If you get a flyer in the mail saying, “We just sold a property on this street. Get in touch to find out how much your home is worth,” you may feel inclined to look online to see which neighbor’s moving, how much their home sold for, and even take a virtual tour through the house you’ve never been invited to. That’s the power of print marketing.
But if you got an email or saw a social media ad saying the same thing, it wouldn’t have the same effect. Instead of making you curious, it would feel intrusive: How does the real estate company know where you live? How did they get your email address?
Even in today’s digital world, print marketing plays an important role for real estate agents, and it can be a valuable source of new leads and potential clients.
Print marketing is often seen as outdated because, historically, it’s been impossible to track and measure those results. But with the right tools in place, you can track new property listings and sales driven by your real estate marketing materials, so print marketing shouldn’t be an impenetrable black box for your real estate agency.
See how many leads come from your print marketing
With digital marketing campaigns, many of the tools you use often come with built-in dashboards so you can see how your online marketing activities perform. But it’s difficult to track the performance of print marketing in the same way. Platforms like CallRail give you a way to track the leads that come from print marketing, so you can see how many become customers and how much income you generate from your print marketing campaigns.
Track calls from your real estate print marketing
A successful print marketing campaign should drive interest in your newest listings or bring in new listings. Either way, it encourages people to pick up the phone to book a viewing or arrange a valuation. To see which of your print marketing campaigns generate the most interest, track and analyze incoming calls.
Set up Call Tracking by using unique phone numbers on different print marketing campaigns, and set them up so they forward to your main office number (or cellphone if you’d prefer). This will help you see exactly how many calls come in from each campaign. For example, you could put a unique number for each listing in a brochure or have a specific number you use on all your billboard ads.
Alternatively, you could use the same number on all the listings in your brochure and then set up Call Routing to create a menu for incoming callers, who can then press a number and choose an option when prompted, to speak to someone about a specific listing.
Calculate the value of your print marketing
To work out the value of your print marketing, you need to understand how much revenue came from those campaigns and how much your print marketing costs. There are many different ways to calculate the return on investment (ROI) of your marketing efforts. But as real estate delivers big one-off purchases, the best way to calculate ROI is to subtract the marketing spend from the revenue generated.
Work out the value of your real estate print marketing campaigns in five steps:
- Calculate the total marketing spend for your campaign. This should include printing costs, postage if applicable, and the cost of any specific software such as direct mail automation tools.
- Use your Call Tracking data to tie every lead back to that print marketing campaign.
- Work out how many of those leads turned into customers.
- Calculate how much total revenue those customers brought through your print marketing campaign.
- Subtract the marketing spend from Step 1 from the revenue calculated in Step 4. This is the ROI from your print marketing campaign.
Create relevant, targeted print marketing
As you run more print marketing campaigns, you can use the data from previous campaigns to learn what works for your customers and improve your next campaigns to focus on doing more of what works for your company or resonates with your community.
Use language that resonates with your target audience
The best way to engage potential buyers with your listings is to start speaking their language. Demonstrate your own familiarity with the area — mention in your brochures and flyers any local landmarks or neighborhood businesses that everyone knows.
But you may be from another part of town and not as familiar with the area as local residents and wannabe homeowners. CallRail’s Conversation Intelligence can help you understand what your customers are saying by recording and transcribing your phone calls and then using artificial intelligence to analyze them. You can generate a word cloud report to help you visualize the words and phrases people use most often, which could help you identify new words to include in your brochures or flyers.
Generate a word cloud report using CallRail’s Conversation Intelligence to understand what customers talk about when they call your real estate agency.
Reach the right people by improving geographic targeting
Analyze the location data of calls generated by your print marketing campaigns. This will help you understand if specific campaigns resonate in particular areas. For example, suppose you see a spike in calls after distributing flyers promoting a listing in an up-and-coming neighborhood. In that case, you may want to run a new direct mail campaign offering home valuations to homeowners in that neighborhood.
Tools like the United States Postal Service’s Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM) are a great way to target specific local areas with your flyers or postcards. To run direct mail campaigns, you often need to have a list of addresses to target. But this allows you to target specific postal routes instead, so you can focus on targeting specific areas with your print marketing.
Invest in different forms of real estate print marketing that get people to call
Different print marketing materials will boost brand visibility for your agency and get your property listings in front of potential buyers. Here are four must-have print marketing materials to consider for your next marketing campaigns.
Postcards
Postcards are a fun twist on direct mail campaigns. Many real estate agents send postcard marketing campaigns to promote properties they’ve just sold, new listings, or to offer free valuations to local homeowners. They’re a great way to put photos and striking visuals front and center, making them a great fit for showcasing a standout listing, like this example from PostcardMania.
Example of a “just listed” postcard marketing campaign from PostcardMania
This real estate postcard highlights some of the property’s best features, and it clearly displays the agent’s contact details so interested buyers can quickly get in touch. This is where you could add a unique phone number, so you can track how many calls come from this postcard marketing campaign. You can even split test your campaigns by creating two different postcard campaigns and adding different call tracking numbers to each. That way you can see which designs and messages best resonate with your audience.
Flyers
Flyers are the more traditional format for direct mail campaigns. You could use them to promote upcoming open houses, showcase new listings, or promote your real estate services as a neighborhood specialist. You have a little more space than on a postcard, so you can use more text. But to keep your flyers eye-catching, you’ll want to prioritize great photos or star listings, like this flyer template from Zillow.
Example of a flyer promoting a new real estate listing from Zillow
Like the postcard above, real estate flyers highlight the property’s best features with great photography, but you can go into more details about the listing or the local area because it has more space. In addition, it prominently features the selling agent, adding their photo and contact information for a more personal touch. Again, you could add a unique phone number to track calls generated from these flyers.
Brochures
Brochures are longer print marketing materials and are a great way to showcase what you can offer potential customers. You could put together brochures showcasing similar listings (grouped by location or property similarities), or you could produce brochures to promote individual listings. These will give viewers something tangible to take away and look through after an open house, viewing, or visit to your office.
Example real estate brochure from Realty Cards promoting multiple listings in a neighborhood
This brochure is an effective way to showcase lots of listings at the same time. It’s easy for potential homeowners to skim to see if they’re interested in any of the properties. This brochure directs people to your website, and you could use tools like CallRail’s Form Tracking to track leads from print marketing campaigns that go straight to your website instead of giving you a call.
Billboards
Billboards are a very different type of print marketing. They’re not something you’re going to get into the hands of potential customers. But they’re a great way to build visibility for your company, build your agents’ reputation in the local area, or promote specific listings.
Example billboard_ for commercial and residential real estate agents from StreetText_
This billboard is a great example of how you can use one to build your real estate agents’ reputation in your local area. Making your agents the stars of your billboard ad means local residents are more likely to recognize their names or faces, which will help build trust and rapport with potential clients.
Connect real estate print and online marketing
Print marketing is an important piece of your real estate marketing strategy, and it should complement and work together with your online marketing activities. Aim to create consistency across your online and print marketing. For example, make sure the listings on your flyers are front-and-center on your website and social media ads. That way, if potential buyers see your flyer and visit your website, it’s easy for them to find the listing they think could be their new home. Online marketing campaigns can amplify your print marketing to help you reach even more potential customers.
