Old School Real Estate Marketing vs. Online Real Estate Marketing: Which is better?

An article posted on Florida Realtors website showed that yard signs and referrals (when one person who used your service recommends you to a friend, associate, etc.) were more effective than real estate marketing technology. Even more interesting was how low facebook and twitter use was.  Also of note was how well connected users were to various technologies (Google+, Facebook, Linkedin, etc.) for getting out the word or generating leads for their real estate practice.

But, there are a few chinks or weak spots in this article. The survey sample is based on a website called movoto and focuses solely on their users. So it may not be the most ample sample set but these are people marketing online. Curiously, even though all these persons are members of just about any electronic social median you can think of, few of them actually use any of them regularly? The article goes on to say that most of these folks had not posted or done anything in a month or more...?!

So is technology based real estate marketing supposed to market itself while you just sit back and relax? You might indirectly infer that from the results. My answer to that is a resolute no!

You get from your real estate marketing what you put in it

If there is one thing I can say with 100% certainty is that online real estate marketing works. I use it and have a growing real estate practice because of it. Do I get referrals? Of course. Do I use yard signs? Sometimes and depending on the clients request. But the truth of the matter is that my yards signs, referrals and clients have come in large part due to our firm getting the word out that we exist to persons all around the world who visit us online.

The research that movoto did goes to show what is very typical within the real estate industry and many professions in general. There will always be a handful of persons who do what is necessary to succeed. Conversely, there are also a larger majority who will not. It's not to say that people who don't jump into tech related real estate marketing are doomed to failure. There are a lot of very successful professionals whose marketing uses very little tech based marketing and they thrive. The point is that these stories are becoming fewer and fewer by the day.

There is no mystery to successful Real Estate marketing. You use the best of the old and blend it with the best of the new and constantly fine tune and adjust. There is no secret. It's just good old fashioned hard work and dedication.

Do you think old school real estate marketing is going the way of the dodo bird? Is new tech going to be the only way to market? I have my opinions on this. Some of it I already hinted at above.

What do you think?