per visitor was less expensive, bounce rates were half and customer conversations occurred 4.0x more. Consumers are becoming more savvy and have a shorter attention span than ever. Thus, engagement becomes important when marketing online.

Researched conducted by Pilot, who surveyed over 200 marketing professionals, asked how satisfied they were with their Social advertising. Only 1% said they were not satisfied. Meaning 99% said they were somewhat to very satisfied. These are professional marketers, so Real Estate agents and other small businesses, take note, Social advertising is going to be the greatest marketing channel to build a pipeline of customers for the long term.

Real Estate agents, like all small businesses, need to approach marketing with a long term focus. The key question one must ask is ?how do I build a long term pipeline of leads?? or asked another way ?how do I build a business online that I can market to over the long term?? According to Back At you, most Real Estate agents tend to have a short term, transaction oriented focus. This line of thinking encourages banner ads and buying zip codes or emails for marketing. There are many big businesses selling these old products, but they dominate the industry. Back At You, however, has seen a shift occurring with the top brokers and agents it works with. These early adopters are re-allocating their budgets and placing up to 50% of their marketing spend into building a long term pipeline of clients through Social advertising. They are beginning to understand why virtually all the Fortune 500 brands market through their Facebook page and not their own websites.

When was the last time you saw a commercial of a large brand where they were promoting their web site and not their Facebook page? Why is that? Mainly because Facebook provides a place for users to better engage with the brand. Engagement means loyalty and loyalty means a likely customer.

According to one Real Estate broker, Ron Marshall, ?I know I will be on Facebook in the next year or two, so why wait, if I start building a targeted audience now and ahead of my peers, I may not need to spend money on advertising in the future. The opportunity is too big to ignore and I am really excited about the prospects. Today, I have 500 people who I have targeted to Like my Facebook page, I have half a dozen leads and one confirmed sale assignment.?

Back At You works with Real Estate professionals to build custom social media and Facebook marketing strategies. Once created, Back At You will then build, execute and optimize each marketing campaign to ensure each broker and agent attracts the audience they specify.

About Back At You

Back At You provides social media marketing services and promotion technology to all size businesses. The company provides both a self-service and full service model to assist companies and agencies in their use of social media. As a true service company, Back At You specializes in helping businesses create, build and execute marketing campaigns that look to build engagement while also focusing on targeting the right customer. We are like your own social media marketing department.

For more information, please contact info(at)backatyou(dot)com.

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Source: http://www.onlinesys.info/technology/real-estate-online-marketing-social-ads-vs-banner-ads

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