This post is going to talk about what you can do to market your home to potential homebuyers. We’re not talking about staging or home preparation–we’re talking strictly about what to do to get people to tour (and buy) your home.

Two Main Approaches

The two main approaches are similar to those taken when marketing to Agents. You need to have great passive marketing, which will get the attention of potential homebuyers. Once you have their attention, you need to engage them through interactive marketing.

Types of Passive Marketing:

 

• Flyers
• Signage
• Videos
• MLS feeds

Types of Interactive Marketing:

 

• Web Sites

• Floor Plans

• Virtual Tours

Passive Marketing: Flyers

Flyers are an extremely basic form of advertisement, but they shouldn’t be disregarded or treated lightly. A well-designed flyer can serve a few different ends. For example, by placing a high-quality descriptive flyer in flyer box, people who grab one from the side of the road will get a good idea of what the home really has to offer, instead of just learning that it is for sale. Similarly, homebuyers who tour that home can take one with them to remind them of the home’s main features. Without a good flyer, the home will blend together with the rest of the homes they may have visited that day. It’s important that your flyer is customized to your home. People can see right through a template, so you don’t really benefit from printing off a canned-flyer. Any home worth visiting deserves a decent flyer.

Here is a quick example of the type of flyers you’re likely to see. We already covered this in the first marketing post, so I’m not going to talk about it, but you know you shouldn’t settle for this form of “marketing”.

Here is an example of a flyer that we made for a home in the Pinnacle here in San Antonio—it is compressed so you can see both sides. You’ll notice that the front shows and explains the benefits of the home—it is primarily narrative and pictures. You also see that the back of the flyer has the basics covered: you have the major features listed, as well as the price. For this particular home, we decided to highlight the building materials, as well as giving some background on the Builder. You’ll see that I also have information about myself, since it is necessary to provide contact information, but my information is definitely not the centerpiece of this flyer.

Passive Marketing: Real Estate Signage

Next we’ll talk about signage, specifically, I’m talking about the signs which you put in your front yard. Although each company has it’s own identity standards for signage, you should still discuss the idea of getting a sign custom-made for your home. If your REALTOR is receptive, they will try to do this for you instead of just saying no, and hiding behind “company policy”. At a bare minimum, the signage should have riders, or some type of information about your home. Ideally it will also guide people towards the interactive marketing mediums that you should have in place for your home.

Here we have 2 examples of possible real estate signage. The first is the kind you’re likely to see. You’ll notice that you have the company information, as well as the “For Sale” proclamation. You also have information about the Agent, as well as several ways to contact that Agent. Again, we talked about this in the first Marketing video, so I’ll move on. Here you have a different approach to the yard sign. You’ll notice that you still have the company information, you still have a contact phone number, but they are not the highlights of the sign. On this sign you actually have narrative about the home, and in big letters we advertise an interactive marketing medium—the home’s own personal website. It also highlight a few of the main point of the home: in this case, you see a beautiful eat-in kitchen, you see decks, and you see the water, all of which make this home appealing to someone looking for a waterfront home under half a million dollars. The narrative and pictures are intended to stop traffic—you want people to stop to look at your house—that’s why you market your home. With a normal sign, people have no reason to stop since the sign provides no information on the property.

Passive Marketing: Videos

Video marketing for homes is still in its infancy, but there are lots of way to market a home through video. We personally like have two types of videos. One is to create a short photo montage of the home, which can be linked to the MLS and distributed via e-mail. The second is a little more complicated and required full-motion video, audio, etc. It is essentially a commercial for the home. That commercial can be distributed via a web link, or can be put onto DVD, or other mediums. It’s also good to include footage of the neighborhood when possible, and if the home is historic or brand new, it’s nice to include a history of the home, or an interview with the Builder. Here’s an example of a video that we made for one of our Clients.

Passive: MLS Feeds

The key to marketing via the MLS is to enter the correct information into all the categories. That seems trivial, but it is very common to find mistakes in the listings. By having good MLS information and copy, you ensure that real estate websites that pull information from the MLS, such as REALTOR.com, SABOR.com, etc, will serve as effective marketing channels for your home. We discussed this in a previous post, so I’ll move on.

Interactive Marketing: Custom Websites

Custom websites are a very innovate and information marketing service that few Agents provide. I will cover this topic in more detail in our online marketing post, but I will say that your custom website needs to be the definitive source for all information and marketing materials related to your home. To see an example, you can visit the website of one our listings at: www.22319Lavaca.com

Interactive Marketing: Interactive Floor Plans

Interactive floor plans are starting to become more common in some real estate markets around the country, although you don’t really see them much in San Antonio yet. The interactive floor plan is a great marketing tool because it shows you how the home is arranged. In my opinion, the information it provides is more valuable than any single picture. The way the floor plan works is that people can click on the little markers on the plan, and they’ll be able to see the picture taken from that marker. You can see a working example at one of our listings

Interactive Marketing: Virtual Tours

Virtual tours are a decent way to give a tour of the home. Typically they’re done with panning and zooming of still images. While this is a nice feature to have, I think that the use of interactive floor plans and full videos can do a better job of giving a prospective homebuyer a tour of the home. One good use of a virtual tour, however, is to take a virtual tour of the neighborhood. You can highlight other homes in the area, so that the prospective homebuyer can see the neighborhood virtually.

Conclusions

So to recap this topic: I hope you’ve learned that marketing needs to be targeted to your intended audience. There’s a world of resources out there, and you need to make the best use of them so that you can sell your home as quickly as possible, and for the best price.

The next post in the marketing series is about internet marketing and how it can be used to sell your home.

Thanks, and have a great day!