United Country Real Estate is celebrating the 90th anniversary of its national catalog, which was launched in 1928. The first catalog is housed as an original historical document in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., recognized as marketing innovation for its time. It features 36 pages with 225 farm and land listings nationwide with a total property value of $728,095. The highlight was a 160-acre farm in Missouri for $1,750. Over the years, the design and quality of the catalog, the number of featured listings and the average price of the listings have all increased dramatically.
Today, the United Country Catalog is available digitally, but it is also still available in print nationally. It is printed twice a year in full color and features 176 pages of farmland, vacant land, ranches, hunting and recreational property, waterfront property, commercial property, international properties, and more. With a readership of over 2 million annually, United Country affiliates often use this catalog as showpiece to advertise their local listings, locally, statewide and across the nation.
“I have been honored to be a part of the historic United Country Catalog for over 20 years,” says Michele Frisby, senior creative director for United Country Real Estate. “Many of our customers refer to the catalog as their ‘dream book,’ like the old Sears catalog for adults. Since 1928, this groundbreaking publication has changed the way buyers and sellers of lifestyle and country real estate connect and do business, and allowed our affiliates to win more listings by offering a platform no other real estate company can offer. We are constantly striving to innovate and improve this unique and powerful marketing tool, and look forward to continuing to produce this national showcase of lifestyle properties.”
“This is an important milestone as we approach 100 years of driving marketing innovation in real estate,” says Mike Duffy, president of United Country Real Estate. “Our dedication to constantly innovating how we reach potential buyers and exposing local properties more broadly is as clear and strong today as it was when this catalog started it all in 1928. Our business has never been stronger and the catalog started it, and has remained a key part of this solid marketing foundation over nine decades.”
In addition to the Catalog, United Country has an unmatched inventory of other innovative marketing strategies to fulfil their mission of providing broader exposure for local listings. They established their tagline as “National Marketing, Local Expertise®.” The innovation continued throughout the decades, advertising local real estate listings in national newspapers in the 1940s and national magazines in the 1950s, the first real estate company to do so. In the 1970s, United Country introduced national buyer database and direct mail marketing and also launched e-marketing systems 10 years later. By the 1990s, it launched the first national real estate website.
Today, United Country remains an innovator in national real estate marketing. It offers vast internet marketing, unique niche property programs, advanced e-marketing programs and social media advertising, automated marketing, national magazine and newspaper advertising and more than 3,500 high-performing websites that include office websites, agent websites and special property group websites. It also offers custom marketing by the largest in-house real estate advertising agency and has an opt-in database of more than 700,000 buyers.
For more information, please visit UnitedCountry.com. Â
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