If newspaper advertising is in the decline, where is best place to spend money with online advertising to get leads for buyers and sellers of residential properties?

You want to get in front of the most people right, so where would that be online?

Adwords -- hands down.

You could be getting traffic as soon as 20 or 30 minutes from now.

PS - As a distant second place, I'd do homegain's "buyerlink" traffic program before I'd do yahoo or MSN PPC services.

Its all about RELEVANT traffic, and not just traffic IMO.


Meaning, if someone is searching for how to make inflatable blow up dolls - thats not exactly your ideal target audience for real estate.


As far as advertising goes, you can either:
1. Own your web presence.
This can be done either through Pay Per Click (PPC) ads for specific keyword searches, or through investing in your own web presence on a website or blog. They all drive traffic to YOUR website, and establish YOUR website as the authority in your market.

2. "Rent" your web presence on other sites that you don't own.
The most obvious choice right out of the gate would probably be Realtor.com enhanced listings as just one example. The downside of course is - you are establishing the OTHER sites as the authority for your market in the eyes of the consumer. (Which can ultimately lead to higher fees that they can charge down the road as they become more and more dominant for your market.)

[quote=JonInAlbanyNY]If newspaper advertising is in the decline, where is best place to spend money with online advertising to get leads for buyers and sellers of residential properties?

You want to get in front of the most people right, so where would that be online?

[/quote]

If you are talking about real estate, directory listings sites are places where you're going to find buyers and sellers of residential properties. Because only a marketplace will have the capacity for quick reference and selections. Places like Craigslist and USFreeAds should get the job done.

If you are interested in using PPC, there are two real options...first, Google AdWords...however, if you follow the internet marketing world at all, you know that Google likes to slap down their users and charge incredibly high costs-per-click on a whim. A quick rule of thumb that I have always followed is that Yahoo + MSN = Google...in other words, if you run your campaigns on Yahoo and MSN you should get about the same of quality traffic as you would from google...at much lower costs (typically).

Other great ways to get qualified traffic quickly is to use videos and blogs (free ones at blogger.com and wordpress.com) - they rank very high and quick in the search engines and allow you to deliver a quality message to your prospects and direct them to your site without a major investment in time and money. The only real drawback to this method is understanding, and utilizing the very best keyword research practices to maximize your ROI.