How long should you run the same campaign when marketing your real estate agency? Hint: It’s longer than you think

We all know real estate can be a short term business, with listings and sales lasting 30-40 days. This fast paced turnover can often lead to short term thinking in real estate brand awareness campaigns – with the urge to have something new created constantly bubbling to the top. 

But, when it comes to building your brand, studies have shown that the idea of creative wear-out is wearing thin. In fact, the opposite is true. Brands that run a consistent message, over time, have much greater brand recall and long term success when compared to those that change their messaging frequently. 

This was highlighted recently by renowned adman, Sir John Hegarty, comparing Nike’s market share vs Reebok’s over time. He made the observation that since 1988, Nike had the one tagline, while since 1988 Reebok has changed theirs 14 times. 

Now, that’s not to say that a consistent message is entirely responsible for the difference, but it does reflect research conducted into brand consistency and creative wear out. As reported in Marketing Week, marketing wear-out just isn’t a thing. 

As quoted by Mark Ritson in his article, Consumers don’t get tired of ads, only marketers do, data from the three most recognised marketing research firms suggest that wear-out – at least in the real world – really does not exist. 

As the graph above shows, Analytic Partners found that across 50,000 ads from 2020 only 14 of these campaigns had run their full course and were exhibiting wear-out when they were replaced. As Mark puts it so well:

“The problem of wear-out is one of the marketer, not the market.”

Applying this to marketing your real estate agency. 

As we’ve often reinforced, consistency is the key to success in marketing. Given the expected 7-10 year cycle from buying to selling the same property, much of the game is being front of mind when someone is looking to sell. 

This cycle also means that most of your core area isn’t “in-market”, that is, they aren’t considering any real estate agent today, tomorrow, or this month. As a result, they just don’t give a shit about your advertising.  

Compare the above to you and your team. You live and breathe your agency, you review your marketing weekly, and because you’re so invested in it (which is a good thing), you get bored with your marketing easily, and make the assumption the market is too. They are not. 

Does this mean you shouldn’t market yourself? Of course not. Luckily, variety is baked into what you do, and just listed and just sold’s give you plenty of variation. But when it comes to brand the same message must be repeated. 

So, to successfully build your brand into the future, you must resist the urge to chop and change your marketing strategy – your brand, your message, your look – and keep consistent over years and years. Let your competitors scattergun their marketing, and in a few years time you’ll be the Nike of your patch. 

Interested to learn more about long term brand building, click to read this article.