4 min read
Do real estate billboards work?
Admittedly, billboards are a little old school. Everyone has seen them. From highways in major cities to quiet, little towns in the middle of nowhere, you'll find billboards. By definition, advertising involves drawing the attention of the public to a brand, product, or service. And no medium excels at this quite like billboards.
In the real estate market, the challenge for realtors and agencies is to cut through the noise. Marketing plays a huge role in capturing the attention of potential home buyers, especially in the current red-hot housing market.
According to the National Association of Realtors, 87% of buyers purchase their homes through realtors. How do you attract their attention? Considering that the average American is bombarded by about 10,000 advertisements per day, you'll need a medium that just can't be ignored. Billboard advertising can be a very effective and lucrative medium for residential realtors. They provide great visibility, a captive audience, and a format large enough that perfectly delivers your message.
Brand Building Through Billboard Advertising
Real estate is a highly local business. So, advertising is more effective when it takes on a highly localized approach. Outdoor advertising has a way of charming local audiences, creating leads, and driving engagement. Like other out-of-home formats, billboards are a non-intrusive form of advertising that enhance the reach of brands within a target area.
Over the past three decades, the internet has made quite a notable appearance, changing the way people live, socialize, and do business. It has also changed the way brands interact with their customers. Yet, digital marketing hasn't managed to replace local outdoor advertising. Billboards still remain one of the most effective ways to prompt customers into action.
The non-intrusive nature of billboards allows you to build trust with your audience. And you can't sell houses without trust. That is how powerful billboards can be. They're evocative, and they enhance brand value and credibility.
If you want to stand out, go big. Why share advertising space when you can tower over your competitors? This is the story of Homie – an innovative real estate startup in Phoenix – that proved billboards sell homes.
The Homie Story
Homie, a real estate startup, sought to shake up the local real estate market in Phoenix. Their goal was to do what most startups dream of: to disrupt the industry by providing a cutting-edge solution driven by technology that cut out the middlemen in real estate. As most companies know, changing the way business is done is an uphill task. Homie needed to drive awareness and build trust in their target market.
The solution was to create a sizeable out-of-home campaign that would deliver hundreds of thousands of daily impressions. In the real estate industry, timing is everything. Buying or selling a property is one of the most important decisions people make in their lifetimes. The key to growing a real estate business is to get the attention of the right people in the right place.
Homie's goal was to reach as much of the Phoenix market as possible. The only way to effectively optimize for reach and frequency is to saturate a market. And out-of-home advertising is the perfect channel for this. Their creative strategy was to arouse curiosity and get people talking about their brand and their service offering.
Billboards serve as an eye-catching yet engaging channel that can build brand awareness within a target area. By placing billboards in strategic locations, Homie was able to reach potential customers — exactly where they were. Real estate is all about location, and so is OOH advertising. Being such a geographically targeted business, Homie needed to drum up conversation around its brand. After all, word-of-mouth marketing is still the best way to build brand reputation.
In Homie's case, billboards proved to be the most effective way to get attention and make a lasting impression with the local audience.
The company made a big, bold statement by purchasing 28 bulletins in the Valley of various sizes, allowing them to elevate their messaging through localized humor.
The real estate firm strategically spread out the billboards to increase daily impressions. Doing so enabled the company to appeal to a wider demographic, and this proved to be a win considering 64% of Homie's customers first learned about the brand through billboards.
So, how can other real estate companies replicate Homie’s success through billboard advertising? Let's look at how you can deliver an effective real estate billboard campaign.
Using Billboards to Ramp Up Real Estate Business
Aside from the sheer, un-ignorable size of billboards, what makes it the perfect advertising platform is the detailed level of targeting you can achieve. Great messaging will always connect with the target consumer. Billboards enable you to match the messaging to the location and target demographic. Here's how Homie created a billboard campaign that resonated with the intended audience.
1. Location is Everything
Homie's goal was to build awareness and drive awareness in Phoenix CBSA – their test expansion market. Homie chose to advertise in areas with hot real estate activity. No matter how creative their marketing campaign was, it would not have delivered had the company chosen to advertise in stagnant or crumbling housing markets.
The real estate industry is perfectly suited to outdoor advertising. Knowing where to advertise is one of the most important elements of great campaigns.
2. Consistent Messaging
Consistency is the key to successful branding. By utilizing consistent brand messaging, Homie built a strong rapport with its audience. In addition, the company used visual elements that embodied its corporate identity, which made Homie instantly recognizable.
Billboards have been a marketing staple for decades. They deliver widespread, repeated exposure since people tend to travel the same route multiple times over. As a result, billboards build trust with your customers and increase brand equity by instilling a positive, consistent image of your brand.
3. Keep the Messaging About Your Customer
Homie didn't attempt to tell their customers how great or innovative they were. They let their audience come to this conclusion on their own. Homie understood that the most compelling message is one that placed the customer’s needs front and center.
Customers need to understand how what you're selling impacts their day-to-day life, especially when launching a new brand. Why should they switch from their status quo? Homie's message "Dinosaurs. Dodo birds. 6% commissions" ensured their audience understood exactly what their company brought to the table – the eradication of middlemen in real estate, ensuring home sellers kept every bit of their sales revenue.
Homie used billboards to deliver a crucial message and build intentional relationships with their audience. That's the beauty of billboard advertising. It conveys credibility and allows you to speak to the same group of people on a consistent basis.
Amplify Your Brand Through Billboard Advertising
Billboard advertising helps target the local market optimally and increase brand recognition. Combining billboards with digital advertising can increase your exposure and enhance your brand image.
In real estate, billboards are a great way to target would-be buyers with the latest listings and open houses. Whether you sell starter cottages or McMansions, billboards will get you noticed. A creative design will catch people's attention and ramp up curiosity about your brand.
Have fun and stand out, 🏡ie.
Ready to create your real estate success story?