Advertising

I like to think that I'm not that old, but I am catching myself saying "I remember when..." way too often. I remember when Milestone was just a helicopter field. I remember when I could buy a Coke, candy bar, and fill up my go-cart with gas for under $5. I remember when Escambia County was run by corrupt politicians - well, that doesn't take much of a memory.

I'm not reminiscing with a sour attitude, or being a grumpy old curmudgeon like Andy Rooney. I just see things changing, and that is not a bad thing. One of the biggest changes that I see taking place now is the way we advertise our vacancies. Let's face it, print media is dead. I stuck with it for as long as I could. I even stuck with it longer than I saw results. Early this year, we broke ties with the last print media that we were using. We ran the results from last year to see how many executed leases came from each area of advertising. Print media brought in less than 4% while it was the highest priced form of advertising. Looking for a good way to waste time and money? That is it!

So, where does that leave us? How do we get the properties out there for everyone to see? Online advertising is the most targeted and most productive way to advertise for our industry. When I go into homes for inspections, it is extremely rare to not see a computer. Everyone is online. But does simply being online mean we are hitting our target audience? Of course not. Our company's website is based with HEROpm which is a company that makes our website and database the core of our existence. From there, our listings go to destination sites. I could sit here and try to list all of the sites on which our listings land, but there is no way I could remember them all. We do a datafeed to dozens of sites which land all over the search engines. The biggest of all would be HomeRentals.net, Rentals.com, RentClicks.com, and RentalHomesPlus.com. Of course, we datafeed to CraigsList.org, Pensacolamls.com, and ahrn.com (military housing).

We still have clients that can't understand why we are no longer using print media for advertising. My hopes are that they will see the results we produce, and how we are able to keep our fees competitive by being smart with our advertising dollars. Of course, you still need to keep the rent prices low to get it rented... but I will save that for another blog. So here's to technology and a low vacancy rate! So far, I feel that we are harnessing the power of technology to benefit our clients and keep moving forward in a world of changes.