Marketing Plans for the Digital Age
During your listing appointment with your Realtor, you should expect to discuss a marketing plan for your home. It is usually ideal to appeal to as many buyers as possible, but there are times when you want to specifically target an audience. For example, if your home is in a Golf Community, you may want to focus some marketing on social media groups for Golf Enthusiasts. Your Realtor should come to the table with a Marketing Plan in mind and collaborate with you on what you feel is the best way to proceed.
As a part of your marketing plan, you will also want to discuss and decide on the pros and cons of hosting an open house. There are typically 2 types of open houses – Broker Open Houses in which your Realtor would invite other Realtors ONLY to come and view the house before it hits the market. These Realtors can help to find the right buyer. They may already have buyer clients that are looking for something like what you have; or they might share information about your listing with their friends and colleagues, growing the interest in your property before it even hits the market. This type of open house limits the number of strangers in your home, along with reducing the casual lookie loo or unqualified buyer from browsing through your home.
Another option is a Public Open house. Most of the time, the traffic from a Public Open house are passive lookers. This means there could be several strangers roaming through your home with no intention of buying it. The open house will offer the home more exposure, and as a benefit for hesitant buyers it also creates a low-pressure shopping opportunity. This also allows the nosy neighbors and lookie loos a glimpse into your private home. Some shoppers are touring homes to research what they will be looking for when they are ready to buy, which could be sooner or later. Depending on the popularity or traffic an open house gets, security becomes more difficult to control and there is the possibility of theft. You may want to keep an open mind though, the person at the Open House may not be qualified to purchase your home, but they may know someone who would be interested. They could post photos on their social media, or even call a friend to tell them about a home they saw. For some nosy neighbors, they may be checking out a house so they can recommend it to a friend that they would like to live closer to them. It is up to each seller to weigh the pros and cons and make the decision based on what they feel is right for them.
Listed below are some marketing tools to be familiar with. Not every Realtor will use the same tools, not every home will require the same plan. You will work with your Realtor to decide on the best plan for YOU, to get your home SOLD.
Yard Sign – There are sellers who prefer to keep a low profile when selling their house. Some are concerned that having a For Sale sign in front of their home could make the home a target for theft, but the exposure provided by having a sign increases your buyer pool exponentially. When a house is for sale and listed in various places, it still creates hesitation and concern if a buyer drives buy and doesn’t see a sign. They begin to think there was an error and lose confidence in the option.
Social Media – Posting on your Realtors website, their Agency Website, Facebook, Next-door, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube – for all these options it is important to use high quality, Professional Photos. Especially in the current climate, many people are home shopping remotely, possibly even from out of state and could potentially purchase sight unseen. Poor photos, or photos that fail to capture the home and intrigue the buyer will turn many buyers off. It is also more common these days to offer a virtual walk through, via an online tool, or a Video created by your agent.
MLS (Multi-listing Service) – Searchable for Professional Real Estate agents AND automatically feeds into public search engines including Realtor.com, Zillow, Redfin, Open-door, Trulia etc. AND local agent websites; any agent who has a listing feed plugin enabled on their website (most do) will automatically display your MLS listing on their site.
Purchased Ads – Newspapers, magazines, billboards, local associations, community boards. Marketing expenses are paid for by your AGENT – it is one of the benefits of using a professional agent and one of the reasons you pay them a commission when you sell your home for a great price.
Neighbor Letters / Flyers/ direct mail postcards – Do you live in a neighborhood where everyone knows everyone else? Do you know that you have neighbors that are hoping to get some friends or family to move closer to them? Hopefully, you have already spoken to them and told them you plan to sell your home, and those interested may already have told their friends and family – sometimes neighborhoods are just to big to know everyone – when that is the case, you can utilize this option. Again, the expense of printing and distributing these materials is taken care of by your agent!
Realtors Sphere, professional associations, and network– Realtors talk! Sure, there is competition in the industry, but the goal of Realtors is the same- sell that house! Cooperation is key in this industry and Realtors have multiple associations, message boards, and communication tools to ensure everyone knows what they have available and what they are looking for, for their buyers.
By utilizing the right combination of these and other marketing tools, your home will get the attention it deserves and will get discovered by the home buyers searching for their new home!