By Judy Kasten
If there's one thing hotter than the weather in Florida, it's the real estate industry.
Florida, especially interior Florida is growing by leaps and bounds. Independent’s daily and weekly papers are attracting an increasing amount of advertising from real estate companies and related industries.
Several years ago, the Okeechobee News started the Lake Okeechobee Real Estate Magazine, monthly real estate magazine. This has grown over the past few years into a very attractive 28 page tab with 8,500 circulation. This magazine is inserted in the home delivery copies of the Okeechobee News on the first of each month and is free standing at businesses, racks and stores throughout Okeechobee County. Kay Sheedy is the team leader of the sales effort.
The continuing success of the Lake Okeechobee Real Estate Magazine led the Florida groupto consider a real estate magazine in the other communities where Independent has weekly publications.
The area in Hendry County served by the Clewiston News and the Caloosa Belle appeared ripe for such a product, as they were showing good growth in residential real estate. Based on this belief that an "underserved market" existed in real estate, plans for the Hendry GladesReal Estate Magazine were hatched.
The plan for the new publication is to cover the other communities around Lake Okeechobee, including Belle Glade, Pahokee, South Bay, Clewiston, Glades County, LaBelle and Immokalee, and eastward towards Lee County.
Papers involved in this project are the Sun, Clewiston News, Glades County Democrat, Caloosa Belle and Immokalee Bulletin. Unlike the Okeechobee magazine however, this new magazine would be free-standing only, distributed to businesses and stores in these markets.
The sales teams in the south lake office; Brenda Jaramillo, Wanda Graham, Melissa Agee and Lauren Adams, and the Caloosa Belle; Barb Calfee and Dale Conyers were involved in planning the new magazine and eager to start selling. Armed with samples of the Okeechobee magazine and a rate card, the sales staffs blitzed through their markets, aiming for a magazine to hit the streets the first Thursday in March. Kay Sheedy coordinated the sales efforts and Karmen Brown helped with production.
The advertisers' response to the not yet published magazine was phenomenal.
"We felt it was important to get our real estate publication on the street ahead of some competitors who were said to be planning their own real estate products for this underserved market," said Tom Byrd, Florida Operations VP.
"Another exciting thing about this project was the fact that we were able to mesh the existing local knowledge about our market and experience in Okeechobee with the planning template created by Chris Engel,” Byrd added. “This Model Guide for Real Estate Publications prepared by Chris was very helpful not only in organizing our thinking but in simplifying the decision making."
The goal was to launch the product with 12 pages and instead the first issue of the Hendry Glades Real Estate Magazine had 20 pages and several full color ads!
"The niche marketers creed, is 'identify a need and fill it', and we were able to bring this idea to market extremely quickly," Byrd said.
Response to the magazine once it hit the street has been great and we look for a larger magazine next month.
"The entire Florida advertising and circulation team did a great job of implementing the successful launch of the new real estate publication, Hendry Glades Real Estate Magazine", Byrd said.
