Innovative Real Estate Marketing Strategies from Leading Experts
Being in real estate is tough business, especially when you only get paid for the performance and results you deliver. We’ve talked to 19 of the top experts in real estate, real estate marketing and real estate PR to bring you their best real estate marketing ideas. These will get you the close you are after whether you’re working with a buyer or seller.
#1. Pam Danziger – Unity Marketing
As a high-end real estate marketer, your primary responsibility is to create a perception of luxury for a home that becomes the reality and expectation of the potential home buyer. Creating that luxury perception becomes the key. It requires effective marketing strategies that draw the affluent home buyer. That means every potential customer contact – from online listing, advertisements, listing flyers, brochures, direct mail contact – must communicate the luxury story aimed to entice the potential luxury buyer.
The Secret: It’s Not About More Marketing; It’s About More EFFECTIVE Marketing
To sell a million-dollar house in a slow market, you don’t necessarily need more marketing or advertising, but you need more EFFECTIVE marketing and advertising. Here are some research-based ideas to help real estate marketers sell more million-dollar homes in a luxury housing market that has suddenly gone cold.
Key Takeaways
- Luxury Perception: Crafting a luxury image is crucial for attracting affluent buyers.
- Effective Marketing: Focus on quality over quantity in marketing efforts.
- Brand Inventory: Highlight luxury brands within the home to justify its price.
- Storytelling: Use narratives to bring listings to life beyond mere features.
- Professional Writing: Hiring a writer can transform listings into compelling stories.
Brand Name Drop
In today’s marketplace, luxury brands are cultural currency. They talk to the quality and value of a million-dollar home. Real estate marketers should take a full inventory of the brands reflected in the home, not just the appliances, but the fixtures, local name-brand architects, designers, and contractors that are reflected in the home. Luxury brands in the home testify to the luxury price tag, Use them.
Tell Stories About The Home, Don’t Just Describe It’s Features
Real estate listings are just that: fact-based objective listings of the home’s features. But such listings – square footage, lot size, number of bedrooms, baths, etc. – tell the prospective buyer nothing about the experience of living in the home. Story-based listings that weave the home’s facts and figures into the story romance the listing and make it come alive. Don’t just write a listing, tell a story about the home.
Hire A Writer
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but in today’s internet-powered, social-media driven, content-marketing world, a thousand words need to go along with that picture. Those thousand words must tell stories engaging enough to make the prospective home buyer curious enough to call the agent and set up an appointment to experience the home for themselves.
Real estate agents think nothing of hiring professionals to do their photography and videography, yet they write the listing themselves. This is a huge mistake! Writers can take that fact-based listing description, including the extensive brand-name inventory, and tell a story about the home that will romance the listing and make it pop! Plus, writers are fairly inexpensive to hire. Put one on the payroll and see the difference it makes to the listings and your sales.
#2. Bob Gordon – Remax
Blog
This is a low cost, organic route to lead generation. Beyond blogging, you can share your content in Groups on Social Media, use your posts as material for a Drip Marketing campaign and even share Client Testimonials in your Blog. I do all of this and more with my website: boulderrealestatenews.com
Recently I’ve created a electronic newsletter, using my BLOG content as the stories, so that interested consumers can click to my website.
Interact on Social Media
Interact on social platforms, especially in Groups. Specifically, in a local FB group called the 8-Oh-Oh-27 (named after a zip code), I posted I was looking for recommended contractors to create a list to share. I had a massive response. Over sixty LIKES, and another 50 comments, about a 1/3 wanted in the material, the rest wanted a copy.
Utilize Video
I have published over one hundred videos, some of which have been viewed extensively. My favorite videos are quick post-closing client testimonials. My clients thank me by name and share how excited they are to be in their new home. They mention the things I did well – the marketing, the communication, the strong negotiation skills. Then I post the video to my Blog, share on Social Media and I TAG everyone involved when sharing — the closer, the other agent, the client, the title company, the mortgage lender. These videos get great exposure.
#3. Luca Alessandrini – Online Optimisim
Building and Maintaining Relationships Online
A key activity to building relationships is an email newsletter. Through platforms like Emma or Mailchimp it has never been easier to handle create and distribute your own email newsletter. Letting past, current and potential clients know your activities including listings, speaking opportunities, closings, open houses, even personal events like weddings, births and graduations are a great way to keep clients engaged. This contributes to increased trust, referral opportunity and relationship building. Newsletters are a more direct method of communication compared to social media or blogging, two other strategies commonly used to build connections.
Building Confidence in Your Ability Through Social Media
In 2016, especially in the real estate industry, it is essential to show movement, progression, and of course, great sales. Most house buyers are not looking for the house of their dreams, but the best home for them. By connecting clients to the best home for them, they can provide strong testimonial, key content to be published on your social media accounts. Overall, real estate agents must communicate their ability to match homes with clients and build relationships with past, current and potential clients to best increase their leads and improve their business.
#4. Karim Wahba – Realty One Group
@WahbaRealtor
Price Under Marker Value
If the fair market value of a house is $500,000 for example, sometimes I advise my sellers to list slightly below the market value. What this does is it exposes the property to so many more potential buyers & so many buyers schedule appointments to view the property. This often results in multiple offers being written on the property & a bidding war ensues. This benefits the seller, in many cases the final purchase price ends up surpassing the fair market value. People want what other people want, so they keep bidding up!!
Limit Showings & Create Deadline
By limiting the showings of a property to one open house, this means many buyers will come in to see the house during this 3 or 4 hour window as that’s the only opportunity to see the house. This almost ensures that an open house will be packed with potential buyers. The more crowded the open house, the more buyers feel like everyone else is going to bid for this property so I’ll bid the highest.
If the open house is on a Saturday, I like to create a deadline to receiving all offers by noon on Monday. What this does is it also creates a sense of urgency & subconsciously buyers automatically prepare to compete with other offers.
Again it just plays on the notion of “people want what other people want”.
#5. Sam Williamson – Aims Media Glasgow
Retargeting
Most consumers considering purchasing real estate deliberate for months (or even years) before finally deciding on a property, and they’ll often spend significant time using the Internet to look at the various options available to them. This means it’s likely that they’ve visited your website several times to take a look at any available properties, which presents the perfect opportunity for retargeting.
For real estate, email retargeting is probably the most effective marketing method to use. The emails can be kept in the inbox and referred to when the customer feels ready to purchase the real estate.
#6. Blake Philpott – RE/MAX City Realty
Facebook Ads!
Great way to let literally hundreds of thousands of people in the community know about the listing, I will do this for all my listings, it works like magic. Exposing the listing to the highest number of people is what really brings in the money for the seller once people start to compete for the property.
Professional Videography, Photography, And Even Drone Footage
According to the real estate association 90% of buyers are first drawn to listings with high-quality visuals. Investing in professional videography, photography, and even drone footage can significantly enhance the appeal of a property.
#12. Brian Davis – Spark Rental
Consider Inexpensive Ways to Boost “Sexiness”
The trick is to find items that are inexpensive to install, but that stand out in real estate listings. Buyers and renters make housing decisions largely on a subconscious, emotional level, then use reason to justify those decisions, so as a seller you want to brainstorm ideas that make the home feel chic, modern, sexy… without breaking the bank. For example, you can install almost any type of “smart home” technology for less than $200: smart door locks, smart thermostats, smart security systems, smart smoke and CO detectors, even smart coffee makers… each can be bought in the $100-200 range. I once bought a used Jacuzzi tub on Craigslist for $700, put it on the rear deck, and then asked $5,000 more than we were originally planning. The phone rang off the hook for showing requests.
The Right Words Really Can Add $10,000 to the Sales Price
According to a Zillow study earlier this year, the word “luxurious” added 8.2% to the sales price of lower-tier homes for sale. Among higher-tier homes, the word “captivating” added 6.5%. They go to identify 15 words that added value to home listings, from “impeccable” to “landscaped” to “pergola”.
| Word | Increase in Sales Price | Home Tier |
|---|---|---|
| Luxurious | 8.2% | Lower-tier |
| Captivating | 6.5% | Higher-tier |
Be sure to remind prospects of the expected benefits for a certain neighborhood, but also be sure to point out better-than-expected features of this particular home. People shopping in a trendy urban neighborhood expect to be able to walk to many amenities, so remind them the home is “a five-minute walk from Whole Foods”, but also point out the home has surprisingly spacious bedrooms for this popular urban neighborhood.
Perfect Presentability
Unless the home needs repairs and is being sold as-is, it should be perfectly clean inside and out, with flawlessly groomed landscaping and floors you can eat off of.. The name of the game is first impressions, and nothing turns prospective buyers or renters off more than other people’s dirt and grime (especially in kitchens or bathrooms). If there isn’t much landscaping to speak of, you can still find ways to spruce up the front of the house and boost curb appeal, by adding bright-colored potted plants. The nice thing about potted plants is you can reuse the same ones over and over, and move them from listing to listing as you make sales (just make sure the contract excludes the plants).
Lastly, be sure to include lots of photos of your perfectly presentable home with the listing.Go Professional
Provide a professional photographer to capture the property at its best. According to a Redfin study, homes that are professionally photographed sell for at least $934 and as much as $18,819 more than homes photographed by an amateur. The study also shows that homes photographed by a professional garner 61 percent more online views. We understand that web appeal of our listings is a huge selling point, this is why we hire a professional photographer for every home. 83% of home buyers believe the most valuable feature of a website is the photos. This is why it is imperative for our listings to have the best possible photos online.
| Photography Type | Price Increase | Online Views Increase |
|---|---|---|
| Professional | $934 – $18,819 more | 61% more views |
| Amateur | Less than professional | Fewer views |
Single Property Websites
Provide a unique single-property website solely for the purpose of marketing the home to potential buyers. Buyers can use this site to view information and photos of your home while also scheduling a showing with just a click.selling points. Your best result is to be able to list the home with something along the lines of “largest bedrooms and closest to train station of any 3 bedroom home in (community)!”.
Many agents fail to update their information and selling points regularly. Take notice of how long the properties you are looking at have been on the market. You might find ads which haven’t changed in six months, thus taking away any urgency to pursue that property. Your property should always be advertised with “fresh” information and be updated frequently whether the price changes or not.
Continue to monitor the advertising of those similar local properties and watch for others coming on the market. You need to make sure that your selling points are still current along with looking out for newer ones.
#18. Jeff Knox – Knox & Associates Real Estate Brokerage
Identify Your Probable Buyers
For instance, if you are listing a larger home in a neighborhood known for its great schools, identify your probable buyers and leverage your online marketing to target those buyers. For the house in this example, your most likely buyers will be a family with children needing good schools and a larger home.
Reverse Prospect on MLS
Most MLS systems now allow Realtors to reverse prospect to find agents who have clients looking for a home in the area of your new listing. Contact these agents and let them know about your new listing.
Contact All Realtors Who Have Sold A Home In The Neighborhood
Contact all agents who have sold a home in the neighborhood within the past year. Most likely, they have some “sideline buyers” who are just waiting for the right house to hit the market. Sideline buyers do not search daily so they may not see your new listing. Be proactive and reach out to these other agents.
#19. Greg Chaplain – The Real Estate Group LLC
| Approach | Description |
|---|---|
| Price It Right | The best marketing strategy ever invented is called “price it right.” The thought of pricing it high and expecting a buyer to “make an offer” is a myth. Pricing it high is a barrier to the prospective buyer seeing the property at all. |
| Set Up The Property Appropriately | Furnish rooms for their intended use. In other words, a dining room should showcase dining room furniture. Not a weight bench or pool table. These items should be removed and placed in storage off-site. An empty room is better than one not set for its designed function. |
| Be Prepared | Whether there is a showing appointment scheduled for that day or not, whenever leaving the house be sure that it is in show ready condition. (Especially if your schedule doesn’t allow you to shoot home on a moment’s notice to prepare the house for a showing) |
Think something is missing? Comment below and let us know your best real estate marketing ideas!