Your listings are your lifeblood as a real estate agent, and getting them in front of potential buyers is crucial to your business.
If you’re effectively marketing your listing, it helps you in multiple ways:
- It gets potential buyers to see the listing
- It shows your seller they chose the right agent
- It puts you in front of more potential clients
In this article, I’ll go through the five ways I’ve seen top producers market their listings and give you some actionable tips for your own listings.
1. Show off the (real) price
It’s no secret that price is a major factor when it comes to promoting a listing. Every agent with a pulse is promoting the price of his or her listings, but top producers take it one step further.
They promote what the down payment amount would be, helping the prospective buyer understand what they’ll actually need to purchase your listing. Giving a 5 percent to 20 percent range for a downpayment helps bring clarity to the potential buyer and makes the idea of them owning a home much more realistic.
2. Get creative with photos
Posting listing photos is not enough to make an impression. Instead, try throwing yourself into a few of the photos. I spoke with Denny Dumas, leader of the Garbutt + Dumas team in Vancouver, Canada.
He said, “We have definitely found that posts get more engagement when we (people) are in them rather than just a photo of a kitchen. Of course the goal of any post or ad for our business, new listings, is to create as much attention as possible.
“MLS [multiple listing service] is the best tool to hit serious buyers, but the amount of views we get on MLS does not even compare to the views we get on social. For example, a brand new house listing on MLS may get 400-600 views in the first week and through a Facebook ad would get 8,000-12,000. If it’s a unique home, this number could climb to over 20,000 with pretty minimal investment in ad dollars.”
Here’s an example of what his team is doing on Instagram.
3. Use proper grammar in property descriptions
A 2014 study by Redfin and Grammarly found that people were 45 percent less likely to check out a listing if the property description was grammatically incorrect.
It’s important for you to use complete sentences, limit how many abbreviations you use and avoid writing in all caps.
4. Get up in the air
According to MLS statistics, listings that were promoted with aerial footage sold 68 percent faster than those without. Getting drone footage of your listing isn’t absolutely necessary, but it does give you a beautiful way to show off your listing and the surrounding area.
5. Pay to play
At the end of the day, you might want to buy some paid ads to promote your listing. Social media platforms are great ad platforms to get in front of potential interested buyers for your listing.
Paying for promotion is also a great way to show your sellers you’re active in promoting their property.
Jordan Scheltgen is the founder of the marketing agency Cave Social. You can follow him on Twitter @cavejordans or connect with him on Facebook.
