The power of advertising

VICKI HOLDER delves into the issue of residential property ad campaigns.

Without an advertising campaign, "you may as well be winking in the dark" when you try to sell your property, says Ross Foreman, of Bayleys, Mt Eden. "You know about it, but nobody else does," he says.

A well-conceived, targeted promotional campaign that tells the world of your property's virtues will help to maximise the price of what is probably your biggest asset. By creating as much competition between interested parties as possible, you can drive the price as high as buyers are prepared to go.

It's important to make your promotion stand out - people are too busy to wade through wee ads these days, says Julie Yonge, marketing co-ordinator for Ponsonby Real Estate.

"They want to see colour and good quality pictures," she says.

You're appealing to conscious buyers who have sold their house and are actively looking for a new one. Then you get the sub-conscious buyers who are just flicking through and something catches their eye.

They could be the ones who end up buying, so you've got to think carefully about how you can capture their attention. The bigger the ad, the more chance of being noticed.

Bayleys' Foreman says New Zealand was well behind the rest of the world in realising the value of pictorial advertising. Real estate agents had to entice buyers with words until the mid-80s, when pencil sketches on bigger display ads became popular. It was not until the 90s, when newspapers introduced colour pages, that property marketing finally arrived.

"A picture paints 1000 words," he says. "Many vendors still don't appreciate that. Now the ad campaign is the real estate agent's biggest tool. People know what they want. They want it quickly, and they don't want to be interrogated or harangued."

When vendors plan a three- to four-week auction campaign, they are looking for action and results at the end of that period. During the lead-up campaign, they need to promote the house in the best way possible.

Buyers need to see a quality picture of the house to assess whether it looks interesting. If there's no picture, buyers are suspicious. The only time you can be forgiven for not including a picture is when there's an amazing view.

Buyers move to the text for more information. That needs to be well-written to convince them that the property is worth visiting. When writing her ads, Ponsonby Real Estate's Yonge uses the AIDA formula. "ATTRACT attention, hold INTEREST, create DESIRE and call for ACTION - such as come to the open home on a particular date," she says.

As a primary advertising medium in Auckland, most agents recommend colour ads plus a lineage listing in the Weekend Herald, because it's the real estate bible and its circulation is too high to pass up.

Weekly property publications with good pictorial imagery are also important. If there's the budget, glossy magazines work, because they have a longer life. The Internet has also become a cost-effective method of reaching buyers, particularly those aged 25 to 40 and overseas buyers.

Most agents suggest signage to demonstrate that the vendor is serious about selling. Some distribute flyers in the area.

You need to tailor the budget to the individual property and client, but the general rule for expenditure is about 1% of the expected sale price, says Foreman. Typically, he looks at a property and rates it according to the difficulty it faces being sold. He asks: "How many people will I need to show the home to in order to sell it?

"You need enough budget to ensure you can promote the property so that it reaches the widest possible market."

Foreman stresses that it's crucial to do your marketing in good and bad times. It's easy for agents and their vendors to under-sell their marketing effort when there are plenty of buyers around.

"This is wrong, because you're going to miss people. By using the agent's database, you're only going to market to known buyers - those actively looking. There's another 70% of buyers [in that sub-conscious category] who need to be made aware through the advertising campaign."

Next week, we discuss why the cost of the ad campaign is not covered by the agent's commission.