Real Estate Marketing and the Internet

Realtors are an interesting segment of the small business market. Quintessential small businesses (SMBs) and entrepreneurs in some respects, they're atypical in other ways. One of them is marketing; realtors tend to be more aggressive and creative than other categories of SMBs. Accordingly, this LA Times article talks about how the mood has shifted and local realtors are now embracing the Internet with enthusiasm (but also out of necessity).
Real estate ad spending is worth approximately $12 billion in the U.S. annually, according to the National Association of Realtors. And a host of websites are trying to grab chunks of that.
--36% of surveyed realtors spent 10% or less of their total budgets in their local newspapers. 19% spent less than 20% of their total budgets on newspaper print ads. And 17% didn’t advertise at all in print newspapers
--52% of survey respondents reported promoting their services on free classified sites such as Craigslist (67%) Google Base (45%) and MSN/Windows Live Expo (33%)--61% of respondents said the weren’t spending any marketing dollars on newspaper websites
--40% of respondents said they planned to spend $1,000 to $5,000 on [online marketing] in the next year. Approximately 20% planned to spend less than $1,000, and 18% planned to spend more than $10,000
--The most popular category of online advertising was search engine keywords, which 52% of respondents said they planned to buy in the next year. Featured listing ads ran a close second with 48% planned buys. Search engine optimization (SEO) services were a priority as well with 42% planned buys. Dollar amounts budgeted for keyword advertising in the next year ranged from zero to more than $5,000