Dear Ginny,
After months of paying for banner ads on Realtor.com and seeing no return, I am at a loss as to what to do. The folks at Realtor.com say that we’re not getting clicks because we’ve got the wrong banner ads. Our banner ads promote our web site and our listings. What’s “wrong” with that? Isn’t that what I’m supposed to advertise? Should we be doing banner ads and if so, what should we be advertising?
Inspired by Trish Muench, BrianDavid Realtors, Northern New Jersey
Dear Trish,
I love this question, because I had a client who was making big purchases on multiple online real estate sites with little return and couldn’t figure out why. It was immediately obvious to me. They were advertising listings on a listing site similar to what you’ve described. If you are going to spend money on banner advertising, which can be an effective marketing vehicle as part of a 360-degree strategy, you need to analyze and then target the site audience and understand why they are there in the first place. And you need to clearly understand what you want as a desired outcome.
Let’s set the scenario: I’m a Realtor.com or Trulia.com visitor. Why am I on either of those sites? To view listings. Why did I go specifically to one of those sites? Because I perceived the site to have a full compendium of listings. Ok, so I’m browsing the site for listings and I see your banner ad. It says, come to my site to see all the listings. Duh! I’m already on a site that has all the listings. What could you possibly have that I don’t see right now? Well, the answer might be plenty, but that’s not what is being displayed on the banner ad.
If you are advertising on a listing site you need to provide that visitor with a darn good reason to leave the site they are on to come to your site. What is that? Maybe it’s deeper content in a specific geographic area. Maybe you offer free moving supplies to sellers, or in depth market reports. My client had environmental data reports on every house in the United States. Might that be a reason to draw visitors away from one site to another? You get the idea? You need to lure the traffic from the preferred site they are on, to yours with a carrot. It can’t just be about listings.
With that said, what is your desired outcome? You want a different sort of banner depending on whether your goal is branding, building Web traffic or generating leads. With branding ads, you won’t expect as many clicks because you are simply attempting to position yourself in that market as the area expert professional through impressions. Web clicks and lead generation take a different approach.
Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Instead take a deeper look at what you want as a result and strategically design your banner around that goal. And don’t forget to test messages constantly for effectiveness against your desired result.
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