By Bill Butler, Productivity Coach, RE/MAX Leading Edge

The oldest, most tried and true marketing effort for Realtors…the geographic farm.

Planting seeds for years and eventually harvest time will come.

Ask anyone who’s been in real estate for over twenty years and they’ll tell you their geographic farm was not only their most successful marketing effort (aside from open houses)…it was usually their only marketing effort.

As the industry evolved with the integration of the internet and web-based home search, the geographic farm - and direct mail for that matter - fell out of favor.  Marketers fell in love with this new online interactive medium that made reach and frequency much less expensive via emails, banners, and search.  Direct response advertising was redefined.  You could now track your ROI with surgical-like precision.  Geo-farming and direct mail became dinosaurs.

Fast forward 18 years…banner ads, spam email, pop-up windows are now the new ‘noise’.  Marketers began asking themselves, "How can we break through, stand out and achieve our direct marketing success?"

Well…just ask Mr. Postman…

For the past two years, marketers have reunited with an old friend; direct mail.  Why?  Research Firm, Millward Brown used functional Magnetic Resonance Imagery (fMRI) scanning to understand how the brain reacts to stimuli provided by physical media as opposed to virtual media.

• First, tangible materials leave a deeper footprint in the brain.  They make it more “real”.  It has a meaning and a place
• Second, physical material involves more emotional processing, which reinforces memory and brand associations.
• Third, physical materials produce more brain responses connected with internal feelings than virtual displays, suggesting greater “internalization” of the ads.
• Fourth, the brain’s “default network” appeared to remain more active when viewing direct mail than when viewing virtual advertising. Experts associate activity in the default network with a greater focus on a person’s internal emotional response to outside stimuli. This suggests that the individuals were relating information to their own thoughts and feelings.

According to Forbes magazine, “Direct mail surprisingly transcends the age demographic with younger consumers, specifically the 18 to 34-year-old demographic, who prefer to learn about marketing offers via postal mail rather than online sources.”

Counter-intuitively, direct mail is an effective means for reaching…Millenials!  They’ve been conditioned to tune out marketing online.  However, send them a high end post card or mail piece and you’re on your way to connecting and building a relationship.

The USPS has jumped on board as well with a program that makes direct mail (eg geo-farming) easy and more cost-effective.  Every Door Direct is the postal service’s version of a flyer drop service.  For as little as $.16/piece, you can have your post card or flyer delivered to every door in a selected portion of a zip code.

Support your direct mail with a geo and age-targeted Facebook ad campaign and now you have the makings of a GNC-like supplemented geographic farm for much greater effectiveness and efficiency.  You’ll see results faster and more efficiently as your direct mail piece is supported online with minimal waste.

So…maybe old school is new school again…time to get up with the chickens, plant those seeds and connect with your favorite neighbors and neighborhoods.