EZ Ads have been on the market now for about 3 months and we are starting to get some great feedback as to how to best utilize the ads. In case you aren't familiar with EZ Ads, they're self-service ads that show up only in pre-selected ZIP codes where you pay one penny every time the ad is displayed.
One of the more imaginative and effective uses we're seeing is to advertise open houses. Compare buying EZ Ads to advertising an open house with using direct mail, which is another way to target ZIP codes. Let's say you buy a mailing list of 1,000 names for $100 in a particular ZIP code. If the piece you are mailing costs 10 cents each, that would be $100 in marketing materials costs, plus $410 in stamps. You total mailing cost is $610 to reach 1,000 people. Where these people may be qualified by ZIP code, you don't know their interest level in real estate. For that same $610 you could have bought 61,000 EZ Ad impressions (or ad views) in specific ZIP code(s) on Zillow. Here you not only know that the ad's viewers are ZIP code targeted, but they also have an interest in real estate. It's also easy to edit your EA Ad at any time so keep the open house info fresh.
Buying EZ Ads is a great way to publicize upcoming open houses. It also sends a great message to sellers when they see their home promoted on Zillow. So if you have an open house coming up go ahead and promote it with an EZ Ad now!
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Zillow is good, and there are a few others that advertise open house.
1. onlyopenhouses.com and they are free.
Free or nearly free advertising for Open House or anything else is always good. I'm a believer. Thanks for all the details about Zillow.
Great idea we have an open house on June 3. We'll do it! Thanks.
Jay and Linnea Hanley
I put my ads on the following FREE sites:
Inside Bay Area - well this is California
Backpage.com
Craigslist.com
epage.com
usfreeads.com/postad
adpost.com
point2agent.com
Just to name a few!
Dan- One thing to keep in mind is that when people go to real estate sites they are generally there to see information on houses, they really don't care who is listing the home (sorry...). So in the short time that EZ have been available, we have seen a higher click through rate when a home is advertised verses a person/company. So if you goal is click-thrus, I would try that route. If your goal is branding and exposure, then I would advertiser yourself.
Rosemay- Thanks highlighting where you could post your listings for free. I actually wrote a post about this the other day that listed these and a bunch more, including sites where you could enter the data in one place and it was fed to a number of others. http://activerain.com/blogsview/102117/Back-In-My-Day