Daniel & Julie talked about the importance of marketing your home on Twin Cities Live this week. There are both high-tech and low-tech ways to sell your home in 2017. Find out what their advice is on what works and what doesn’t.
Staging consultation & contractors to perform repairs/updates:
You should work with a realtor that provides professional staging services. Whether it’s to give decorating and furniture layout recommendations or completely furnish and stage a vacant property it is important that it is done by a professional. This is a key component of marketing, if the house does not look good in pictures or in person it is going to be a lot harder to get buyers through the door and make an offer.
If work is needed to be done to your home to prep it for sale it is important to work with a realtor that will give you that honest feedback and also has the network of professional contractors to perform work to ensure it is done well.
Professional photography and brochures:
Its important that you have professional pictures taken of your house. The pictures are going to be what motivates a buyer to want to look at your home, they need to be top quality. Your realtor shouldn’t take pictures on their phone or for that matter take the pictures themselves. They should be taken by a professional photographer that has the proper skills and lighting.
The brochures should be professionally created and printed. Not created on someone’s computer at home and printed out on a low quality printer. All of our brochures are professionally created and printed on high quality paper. They are full color and left out at the home for showings and in brochure boxes on the exterior signs.
For certain properties we have a 3D virtual tour that we do which allows buyers online to move through a property as if they were actually there. It is more advanced than a 360 tour as it actually allows the viewer to feel as if they are walking around each room and view it from any angle. There is also a dollhouse view which allows the buyer to see the full layout of the house and rooms.
For properties where we want to highlight the land or lot we have an aerial tour done by a drone photography company that is then put to music and uploaded to the MLS and all websites. This is a great tool if a property has a lot of land, located on a lake or body of water or has a pool or outbuildings you want to feature.
Advertising on the MLS and all 3rd party websites:
You want to make sure when advertising on those sites your realtor has contracted with the internet site to display your listing in the best possible light. So you want your listing to be pulling up towards the top of the page when buyers are searching, you want to make sure all photos and virtual tours are featured on the website and you want to make sure that your realtor’s information is featured when a consumer clicks on your home. Most sellers think all of this is done automatically when a home is listed on the MLS but it is not. (We could go into the differences here of just putting your home on the MLS and making sure it is effectively marketed on all 3rd party sites, there is a big difference).
A lot of sellers and buyers don’t understand that if a realtor is not paying the website to advertise their properties that 3rd party website will feature another agents info as the contact for that property. So a buyer thinks their calling the listing realtor to look at the property when in fact they are just calling some other agent that is advertising with that website. You want to make sure the realtor you are working with will be the one receiving those calls and emails because they are the ones that are best going to sell your home and make sure that buyer gets in there in a timely fashion.
Social media advertising (Facebook, Linkedin, Instagram, Twitter, etc.):
Your realtor should have a strong social media following and be posting your listing information on those social media websites.
Marketing in the home:
The marketing does not stop with once the buyer has decided to look at the property. You also want to make sure you are marking the property to the buyer once they are in the home. This is done by providing professional color brochures, school and utility information and point of interest cards placed throughout the house highlighting all the features (can go more in depth on the point of interest cards talking about examples in the home that we would point out). You want to make sure the write ups on your brochures are professional and detailed.
Yard signs are important as buyers often see a home they like just by driving around a neighborhood or neighbors see that a home in their neighborhood was listed and tell friends and co-workers they know that are looking to move into the area. Our signs are solar lit so at night when its dark out our signs are illuminated so buyers can see the sign and the brochure box, phone number and website so they can get more info. This is especially important during these winter months when it gets dark so early.
Watch the entire Twin Cities Live segment below:
