I was clearing my study a couple of months back and I came across a Straitstimes Newspaper Classified Ads section dated sometime in 2002. (This also tells you how much trash I have in my study.) What struck me when I looked through the advertisements was not the seemingly ridiculously low property prices compared to the current levels.

It was the pages of advertisements itself. Essentially, you do not see many photo-ads that feature the agents’ faces.

There are sporadic photo-ads of agents whom I recognize as today’s industry leaders who have risen through the years to form their own boutique real estate companies.

Most of the advertisements are run-on ads, which are plain looking lines of words. Basically, you need to squint your eyes through the ads in an attempt to search for the properties that you desire.

How interesting to note that in a span of less than a decade, agents are advertising on newspapers in such an aggressive manner that could sometimes be deemed as self-destructive due to the huge amount of advertising costs incurred. This is evident from the huge display ads that span across columns of advertisement space, which could easily result in an instant damage of hundreds, if not more than a thousand dollars per ad per day. Even the most humble of a photo-ad that merely features a miserably small picture of the agent’s face with 4 lines of text would cost close to S$70 per ad per day.

Amazingly, if you flip any Singapore newspaper classified section these days, such aggressive advertisements just jump straight to your face from all angles.

Read long enough and you might even have nightmares of faces haunting you at night.

On a more serious note, what could we draw from this obeservation? Interestingly, such aggressive off-line advertisements come at a time when agents are also spending sizeable dollars subscribing annually to third party listing sites online where they could post their property listings. I do not know whether the online ads are inflicting damage to the newspaper advertisement revenue, but it seems unlikely as almost all agents are exploring both avenues to market their properties.

What conclusions could we draw from this phenonmenon? I thought there could be a couple of reasons.

1) The prices of properties have escalated over the years and despite the same % of commission that agents are getting, the business has become more lucrative due to the higher commissions that could be derived from a transaction. Hence, more additional budget to spend on marketing. Having said this though, what would happen if the market quietens? Are the agents still able to sustain the toll from the big ads?

2) There could be a shift of business operation models among the real estate agents or salespersons (as we call agents in Singapore). Agents could have shifted from one-man operation to a team-operation where costs and profits are shared, thus able to brand more aggressively with a collective pool of capital. While this seems logical, the same question emerges – what if the market quietens and the number of transactions fall. The outcome could be disheartening considering the lesser amount of commissions to be received by an individual after a split among the other partners. Could such collaborative efforts sustain an individual’s long term business model and personal branding strategy?

I bet there are differing views from you, depending on what you have been used to. Before I carry the discussion topic further to online marketing, I would like to hear from you.

What are your views on the trend of offline marketing?
What do you think of the observation I made?
What kind of advertising strategies do you adopt? If you’re from another country, what observation do you note in your country?

If you are a home seller, do you think it is a must for your agents to advertise on print media such as newspaper?

If you are a home buyer, where would your main source of search for your potential homes be?

Start pouring your views and I believe it would mark an interesting topic for discussion.