from Florida Realtor Magazine, December 2007 | page 6

Your Business
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Marketing vs. Advertising

Real estate technology expert Matthew Ferrara, of Matthew Ferrara & Co. in Methuen, Mass., underscores the difference between marketing and advertising properties.

If sales associates place a picture and a home’s specifications in the newspaper or online, they’re merely advertising, he says. But Ferrara insists that advertising is not effective, citing a consumer survey by the National Association of Realtors® that found fewer than 5 percent of homebuyers consider newspapers helpful; in contrast, virtual tours were deemed useful by more than 88 percent of respondents.

According to Ferrara, the biggest difference between advertising and marketing is that the former concentrates on a product, while the latter focuses on people and the opportunities available to them through purchase of the product.

Web sites that allow buyers to search by value—as new buyers or retirees, for example—are more useful than searches based on home price. Ferrara believes homes targeting entry-level buyers should be marketed on YouTube or iTunes because today’s buyers in this demographic generally are interested in videos and podcasts, while maintenance-free condominiums geared toward empty nesters could be marketed on sites with guided video tours and high-quality, printable brochures.

Source: Maryland Realtor magazine (Sept. 1, 2007).