Selling 101: Marketing Your Home

Marketing in today’s world is very different than 10 years ago. In fact, it is even very different than 5 years ago. With nearly everyone buyer looking at homes online, we’ve got to make your home look it’s best. I have heard it time and time again… buyers are ruling out houses they don’t want to visit, based on the photos they see online. As I already covered, it first starts with Staging, and then professional photography.
The whole marketing strategy is to grab that one buyer’s attention as you only have a few seconds to hook a buyer. By having great, high-quality photos, coupled with appealing staging, you can lead buyers into viewing your home. The old addage of the 3 P’s of real estate (put a sign in the yard, put it on mls, and pray it sells) doesn’t hold true anymore. We’ve got to do more.

Online Marketing

Online Marketing consists of more than just a website. A dedicated house website is a starting place but we’ve got to expose your home to the world.

Potential buyers can come from anywhere, whether it be from the big Z(illow) or from the big T(rulia) or any of hundreds of other websites. The majority of trackable buyers come from the Northstar MLS system through buyers agents.

Offline Marketing

Print is not dead. Newspaper advertising is dead, but mailers and postcards still do hold value. Sending out open house postcards still seems effective. I was talking with an agent in our office and she sent out an open house postcard to the immediate neighborhood. At the open several people came because of the postcard and she sold the house to one of those buyers.

Virtual Tour

Our local MLS system only allows for 18 photos at a resolution of 640×480, which is 0.3 MP in size! Yes, they really only allow 18 photos that are really tiny. 640×480 resolution is also called “VGA” and dates back to 1987. I know this is kind of a rant, but a camera in a cell phone can take a 12+ MP image. It would be great if the MLS system we use would allow for larger images, but they don’t. I use a video slideshow to overcome both of these issues. My video slideshow can show many more photos, and can be higher resolution. The resolution I use is 1280x720p, which is on the slightly lower side of HD resolution. I can set this up at 1080p (1920×1080), but I find that once in a while some people complain about download speeds at those resolutions. View the sample below from a recent photo shoot.

Open Houses

Open Houses don’t necessarily sell houses. But they are still important. The latest NAR Profile Of Home Buyers And Sellers Study shows that 9% of home buyers found their home via yard signs or open houses. They don’t specify one over the other. This does not mean that we shouldn’t hold a few open houses. They do still serve a purpose: exposing your home to neighbors. Neighbors are a good source of potential buyers for you house. They may have friends they want to move into their neighborhood. They may have kids that are looking to buy their first home. They may have co-workers that are looking to buy. Or the co-workers may have friends that are looking to buy. No matter what the case is, there is value in open houses. If it is not convenient for your schedule, however, it’s ok to skip the open house as well.

Other Marketing

I don’t cover all my marketing ideas on the web. Please contact me to set up a brief no-strings-attached meeting to discuss how we can get your home sold.