Newspaper/Print Advertising vs Internet Advertising In Nigeria - Real Estate
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20th September, 2009, 182 Views
Internet Advertising to Surpass Newspaper Advertising by 2011
The Financial Times reports that the 2007 annual research report on the media sector by media analysts Veronis Suhler Stevenson (VSS) forecasts online advertising will surpass newspaper advertising by 2011. With a projected annual growth rate of than 21 per cent per year, online advertising is expected to reach $62bn in 2011, making it bigger than newspaper advertising, which is expected to total $60bn in 2011.
The move to online advertising is not just a U.S. phenomenon, Nigerians are already embracing it, Already Nigerians who seek jobs go to the internet for job opportunites. Banks, Oil companies and Telecommunication companies are paying webmasters and website owners for advertising on their websites. The shift in advertising spending away from traditional media to online and digital media is global. Some forecasters expect online spending in the UK and Sweden to overtake newspaper advertising as early as this year. By the year 2010 more companies in Nigeria will budget and spend more on online advertising.
Internet advertising vs newspaper advertising of real estate
Internet advertising of real estate and property is getting very popular these days as evident by the number of real estate web sites that have gone online in the cyberspace. Many of the web sites offer free listing while some charge for their service. In general, users are still able to find quality real estate web sites that offer free listing. This is a very common practice in the western world. In advanced and developed nations; home buyers, sellers and renters seek the internet for properties. In Nigeria today, there are a number of websites that offer such services to estate agents, private owners and home developers, but the move isn't attracting the Nigerian populace and even estate agents. The first question you should ask, is why are these websites not listing so many properties for sale or rent? This is because these sites are poorly advertised. Most Nigerians don't even know that such opportunity like this exist, so most home seekrs tend to look for properties in local newspapers, blackboards on the roadside (a common practice by estate agents showing what they have for rent or sale) or placards in front of property owners homes displaying the sign board to only passers-by that the house is up for sale. How can you pass such information to only passers-by? simply because the estate agent/agency hopes that someone will pass-by, notice the house and then write down the information of the estate agents' contact and tell somebody about it and hoping that, that person tells someone else about it bla bla bla...... In how many months will the property be sold if this is how the agent hopes to market the property up for sale?
Another traditional way of selling properties in Nigeria, is viral marketing or word-of-mouth (telling someone about it) which is still in practice till date world wide. Newspaper prints and newspaper classified pages are the biggest medium of marketing properties in Nigeria today and the whole Nigerian populace embrace it.
I agree. It's quite useful to see properties being advertised in Newspapers. However, some property buyers find it so silly for estate agents or property owners not to show photos of the house they are advertising for sale. This is not the fault of the estate agent, because the cost of listing the property alone is ridiculous, not to talk of displaying a non-coloured photo. Adding a single coloured photo of a property in a newspaper is quite impossible in Nigeria because the price newspaper companies charge are too high, most home buyers want to see at least 5 pictures of whatever house an estate agent is selling before they go ahead to contact he/she for a real life meet and a real life tour of the property. The practice of newspaper advertising is good for those who advertise their proprties to people nearby so that they can see the information and contact the agent all because the property is close to where they are living or the area of their choice, but what about those who are far away and interested in buying a property in a particular spot/area? For someone like me, my family is overseas and plan to buy a house in Nigeria, they need to see the photos of the house instead of making a trip before deciding. At least, with photos they can decide whether it's the property to consider and to add to their list to see, call or write for further info.
There are many advantages that are associated with internet advertising of real estate, internet advertising is mostly free as real estate agents can list in multiple web sites for free, and this is a big contrast as compared with the conventional newspaper advertising where they charge you by the day and by the size of your advertising space. With internet advertising, sellers can practically advertise for free and repost their listing upon expiry until such time that their property is sold. In newspaper classifieds, to increase the chance of the listing being noticed by house buyer, estate agents/private owners would need to advertise more than once as potential buyers may not read their advertisement on the day the advertisement is posted. The longer they post their advertisement, the more they would have to pay.
You have to read through various listings and sort out the ones that seem more suitable to you (and possibly write down the phone numbers and contact details on a piece of paper) and then call up the agents/owners to fix an appointment for viewing the property (which may turn out to be totally dissatisfactory in the end). Moreover, the newspaper listings generally happen on a weekly basis. So if a deal has materialised in the meanwhile, there is no way you can check it without actually calling up the agent/owner.
Internet advertising of real estate is instant, many of the real estate web sites instantly display the advertisement upon submission, sellers need not wait for the next day for the advertisement to be published like in the case of local newspaper classifieds.
Internet advertising offer greater exposure as sellers can list their property in as many web sites as they like whole year long and the listing is not limited to the country where the seller stays, in fact, as soon as the advertisement goes online, it will be indexed by search engines and become searchable by people from all over the world. The property listings over the internet, is in fact having a so called ‘global presence’.
Another advantage of internet advertising is that it makes it easier for buyers to search and notice the property that fit his or her requirement. Many of the web sites offer advanced search features that allow the buyer to search with certain criteria such as location, type of property, price range etc so that buyers only look at those advertisement that fit his or her criteria, basically filter out all irrelevant advertisement, making it easier for buyers to get their choice property with minimum effort and time. This is also a sharp contrast as compared with newspaper classifieds where buyer will have to glance through more than ten pages of classifieds which consist of minute print, with newspaper classifieds, buyers will have to do the filtering and sorting themselves. As the content of internet are indexed by various search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN etc daily, the listings uploaded by sellers become searchable not only by search feature of the particular real estate web site but by search engines in general.
One more advantage of internet advertising is that sellers are able to upload photo of their property so that potential buyer can have an an idea what the property looks like, most real estate web sites allow up to five photographs upload. To display five photographs on newspaper classifieds would have cost the seller considerable amount of money like the commission he is hoping on getting after selling the property.
So, real estate listings on the internet do seem to offer a lot of convenience and advantages. However, internet or newspaper is really a matter of personal choice too and the problem with Nigeria is the low web presence. Watch out for my post on the reason for low web presence and internet use in Nigeria.
To advertise your property for free, you may want to visit our real estate listing web site http://www.propertiesng.com, we do not charge for listing, isn’t this the best part of internet advertising, it can be done at almost zero cost except for the internet connection which is anyway needed for other purposes.
About Author
This post is written by Seyi Taiwo and Taiwo Oluwafemi.
