Skip to content
Home Blog Real Estate Marketing

No Calls From Your Real Estate Radio Ads? This Clever Tip Will Change That

Antonio Coleman
4 min read
No Calls From Your Real Estate Radio Ads? This Clever Tip Will Change That

Last week I wrote a post center around direct mail, which is probably the #1 marketing tool for most investors. All the investors I talk to on a daily basis are using some form of direct mail. I pretty much covered all the things you should know before spending top dollar on mailing.

Now, I want to dive deeper into direct mail a little later and let you know some things that will really help you save money and achieve an even better response rate. Direct mail is definitely a form of marketing where if you’re not careful, you might find you’re spending hundreds or thousands on your mailing and getting nothing in return.

Today, though, I want to steer off in another direction for just for a moment and bring to your attention to something that bothers me — and probably you too. I want to know: have you ever being in your car driving down the road and overheard something on the radio that caught your attention?

Has this happened to you? I figure you would probably say yes.

Once that radio advertisement continues, most the time you will hear this fast-talking person reciting a phone number. I tell you — every single time this happens, I’m completely unable to get the number. No matter what I do, it’s extremely hard to hear and remember phone numbers, even if they’re talking slowly.

Related: Your Guide to Real Estate Marketing Success Using Door Hangers

Why is this?

  • You’re driving
  • Your cell phone might not be available to use
  • Your kids are going crazy
  • Etc.

You see, this is a real estate professional’s worst nightmare. Whether you’re an investor, realtor, or broker, when you advertise on the radio, you want your message heard loud and clear so people can take action.

The Golden Tip

The reason I’m sharing this is because a few years ago, one of my real estate investing friends who lives in Little Rock, AR gave me a call up to talk about his radio marketing campaign. We’ve been friends for over 10 years now, so I’ve helped him out a number of times when it comes to his real estate website and teaching him how to use social media.

So when he called me, I knew it was regarding some form of marketing, but didn’t realize that he had taken the big step of getting his REI business on the radio. Obviously, as with all investors, we want to be able to get our brand name out there in front as many potential leads as possible.

He told me that he had being advertising on the radio for about 2 ½ months now and just not getting the phones calls he thought he should have coming in. He explained that he was receiving about 4 to 6 calls a month from the radio marketing that he was doing.

Knowing that there were thousands of people listening, he figured that number should being a little higher. So I asked him how he was ending the radio advertisement and could he send me a copy of it if he could. A few days later, he sent it to me via my iPhone, and I listened as I drove down the road to get a feel of how it sounded to listeners.

From the moment it ended, I realized the #1 issue he — along with most people advertising on the radio — were facing.

So I got on the phone, called him up, and said that advertisement was great, but the way it ended was 100% horrible. I told him that he only needed to make one simple change from my recommendation, and he should expect a higher response rate.

My Plan of Action

It was pretty much a common sense move — I informed him to ditch the information at the end telling people to call him. I think this tactic is the worst way to do business, when instead you can just have someone come over to your website and learn everything about you before they make that call. Once they make that call, you know that they already read tons of information about you. Now it’s just time to get down to the numbers.

If you guys remember when I first started blogging here on BP, I talked a lot about building your online presence, which is extremely important for the long jeopardy of your business. So when I told my friend to change his ending to something that few are trying on the radio in marketing, he paused for a minute, and then something clicked, and he knew my strategy would work.

Related: How to Get Started with a Direct Mail Marketing Campaign for Your Real Estate Business

I basically told him that instead of saying, “Call me at XXX-XXX-XXXX,” you should simply inform them to Google “Your Company Name,” and they will find all valuable information:

  • Your Website
  • Your “Epic-Wow” Content
  • Your Social Media Accounts
  • Local Videos
  • and More…

He took this information and called me up about three weeks later and told me he is seeing his stats rise to around 20 searches per day for his business. Those 20 people must have noticed it was much easier to remember a company name and website, instead of scrambling to write down numbers — and they were now finding his REI business right online.

Let’s Do the Math

20 searches per day X 21 days (three weeks)= 420 searches total

Now, three weeks from then, he told me out of all those searches, only about 200 of those people came over to his website. He’s guessing a number of them just scrolled down to other things, such as his videos and social media accounts.

Overall, he was happy to see how one simple change in how to contact his business really had an impact on the response rate. Plus, I will like to say we never talked about how those resulted in leads; he was just happy that his response rate was up and his advertisement dollars were actually working for him now.

I shared this because it may be something you guys might want to try out in you local market.

Have you ever tried marketing your real estate business on the radio? What tips would you add to mine?

Leave a comment, and let’s talk!

Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.