Dominating the Print Market

By John Voket

RISMEDIA, Oct. 4, 2008-While the word on the street is that online is the best route to reach your clientele, Pat Provost, is still having great success with print. “I’m still hot on print,” she says. “We simply dominate our regional paper and we take the back page of the real estate section. Then, one of our top agents has his own full page inside, which we co-op.” Here, meet Provost and learn other best practices that are working in her marketplace.

Pat Provost
Broker
Century 21 NorthBay Alliance
Santa Rosa, California

Years in business: 29
Number of offices: 12
Number of agents: 150
Region served: Marin, Sonoma, Mendocino, and Lake Counties in Northern California
Best tip for dealing with difficult customers: Tell your agents that clients who read the papers should be up to speed on the state of the market we’re in today. The truth is, it’s a great time to buy or move up, with rates and prices as low as ever.
Best tip for running a successful meeting: We divide our weekly meetings into three parts: what’s working, the news from Century 21, including all the new technology available to help our agents stay at the top of their game, and general sales business.
Can’t-live-without tech tool: We helped start a program called ListingDomains.com, an individual property website for all listings that we beta tested here, and is now available throughout the country.

How do you determine your marketing spend?
I’m still hot on print. We simply dominate our regional paper and we take the back page of the real estate section. Then, one of our top agents has his own full page inside, which we co-op. We sign long-term contracts, which keep our costs per line down. At the same time, we’re building business to our websites. There are at least 1,000 individual sites, agent sites and listing sites among them that all point back to our company.

How do you deal with the negative effects of the media?
Agents should be aware that the media generally prints bad news. So when the client is in escrow and they are reading that prices are falling, they go a little crazy. But you have to be honest with them-they are generally buying a house to live in. Talk about having a home, having a tax advantage. Up here, we doubled our average sales price in three years, which puts a big challenge on our agents. When many houses selling today are distressed properties, it forces the whole market down.

How is your company’s new relationship with American Home Shield helping to benefit your clients and your agents?
Today, about 90% of the houses have home warranties, and Century 21 and all the Realogy companies now exclusively recommend AHS products, which are branded to each division. And we recommend every agent should advise their clients to obtain a home warranty through our exclusive provider-whether they are buying or selling-AHS is always reporting back to us about how they are taking care of our clients, and I am impressed with how client-oriented they are.