Hi. My name is Beth Hurford and I am with In The Neighborhood Magazine. (A Real Estate Magazine) We provide a customized, direct mail real estate magazine that we publish each and every month. I have here with the magazine, you can publish this every month for the same or less than the price of a direct mail postcard. You can do 2500 of these magazines for $675 or you can do 2500 of these postcards for $1250, which one would you choose? With our custom real estate magazine, we provide an 8 and 16 page version every month of which half those pages are customizable for the Realtor to use to put their listings, to provide what may have sold in their neighborhood, to include a broker letter as well on the state of what is going on with the real estate market in your neighborhood. You can also put a community calendar in there. You can elect to go out to your community or affiliate businesses to provide an ad for your magazine to offset some of your costs. You can find out more about us by going to our website at www.intheneighborhoodmag.com or you can contact me at 719-481-8089 to get more information. Thank you.

Posted in Headlines, Traditional Marketing, Colorado Association Of Realtors

BrokerIPTV: Today, we are talking with Catherine LeDuke, a print advertising account executive and welcome to the show. Thanks for being with us.

Catherine LeDuke: Thanks for having me Dan.

BrokerIPTV: Lets talk about advertising. How has the economy affected the print advertising market?

Catherine LeDuke: People are keeping their money a lot closer to their vests these days. They are cautious and they want to make sure that their money is well spent. It's pretty simple.

BrokerIPTV: You specialize in magazines. Does that answer apply to magazines as well as newspapers and so forth?

Catherine LeDuke: Oh yes, definitely.

BrokerIPTV: Okay, so they really want to know how much bang can they get for their buck if they are going to go ahead and make the leap.

Catherine LeDuke: You better have your pencil sharpened when you are dealing with real estate advertising these days.

BrokerIPTV: Right and what was it like when the economy wasnt like this? I mean were you just taking orders?

Catherine LeDuke: No, no, its never as simple as that, but you know people were spending their money a lot more liberally, so it's just a circular thing.

BrokerIPTV: Yeah. What are you hearing from real estate agents and where are they spending their advertising dollars?

Catherine LeDuke: What I am hearing from real estate agency, agents in terms of where they are spending their advertising dollars, a lot on direct mail. They wanted something that they know is tried and trued, so they are still doing magazine advertising, Internet big time.

BrokerIPTV: Do you, is there an Internet component to what you do?

Catherine LeDuke: Yes.

BrokerIPTV: Okay. Talk about that.

Catherine LeDuke: We are a part of Network Communications, which is actually the worlds largest publisher of real estate information.

BrokerIPTV: Okay.

Catherine LeDuke: So, they are partnered with about 30 real estate websites. So, all our inventory in Colorado Homes & Lifestyles and Enclave is uploaded and distributed to all these partner websites, New York Times, Yahoo, Google, Bob Vila, FrontDoor, the list goes on and on.

BrokerIPTV: Okay.

Catherine LeDuke: So, altogether they are generating between 45 and 60 million unique monthly visits. We also have two proprietary sites that are part of NCI, which is livingchoices.com and uniquehomes.com and both of those are big, big sites generating a lot of activity in and of themselves.

BrokerIPTV: And what are some suggestions that you offer a real estate agent on the track of advertising; is that a promotion code, what is it?

Catherine LeDuke: I think the most effective thing for your average broker out there is to create individual websites for each one of their properties and procure a domain that is the address or the name of the home, you know the manor house at Cherry Creek Village or what have you dotcom. That way a consumer knows that they are going to get information instantaneously, which is what people expect on the Internet. They dont want to go to a realtor's website. They dont want to register to look at that realtor's inventory. They dont want to go to a reality firm website because there is too much clicking around. They just want to get to that house and they want more information for that house.

BrokerIPTV: So, you are sending them from the magazine ad into the website?

Catherine LeDuke: Well, magazine ads anymore today like other types of advertising are drivers of traffic to a website.

BrokerIPTV: Okay.

Catherine LeDuke: So thats really the conduit that we are trying to provide for people because again thats where everybody qualifies, what they do is they go to the Internet and look up and then by the time they make a phone call, they are much more qualified prospect for that advertiser.

BrokerIPTV: Good information. Catherine, thanks so much; appreciate it.

Catherine LeDuke: Thank you.

Posted in Headlines, Traditional Marketing, Real Estate Industry

BrokerIPTV: Today, we are talking with Mark Schow, owner of MediaMax Photography and the Colorado distributor for Obeo. Mark, thanks for being with us.

Mark Schow: Thank you Dan.

BrokerIPTV: Glad you are here. Can you explain because I know as a Realtor when I first got in the business I am like okay whats Obeo versus MediaMax versus 360house.com?

Mark Schow: Thats a great question and sometimes there is confusion around that, but Obeo has a model, its a distributor model where they subcontract with individual companies in each market. So, MediaMax is a company I formed back in 2002 to act as a distributor for what was then called 360house.

BrokerIPTV: Okay.

Mark Schow: And it was in 2005 that Obeo started plans to rename their company to better distinguish themselves from other companies with 360 or house in their name and they came up with Obeo and I think they have done a great job because now here in 2008 Obeo is seen as one of the innovation leaders in the country and has become quite a force.

BrokerIPTV: No question and so that is going to lead into my next question.

Mark Schow: Yeah.

BrokerIPTV: Which is how big is Obeo and how do they help consumers buy and sell homes?

Mark Schow: Another great question. I mean Obeo has representatives similar to what they have here in Colorado with 95 markets around the country and in Canada. So, we have a pretty large footprint, and I think it is actually that footprint that, the popularity of Obeo across the country, across North America that really puts more visibility on a buyer or sellers property.

BrokerIPTV: Yeah.

Mark Schow: And puts more eyeballs out there and I think drives more inquiries to the real estate agent.

BrokerIPTV: My next question is, is that for a good part of early 2000.

Mark Schow: Yeah.

BrokerIPTV: When you guys first got going I mean you had most of the market share in Colorado, recently you've had some competition come into the market, CirclePix so forth.

Mark Schow: Right.

BrokerIPTV: Whats your thoughts on that?

Mark Schow: Well, I think you know competition is inevitable. In fact when I was putting my business plan together for 360house back in 2002, I was actually surprised at how few real competitors there were and there is two sides to that competition model, there is self service and full service. So, I think in the full service arena where there is a managed photographer network out taking pictures, the competition is stiff, but not daunting I guess you know. There is, I think we distinguish ourselves based on the service we provide and focusing on the full service side of that business.

BrokerIPTV: Give me a quick example of what a home owner can buy as a package to showcase their home?

Mark Schow: Well, the most popular virtual tour package that we have is the Obeo Bronze Tour; it includes four panoramas and up to 20 still shots, but some of the other core add on services that I think are gaining a lot of popularity are things like the domain name street address registration where you create a single property website around a street address domain name, interactive floor plans with drag and drop furniture as well as the very cool style designer have gained popularity. So, it's those add on products and features that I think are making for popular packages.

BrokerIPTV: Mark, great information. Thanks for being on the show. Appreciate it.

Mark Schow: You are welcome. It was great.

Posted in Headlines, Traditional Marketing, Real Estate Industry, Home Selling Services

BrokerIPTV: Today, we are talking with Mark Schow, the owner of MediaMax Photography and the Colorado distributor for Obeo. Mark, welcome to the show.

Mark Schow: Thanks Dan.

BrokerIPTV: Glad to have you here.

Mark Schow: Yeah.

BrokerIPTV: I want to talk about changes in technology in how we advertise and market homes and so forth and you are starting to change with consumer demand how? <read more>

Read more »

Posted in Headlines, Traditional Marketing, Technology And YOU, Home Selling Services

BrokerIPTV: We are talking today with Catherine LeDuke, a print advertising executive and thanks for being with us.

Catherine LeDuke: Thanks for having me.

BrokerIPTV: You specialize in magazines. I want to talk about your magazines. Tell me about them.

Catherine LeDuke: I work for two magazines Enclave magazine as well as Colorado Homes & Lifestyles. They are two magazines that I work on real estate advertising for. Enclave is a bimonthly publication for Colorado's Front Range that focuses on luxury real estate that pretty much is it - luxury real estate.

BrokerIPTV: Okay.

Catherine LeDuke: 25000 copies go out into the market place. Colorado Homes & Lifestyles is a 28-year-old home design magazine.

BrokerIPTV: Yeah.

Catherine LeDuke: Comes out nine times a year and we print 32500 copies.

BrokerIPTV: How long have you been doing it and how did you get started?

Catherine LeDuke: I have been in print advertising for quite sometime since the early '90s.

BrokerIPTV: Okay.

Catherine LeDuke: And worked for a an alternative news weekly start-up, a lot like Westword, and in the '90s I moved towards a more targeted form of print, looking for a regional wedding magazine. I launched Enclave two years ago, so I have been with NCI about two years and I fell into it. I just got into it from the classifieds.

BrokerIPTV: How about the demographics for both magazines? Who do they appeal to?

Catherine LeDuke: Colorado Homes & Lifestyles demographic is overwhelmingly female, educated, and affluent.

BrokerIPTV: Okay.

Catherine LeDuke: Which is probably no surprise. It's a home design magazine. Enclave, we are looking for the whole gamut of the affluent demographic, we mail it to certain households of certain caliber and then, we distribute it through venue circulation, which helps us a lot because these venue locations where we have the magazine are really carefully thought out and deliberate choices. They are not outdoor racks and bingo parlors and grocery stores, but rather golf and country clubs, luxury auto dealers, places like that.

BrokerIPTV: Thousands of people are going to be descending up on Denver at the end of August for the Democratic National Convention. I can imagine that quite a while ago magazine people were thinking to themselves how do I get my magazine into the hands of everyone attending the convention. Was that discussed at your place of work as well?

Catherine LeDuke: It was and you know that our people involved are pretty savvy about you know the value of that. Enclave is kind of a shoe in because it's inserted into all the places where these people are going to be frequenting while they are in Denver. They are going to be getting their hair and their nails done, they are going to be playing golf, they are going to be entertained in peoples homes where we mail this magazine, it's at the high-end hotels and the private airports, so that is a good source for Enclave. Colorado Homes & Lifestyles has a deal with the Grand Hyatt Hotel downtown.

BrokerIPTV: Okay.

Catherine LeDuke: We have in room distribution beginning at the beginning of August.

BrokerIPTV: Great.

Catherine LeDuke: And will be there for the full month.

BrokerIPTV: Catherine, thanks so much.

Catherine LeDuke: Thank you.

BrokerIPTV: Appreciate it.

Posted in Headlines, Denver Colorado Real Estate, Traditional Marketing