We personally don’t believe television commercials are the most productive or cost-effective tool for marketing real estate agents, but if you do choose to run a TV ad, ask yourself two important questions:

1.Who is my target audience?
2.What can I include in this commercial to get people to call me?

Identifying your target audience helps the more mundane decisions fall into place, such as where and when you would run your commercial. If you were targeting young people, say 21-29, would you advertise on the Price Is Right? Probably not. If you wanted to target retirees, you wouldn’t want to run your commercial during MTV’s Real World. It really just comes down to using your common sense to decide the best placement for your ad.

The much harder question to answer is how to frame the commercial so that people will call or email you in response. Do not, we repeat, DO NOT, create and run a commercial with your face, logo and telephone number plastered all over that does nothing but talk about what a great agent you are. That type of ad has no call to action, nothing to make people want to follow through and contact you.

Always remember, consumers have hundreds of agents to choose from so the important thing is to offer them something useful, valuable or creative and make sure they remember that it was YOU who brought it to them. After all, McDonald’s doesn’t have much of anything new to offer that other fast food restaurants don’t, but if you notice, they almost always run some free offer or discount at the end of their commercials to drive people to their establishments.

Think about what services you have to offer people, than present it to them in such a way as to make them feel they are missing out on something AMAZING by not contacting you.

Recommendation: Hook up with other agents and have an agreement in which they all give you their listings and allow you to advertise them in your commercials. Keep in mind, you also have to get the homeowners permission to show the home on TV, which shouldn’t be a problem when you explain that it will only help sell their home faster. This is a win-win situation all around – for you, it gets you content for your ad that people will want to call in about. The agents you hooked up with benefit because many callers may be interested in purchasing the advertised property, helping the agents find serious buyers for their listings. And of course the homeowner gets their home sold faster than they would have otherwise.

Now shoot your commercial, campaigning hot listing after hot listing at the audience and listing an easy to remember phone number at the end of the ad. You can even market yourself as offering free home market analyses for a limited time – but make it exciting and make your audience excited. Ask them something like “Wanna find out how much cash you have stacked in your walls?” Money is ALWAYS a great motivator.

When it comes to using television to market yourself, just remember that it’s not about you, but about what you can do for your audience. People won’t call just because you say you’re a great agent, but they WILL pick up the phone if you show them something worth their time.