What??!!! Don’t advertise my beautiful new listing, what are you, nuts?

The questions are: what are you advertising, what is the goal of your advertising and how productive is your advertising. Let’s take a look at the existing, traditional logic behind why we advertise a listing the way we do.

• Clients expect it, we do it for them. They have a misunderstanding that placing ads in newspapers or online with a long list of features will help to sell their house. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, advertising their house in the traditional way may delay the sale and it is definitely costing you, the real estate agent, tens of thousands of dollars a year in lost income and wasted advertising dollars.
• Most real estate agents have the same misunderstanding. Why? Because that’s the way it’s always been taught and the client is conditioned to expect a nice ad with their house proudly displayed.

But think back to the times you went through the want ads looking for a house. You either X’d out what you weren’t interested in or you circled what might work. In effect what you were doing was eliminating properties that you thought wouldn't work for you. The perfect house might be there, but you eliminated it from the list to see because the agent gave you too many details, so you could jump to a conclusion without seeing it.

Now some will say – if I give enough details, highly qualified prospects will show up. You see, that’s the rub, a highly qualified prospect did show up wanting a 3 bedroom, 2 ½ bath, with a family room, new dishwasher, water softener (maybe, I ‘m not sure a water softener ever made the deal), 1850 sq. ft., with marble entry, and…and… and… maybe they bought it and maybe the kitchen just didn’t work for them so they passed. And what did you do at that open house, you tried to see if you could help them find a home that did match their needs. But you just lost the opportunity to talk to 10, 20 , or 30 times that many people that are out there looking for a house to buy.

Consider this ad – Spacious family home- open floor plan - large yard w/trees. Cozy fireplace Quiet streets, great neighborhood, convenient to schools and shopping.

Now what couple with a family looking for a home can afford to pass up that ad without calling to find out more information? When they call you, you can give them the details and if they don’t match their criteria, you can say… Hey, let me run that criteria through the MLS for you and get you a list of properties that exactly match your criteria. By the way, are you working with a Realtor®…

Overloading the ad with details can actually overwhelm and confuse people because they are looking at so many ads their brain is succumbing to information overload. And the more details, the more opportunity for more and more prospective clients to reject that one specific property, while you have many more you could talk to them about. To attract more interest, ads need to be written in such a way that they create an image in the client’s mind and tug on some emotional strings.

As you can see, you are advertising. In fact you’re almost advertising that exact house you have listed, but more to the point you’re advertising for serious buyers to pick up the phone and call you. Believe it or not, this will work better for your clients and your bank account because you will be working with more buyers than you ever have.

You go super agent!

Follow up post