Be one of 10 agents to be featured surrounding all of the listings in your market!
You have 3 options:
Leaderboard - Horizontal Ad
Skyscraper - Vertical Ad
Companion - Horizontal Ad, and both Vertical Ads
If you own a Leaderboard or Companion ad, your ad shows on each of your listings:
Your ad also shows up on MSN Real Estate, a top 5 portal:
Here is a flyer you can use in listing presentations...
Click for PDF
CLICK HERE to view our template gallery.
CLICK HERE to view place holders. This ad will show temporarily while we create your custom ad.
In creating your ad, here are my tips for success...
Remember the 4 steps for generating business from the internet:
1. Exposure- 10% market share for Featured Agent Display advertising equals anywhere from 40,000-200,000 page views per month in most markets via Realtor.com, MSN Real Estate, MOVE.com and the rest of our network.
2. Value Propositions- Offer a service or resource in your ad that real estate consumers want. For example:
* new listing alerts
* home values
* school reports
* foreclosure lists
* relocation info
* retirement communities
or whatever the hot button is for that market.
3. Lead Capture Device- Link the value propositions to a landing page on your website that has a contact info section. Try to find a page that closely matches the value proposition. Otherwise have corresponding landing page created by our custom creative team.
4. Drip Marketing- Best lead capture devices offer daily / monthly replies automatically to anyone who sends an inquiry. This helps build a relationship with the consumer by offering them relevant, helpful information on a regular basis.
Thank you for purchasing REALTOR.com®’s Featured Agent/Community.
Next steps for launching your ad!
Now that you have taken this important step and purchased Featured Agent/Community we’d like to take this opportunity to share the next crucial steps for getting your ad up and running as soon as possible.
The creative process for your ad must be completed within 7 days.
If not, a generic, template-based ad will go live on day seven to reserve your purchase. To ensure you get the results you want, it is critical to have your time and attention devoted to this process in the coming week. It’s important that we work together to make certain your ad is active. By doing this, it will allow you to reap the benefits generated through the vast number of visitors to REALTOR.com®.
Here is what you can expect next:
Step #1 Order Confirmation Email with Your Account Login:
You will receive an order confirmation email highlighting the System(s) you recently purchased, with your account login information, and step-by-step instructions for getting set up.
Step #2 Creative Services is alerted to begin fulfilling your order:
You will receive an email letting you know that one of our preferred vendors, Top Producer, or Custom Creatives, now has you in the queue for custom ad creation.
Do you already have an ad? If you already have your own ad created to the proper specifications (Leaderboard - 728w x 90h & Skyscraper - 160w x 600h) you can email it to creativechanges@realtor.com. Be sure to include your full name and MLS ID. If you need additional assistance with your ad or have any questions, simply contact your REALTOR.com® Account Executive with your contact information, advertising and marketing message, and they’ll immediately begin the design process at no additional charge.
Step #3 Follow up call from Custom Creatives:
You will receive a call from our preferred vendor, Custom Creatives, the same day you place your order, to start the ad-building process. Please note, that orders received after 3PM (PST) will be processed the next business day.
Step #4 Follow-up email from Custom Creative:
The Custom Creatives Team will send an email requesting the assets (i.e. branding, photo, logo, slogan, call-to-action, website URL, etc.) needed to complete your ad. It is important that you have a digital picture of yourself and information you would like to have in the ad ready.
Step #5 Ad is sent for your approval:
After Custom Creatives has completed the ad, they will send to you via email, for your final approval/change requests.
Step #6 Final ad approval:
Once you approve the final ad creative, the ad will then be sent to our traffic team for placement.
Step #7 Your ad goes live.Thank you for purchasing REALTOR.com®’s Featured Agent/Community.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A few notes on Banner Advertising in General
The average CTR (click through ratio) for banner ads is nowadays around 0.2%, meaning that on average a banner has to be shown 500 times before it gets clicked even once.
REALTOR.COM actually receives a 1% click through ratio on average - more than double the industry average. This is because the site only recieves visitors interested in real estate, so the banners are very targeted.
Here are some tips on increasing your CTR.
Include a "click here" note or two in your banner ads
If you have examined the banner ads on different sites, you have probably noticed that several of them include a button that says "Click here". Why? As always, the reason is fairly simple - banner ads that contain the words "click here" get on the average clicked more than those that don't.
At first I couldn't understand why this was happening, because I've always thought that if the viewer is interested in the product advertised in the banner, he will click on it. On the other hand, if he isn't interested, no amount of click here-signs is hardly going to make him do so. Still, the including those words does raise the CTR and there must be a reason for it.
This is one of those things I'd blame on the well-known scapegoat, the television. The advertisements that run on TV don't require you to do anything else except to stare at them, while the goal of banner ads is to get the user interact (click the banner). As people have been exposed to passive forms of advertising for decades, they assume that Internet advertising is similar in nature and doesn't require any action from their part. This is where the "click here" signs kick in by letting the users know that they can and should do something instead of just watching. The result is the increased CTR observed by many advertisers who incorporate these elements in their banner designs.
Whether my thoughts are on the mark or not, one thing remains proven: Including the words "click here" in your banner does result in it getting clicked more and you should use this fact to your advantage.
Animation is your friend
Have you ever tried to read something from a web page, only to be distracted and annoyed by a blinking banner at the top of your screen? Most of us have and nearly all of those who have had it happen to them wish that they'd never see another banner that blinks or moves. But like it or not, a banner ad with action in it catches the eye better than an ad that is completely static. In this case, it is worth it to be a little annoying to get some attention.
While animation can make banner ads perform better if used correctly, it can also cause a disaster if you don't know how to use it right. Over-use of animation will increase the file size of the banner, which results in it taking a longer time to load and increases the chance that the visitor has already scrolled past your banner ad before it even appears on the screen. This of course has a very undesirable effect on your click through rate, so before including any animation, make sure that it doesn't make your banner too heavy and slow to load.
Use large text that clearly spells what you are about
Many people tend to clutter their banner with pictures or their company logo. While using them is not always a bad idea, you should make sure that there's enough room left for text. Use a large font size, even if it looks less attractive than a smaller one. You'll have to get noticed and small text just doesn't stand out the way bigger text does.
In your message, get right to the point and be brief. Don't try to explain in detail what your site is about and don't cram all of your offers into one banner ad. You'll have about a sentence or two of time to persuade the viewer to click to your site. If you can't do it in that time, you'll lose the visit.
Outline the benefits
To be clicked on, the ad has to be read. But getting the user's attention is only half of the task. To get the click, the user must also have a good reason to visit your site. This creates the need to use some traditional marketing tricks in your banner. Words such as "free" and "sweepstakes" for example are known to generate a healthy response from the average Internet user, so if you are running a sweepstakes on your site or offer a product for free, it can be well worth it to mention it in your banner. It is also a well established fact that sex sells. Banners that contain a picture of a beautiful lady and a hint of sex usually perform extremely well in terms of click through.
Unfortunately, there are drawbacks in using these "power words" to boost your click through ratio. If your site sells pet food, using the power of sex to draw in visitors is hardly a good idea. You would get more clicks, but at the same time you'd end up targeting the wrong audience. People would come to your site, but they wouldn't buy anything.
The same problem is present in using the words "free" and "sweepstakes", as they will draw in people who are interested in entering the sweepstakes or receiving the free product, but they might not be interested in actually buying anything. So be careful with these tricks. While they are occasionally very useful, using them can cause problems as well.
CTR is important, but it isn't everything
The above tips should help you to achieve a decent CTR for your banners, but as I've already mentioned, getting the visitors to come to your site isn't enough. It is fairly common to focus solely on the CTR without paying any attention to what happens after the click. That kind of thinking rarely produces results that you can brag about.
It is just as important to ensure that your visitors do what you want them to do after they've arrived than it is to make sure that they arrive in the first place. However, there is one tip I just have to give to you, because I've simply seen too many banners that go against this rule.
Direct the visitors straight to what you promised them
Have you ever seen a banner that advertises a specific product at a discount, become interested and clicked on it? Were you happy when instead of taking you straight to a page where you could find details about the product and purchase it, you were taken to the store's front page, where you could find no clues on how to order this specific product? Did you bother to search through the massive inventory just to find what you wanted, or did you just shrug your shoulders and leave?
I've had that happen to me and to tell you the truth, I'm too lazy to start searching for something I shouldn't need to search for. The store in question was having a sale handed to them on a silver platter, but they lost it just because they didn't bother to take me where they had promised to. The moral of the story is, if you promise something in your banner, deliver it to the user on the very first page he sees.
If I clicked on a banner that said "See the new McLaren Formula One racing car", I want to see that car right now! After I've seen it, I can take a look at the rest of your site, but if you don't give me what you said you would, I'll just get mad and disappear. The average Internet user has a very short attention span and is quite lazy, so do the work for him instead of forcing him to do it.