I am currently trying to sell an investment property and was given a copy of the Gil Davis book “Sell for More” which aims to teach you how to sell your residential property for a higher price.

Having a background that includes a 5 year stint as principal of a Print Management firm I was interested to read the section where Mr Davis expounds on research he commissioned to answer the question “Which advertising strategy works best out of Internet, print or both?” In this case “works best” means achieves the highest net gain.

The short answer is both. His research undertaken by Rismark and based on RPdata figures found that “you will sell you property faster and for more money if you combine the use of print and online media”. Makes sense, but how many of us integrate our online and offline efforts in our own communications?

Also to quote Mr Davis “A fascinating and totally unexpected result of the research was that on average, people advertising just on the net achieved a higher price than they expected, but a lower price than they could have achieved had they advertised in a combination of net and print”.

Since selling your house for more is essentially about increasing the size of your market I naturally asked myself would a similar approach work for other products and services? A quick google search will leave you none the wiser as many and varied arguments abound for and against both media. But I suspect that integrated online and offline efforts would yield the best results in most cases. Driving people to your website is sometimes best achieved offline first, and good print advertising would always be part of, or re-inforce, a good campaign but you also need to have a good website ready to go when they get there.