If you’re selling a home in Orlando…or anywhere else for that matter, one of the single most important factors besides pricing it correctly is to do a proper marketing campaign.
Since my real estate career began back in 2004, one of the biggest complaints I’ve heard from unhappy home sellers over the years is that they didn’t feel that their real estate agent is marketing their home properly or that it was getting enough exposure.
Top Orlando Realtors utilize a whole arsenal of marketing techniques and strategies. Some of these techniques are a direct approach in which the home is directly promoted to buyers, while other techniques are more of an indirect or passive nature but can be just as effective and sometimes even more so… depending on your audience.
Working as one of the top listing agents in Orlando, I feel that it’s of the up-most importance that my listing clients know exactly how, where their home will be marketed, and why.
If you or someone you know are thinking about selling a home and wondering what your agent should be doing to market your home then continue reading below…
Local Publications
Some agents… especially the younger generation of agents, feel that print advertising has become completely obsolete and just doesn’t work anymore. This isn’t true… While print advertising has decreased substantially over the years in every industry known to man, there are still people that prefer to read from the actual paper. And yes you guessed it… It’s the older generations that happen to be a large part of the buyer’s pool.
By advertising your home in local newspapers, gazettes, and even penny pinchers, you are ensuring to reach an audience that wants nothing to do with the internet… probably because they don’t know how to use it correctly.
Direct Mail
Another popular strategy that’s been increasingly overlooked by realtors is good old-fashioned direct mail campaigns. Postcards, for instance, are a great way to inform everyone in the neighborhood, subdivision, or zip code that you’re selling a home right in their area.
This can be an effective marketing tool for selling real estate primarily because the residents who receive the postcard might know a friend or relative who’s looking to move close to them.
Like placing ads in local publications, this technique requires the agent to spend money they haven’t earned yet. However, it could pay off big time!
Online Marketing
It probably won’t surprise you to know that over 90% of ALL homebuyers across the nation begin their search online. Your listing agent should also be aware of this staggering statistic… If they aren’t then you may be with the wrong agent. It’s vital that when selling a home that it’s being exposed everywhere online. The best listing agents will have a very strong internet presence making them very easy to find.
Here are some of the most important online strategies to maximize your real estate marketing campaign
Real Estate Website
In this day and age, I imagine it would be hard to find a real estate brokerage that doesn’t have a website. You should know that just because a brokerage has a website, it doesn’t mean that YOUR AGENT has a website. Pay close attention to this…a successful listing agent should have their own, user-friendly website. Not only that, but it should be ranking on the 1st or 2nd page at least on all the major search engines.
A top-quality Realtor website should be loaded with user-friendly tools like a home search tool, home valuation tool, mortgage calculator just to name a few. In addition, it should have also have community pages as well as a blog where consumers can get all the information they need to help solve their problems.
Quality Photography
Because the internet is the starting place for most potential home buyers, listing agents must use only high-quality photographs in their marketing materials. A seller should expect their agent to take photos that are nothing short of spectacular.
As a listing agent in Orlando, I first started by hiring a company to take photographs of all my listings. As time went on I chose to invest in the proper equipment to take all the spectacular photos I need whenever I want.
A good tip when looking to hire a listing agent is to look at some of their listing photos…do they make you say WOW!? or does it look like they used their 1st generation iPhone to take the pics?
Believe it or not, quality pics can make a huge difference in how much your home sells.
Videos
I just love videos… I love to shoot them and I love to watch them… period. Whether I’m learning how to build a cardboard boat or I want to view a house listing. The video makes everything better!
Most listings will provide a virtual tour automatically by compiling the listing photos together, and that’s better than nothing. However, if you want to make a huge impact on the marketing of your home, then your agent should take things a step further.
For every single listing at ORC, we create a highly creative, informative, and fun video showcasing the home’s best features along with all the important information that goes with the listing. Our YT Channel “Top Orlando Realtors” hosts hundreds of listing videos as well as information and institutional videos and we have become well known for it.
Social Media
We now find ourselves in 2017 where social media and real estate are like bread and butter. Homeowners should expect their agents to be using social media to their full capacity.
Top real estate agents should be on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, and even LinkedIn making it easy for them to spread the word to thousands of people instantly about any homes they have listed.
