Does an ad on a bus work?
They certainly do for the ad company! Ads are expensive and you need to make sure you can afford them based on your goals. What are you trying to accomplish?
If it’s to ‘get your name out there’, have you considered how that would work? You need to know most real estate transactions are handled by an agent that was referred to the buyer or seller. Repeat and referral business accounts for about 80% of the market.
You’re not going to break a bond between a good agent and a client, most of the time by running an ad.
You need to look at your competition too in the ad market. Is there a guy or gal running billboards, radio and TV ads that seem to be everywhere? We have 2 in our market. One is certainly bigger than the other but they have a huge ad spend and you’re thinking of competing with them? It takes some deep pockets to do that.
In our office, we teach to lead with revenue. If you’re earning money now and have some to allocate to advertising then do that but you best know how long it will take to get results and you have the budget for it. For example, you can farm a neighborhood but you’ll be sending direct mail for about a year to see some results, and I’m talking about direct mail at least weekly to be effective.
There is another way, even for a new agent. You can work by referral by connecting to your sphere of influence and build a database. This is a really low-cost method and very effective if done right.
There are some free video courses on my site right now you can sign up to get started. A 10 video course that is an introduction to mentoring and I talk about getting started in a referral-based business and a 3 video course that is an hour-long class I taught in my market center a few weeks ago.
Sign up for either or both and see if that helps. I promise it will give you better results than a bus ad and it’s free.