When you are already one of the most widely-known websites in the greater Houston area, what do you do about advertising?
Not to sound boastful, but about one-quarter of the population of the greater Houston area is on HAR.com during any given month. That is tremendous reach that has definitely taken time and effort to develop. You should all be very proud of that accomplishment. We are a known entity now though, so we are in more of a maintenance advertising phase. Coca-Cola is one of the most recognized brands in the world, but it still advertises to stay top of mind for consumers.
We are always cognizant of the member dollar so we try to work communications magic with less. It means that we rely somewhat more heavily on earned media (public relations) rather than paid media, but both make up important parts of an overall communications strategy and plan.
With 24,000 members across the greater Houston area and many of them without the resources to advertise on their own, HAR carries the banner in front of consumers on behalf of all of our members. We promote the value of using a REALTOR® in a property transaction. We promote the real estate market in our region. We promote HAR.com because that is where consumers go to connect with the members.
This year, we do have to work with less. We are fortunate to have great, established relationships with media outlets so that we are able to negotiate even better packages for the benefit of our members.
We currently have 10 billboards located throughout the area. We have a couple of concepts for new billboard designs in the hopper. We are currently working on new print ads that will run in the Houston Chronicle each week. We are developing our annual online advertising campaign that we expect to launch around April 1. We have some other smaller efforts in the works, but those are the big categories. We also have a couple of surprises coming up, but they wouldn’t be as much fun if you knew about them ahead of “time.”
Just know that all of the advertising we do is for you and to help your business. If you ever have any suggestions or comments, please feel free to contact us at matt@har.com.
