What's your most effective marketing tool?

[MARKETVALUE]

We have never advertised. We do have the 'dime a dozen' pens ($240 for 500), but we usually give those out to our regulars just to have our name around. My own belief is that your best source of business is yourself, your customer service, and your quality of work. I am curious as to why you are wanting to advertise. I would question the type of business you are going to attract out of advertising. My guess would be a bunch of homeowners (non repeat business, and more headaches than i am willing to put with), any LO worth his salt has his own people or connections with appriasers. I would doubt very seriously somebody is going to abandon their regular appraiser b/c of some advertising he/she came across.

MRM

 

[Doug in NC]

I would have to say the internet is going to be the best advertising investment for now and the near future. With the help of my 11 year old computer whiz kid, I now have a professional-looking website. I designed it using Microsoft Frontpage. Getting in the top 10 listings in search engine results is very important, otherwise you will never even get noticed.

I think eventually yellow page books (the hard copy version) are going to be made obsolete. With more and more people using the web all the time, it will be the advertising medium that most people will use.

I have used yellow page advertising for 2-3 years now, with little response. Fortunately, I didn't pay much for them because I got discounted rates. I am in the most popular local yellow page book this year. We'll see how it goes.