Recently much to the surprise of everyone in the Advertising Industry, there appeared in the news, an investigation into Sir Martin Sorrell, the talkative head of the Global Advertising giant, WPP Group. This was followed a few weeks later by his resignation.

As the head of WPP he had good insights into what was happening in the Advertising Industry and being talkative he was much sought after to give his thoughts on the trajectory of the industry. I therefore decided to take the opportunity to search for his videos on YouTube and I discovered a treasure trove.

One topic that I believe would be of interest to Real Estate Agents is the relative importance between digital advertising and traditional advertising. Mr. Sorrell, who is particularly fond of statistics, stated that digital advertising accounts for about 30% of advertising today while traditional media still controls about 40% of spending. Yet, viewership of digital media, YouTube, Netflix etc. accounts for 46% while viewership of traditional media newspapers, magazines, television and radio only accounts for about 26%.

These figures suggest to us that advertisers are apt to spend more money on traditional media such as newspapers and magazines than their viewership commands. These statistics while not directly related to Trinidad & Tobago, can lead us to make a few, back of the envelop, rule of thumb advertising suggestions:

• Be careful when spending on traditional media. For Real Estate Agents newspapers and magazines should not account for more than 25% of your advertising budget
• Invest in new, growing digital media such as social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram), websites. Use a value of about 40% of your advertising budget on this form of media.
• Invest the balance, 35%, in direct advertising such as direct mail outs, physical signage outside of properties
• Advertising is still very important. A good budget should be between 5% to 10% of top line revenue

This should give a good guidance for your advertising spend.

A couple of related points on advertising:

• Where possible try to use video on Facebook, ideally video of properties.
• Use your social media advertising to direct viewers to your website and then in turn to make a phone call.
• Use Social Media analytics to learn what works and what doesn’t and who your audience is and respond accordingly.
• Try to outsource advertising to an external provider where possible.