Deploy Self-Serve Promotional Ads for Real Estate Agents
In anticipation of the Local Media Consortium Fall Meeting, iPublish Media Solutions’ event theme will be, Revenue Now, Not Later.
One of the most lucrative verticals for self-serve advertising is not property listings, as one would expect—it is Real Estate Agent Self-Promotional Ads. Many local publishers still think of real estate as a classified section or opportunity for big branding ads for brokers. But the reality is that in a red-hot real estate market agents need to brand themselves to acquire listings; often times more than they need to advertise the listings themselves. Ironically, this is where their options dwindle and become very limited.
Enter LeadHax
The Bay Area News Group recognized the problem back in 2016 when the California real estate market was skyrocketing yet again. Eric Bloom, Director for Real Estate, partnered with iPublish Media to launch LeadHax — an initiative based on iPublish’s AdPortal Real Estate platform — that offered self-serve programmatic audience extension campaigns for agents to brand themselves and promote their services in key neighborhoods and local communities. Because audience extension campaigns run on nationally branded sites across the internet and can be targeted to mobile devices they are equally as effective no matter where they are sold.
In 2017, LeadHax began offering Facebook desktop and mobile News Feed Ads for both property listings and agent self-promotional campaigns, through their self-serve AdPortal, garnering significant engagement for the agents and brokers they serve.
Video is Hot
iPublish recently expanded its marketing capabilities and integrated with VIDEOBOLT.COM — a video creation platform that allows newspapers to add video to real estate packages. Why is this so important for publishers selling branding to agents? 73% of homeowners say that they are more likely to list with a real estate agent who uses video but only 9% of agents create listing videos according to recent statistics from the National Real Estate Association.
Data, photos, logos and links from the iPublish AdPortal platform is transferred automatically to VIDEOBOLT.COM to create either an self-promotion video for the agent or a professionally narrated property listing video. Video is a great way to differentiate your real estate ad package from other services.
Takeaways
For local media, adding self-serve real estate presents media companies with an unlimited opportunity to drive all new ad revenue beyond their own websites and capture new, returning real estate advertisers. Make sure to give them commissions on the self-serve business they help to develop as part of your overarching real estate strategy!
Let us know how we can help your business. Contact us for additional information.
