One of the things I love about ActiveRain is seeing all the creative ways that real estate professionals market themselves and their clients's homes.
Marketing is in my blood... It always has been. I created and sold a board game, promoting my business nationwide, while just a teenager. Now, 25 (or so!) years later, I'm still at it; helping my clients learn the powerful strategies that make people want to buy from them, instead of the competition. That's why I cringe when I think of the traditional notions about real estate marketing. Putting a home on the MLS, a sign in the yard, flyers in the info box, and a small ad in the paper is not marketing... It is the price of admission. You get to be in the game when you do those things.
But the people winning the game in today's tough market, and getting their homes sold, are the ones that put the time and effort into developing new skills. New skills like blogging, using video, search engine optimization and more.
Last year, I sold my home in less than 3 weeks. I know some people sell homes quicker, but I'm pretty happy with my results. I never doubted for a moment that I would sell it in 3 weeks. The reason why is because I had a marketing strategy that created awareness for my home... and then engaged my prospects in a follow up campaign consisting of emails, blog posts, video messages and culminating in a huge event (like an open house). We packed the home with 35 prospects, received 2 offers and were able to negotiate a great price.
Done, sold, closed... all within a total of 6 weeks.
The formula is simple:
Create Awareness
Capture Contact Information
Build Rapport With Your Prospects
Ask For Feedback
These steps will help you find and address your prospects needs and position your home (or your clients' homes) as the one and only solution.
Being here on ActiveRain, already elevates you above yesterday's agents. Challenge yourself today to try something new and different (I know Bob Stewart is still waiting for that Flip Video interview with a school principal!)
I love the "sign stickers" of agents. I can compete with them all day long with my marketing campaign. The days of "sign stickers" is no more. It is all abou the marketing.
Steve - checked out your link on the "Flip Video" secrets, and was floored!!! Having your video in that camera was a hoot! Very creative and clean site you have there. I think I'll be checking out your Teleconference this week. Can you post the date, time, and phone number here in your comments somewhere? Other members might be interested in joining in on that call as well. Great job and congrats on the feature!
Great post and oh, so true....I will be checking out your blog and info on videos. Thanks so much for the useful and great info on marketing.... Terrie
"Steve Rosenbaum, a sales and marketing manager for a building materials company, had his home on the market for 90 days earlier this year, but says that he and his wife, Sherri, dropped their real-estate agent after the house didn’t sell – even after lowering the price from $184,900 to $169,900. They had purchased the three-bedroom, two-bathroom home, located in a small town in northern Texas, in 2002 for $185,000, and were looking to relocate to Austin. During the three months their house was listed, they only had four showings.
The auction drew 30 people, including two serious buyers, he says. The winning bid: $158,000 — a little less than what he would have gotten for his home had he sold it for $169,900 with a real-estate agent. But he didn’t have to pay a commission of 5% to 6%."
Hmmm, sold it FSBO for $27,000 less than you paid for it 6 years ago. Congratulations on saving that 6% commission.
You say you sold your house yourself for $158,000 at auction and bought it in 2002 for $185,000 and that is great marketing?
I sold my house in 19 days last June for 242% more than we paid for it in 1988 and sold it via the MLS to another Realtor (for full price) AND paid him a commission for buying it.
My secret was having it in tip tip condition, move in ready, and priced to sell at what the market was willing to pay.
I think if you sold yours for 158k then that's what the market was wiling to pay at the time.
Some of the comments have me confused. If you sold your home auction style, then I can see why you marketing strategy worked. This you did not disclose.
Fred, thanks for the post. Yes, we did take a financial hit on selling our home. What our unique brand of marketing did for us was to bring 30 interested parties into our house in the course of one weekend and that resulted in an offer that was fair market value for our home at the time of the sale. Because the market was so severly depressed and our personal time constraints, traditional real estate marketing methods were ineffective. We are not opposed to paying commission when the system works. Thanks again.
Yes we did sell our home for fair market value and we do believe our marketing efforts garnered a strong response.
90 days on MLS brought us 4 showings and no offers
21 days of Big Bad Home Sale Marketing brought us 30 showings, multiple offers and a sale.
By the way, we believe that these marketing strategies can be used by Realtors to help their clients. We successfully made our home stand out among several others that just weren't moving. Not all markets need this approach, but it is effective when used.
I was really curious when you said you took that kind of hit when you bought 5-6 years ago. And no doubt the auction fever is what played a role in this sale taking place. Congrats on the quick sale and building that kind of interest. The auction part was missing from your post, but makes more sense now that you've said that in the comments here.
I wonder if your house would have sold sooner with one of the agents you had it listed with if it had been priced there to start with?
Thanks for your question. We did use what can be referred to as a hybrid auction system as part of the marketing. It is not a system that demands cash before making a bid and therefore not a true auction. It is descrbed in our materials.
Although it is just one part of the marketing system that we used, it can be effective in gaining attention to the advertising. There is much more to our system than that and I invite you to check out the links and let me know if you have any more questions.
Bill Gillhespy, thank you for your comment. We, too, hope that the market is regaining some sense of normalcy! If you do figure out what normal is, will you please let us know?
Great post Steve. I definitely agree that there are some great new ways to market listings as opposed to (or in addition to) the old-fashioned ways. With technology evolving daily, there are so many avenues agents can run down for great marketing tools. Thanks for the post.
It is an interesting question and there is no real way to test it. We interviewed several Agents before listing and they all gave us the same CMA which was not totally reliable because the recent sales in our area were few and far between. We aggressively lowered the price and just didn't know how low would be too low, so we decided to let the market set the fair price with our system.
We believed the key to selling our home was to generate enough interest and get hordes of people through our door. When we had it listed on the MLS, we emphasized that we were very motivated and that we would consider all offers. Even then, we didn't get nearly enough traffic.
The pricing didn't seem to be the issue, rather that this was one home among many that had no way of standing out until we did some unique marketing. In short, we emphasized selling the lifestyle our living in our home would provide.
I appreciate your feedback and welcome your questions. Thank you!
Real Estate today is totally different than what it was 20 years ago. You have to continue to re-invent yourself in a business that is very competitive and is very demanding. That's why I am always here on Active Rain. I am always learning from the best of the best this business has to offer here. Great post.
Steve and Sherri, well I signed up to hear all about it. I don't have the phone. However, while visiting a site that sells the phone there are several to chose from. Wondered if anyone has a recommendation on which phone (specs).
Gena and Vickie: Oops! I'm actually referring to a very handy camcorder called a "Flip Video Utra Camcorder". It does a lot of things, but unfortunately, it isn't a phone. I bet the photo I used threw you both off. Sorry. Do join us this Thursday night for a free teleseminar that will teach you some great ways to use the Flip Video camera to grow your business.
You'll get no argument here, Michael. Price is a key factor. Would you agree that good marketing can improve the value of a product? The iPhone is a good example.
I gave you my email address for info on the flip video...I have no idea what to expect. What I do know is that innovative marketing in the name of the game with listing properties, so looking forward to seeing how this can help me.
Three weeks on the market how long did it take to get the property ready and how long have you been working on the marketing program that you use on your properties. The process is much easier if you have a plan in place congratulations.
I've been working on the marketing program for about 9 years! I am an internet marketer, I just decided to apply the same process I use to selling my home. The basic bullet points in the post are an overview of the process. Our book, details it much more and makes it pretty easy. If you can master ActiveRain, you can master our process. I'm getting ready to upload a lot of my content to help real estate professionals better market themselves and their clients homes. So mark our blog as a favorite and keep an eye on us. Let us know if we can help you in any way. Thanks for the great question.
That's great advice about thinking outside the box. I like how you compare MLS and basic marketing to the price of admission. I love reading other people's ideas. I love to share as well, so thanks!
I got several emails today asking me about videoing yourself for your blog. I made this quick "how to" to show you some ideas. This is the type of information you'll get Thursday night on our free teleseminar Flip Video Secrets, 9PM EST, 8PM CST, 6PM PST. Get call in information at http://FlipVideoSecrets.com/today.
It's amazing, but true, that someone here tonight commented that we didn't have time to blog...we have a primary business to run. E-X-C-U-S-E me, but leads come from all that blogging we do!
Vickie, Blogging is important for so many reasons. You are absolutely right about getting leads through blogs. You also bond and build rapport. Not to mention the SEO advantages. Good blogging can get you high Google rankings, VERY QUICKLY. Here is a picture of #1 Google ranking (click to enlarge) I got 5 minutes after posting to my blog. I get these results all the time. Stay tuned... I'll be showing you how soon.
Vickie! Here it is again... I posted to my ActiveRain blog just a few minutes ago with my domain keyword "Flip Video Secrets" in the headline. Google picked it up #1 in just 12 minutes (click to enlarge)! Not only am I number 1, but I am also numbers 2 and 3! 3 top rankings in 12 minutes!
This proves your point why blogging is so important and how it can help improve your SEO and cut down your pay per click advertising costs. This all happened tonight within the past 1 hour! I think I'm going to have to do some courses on this!
Great job on selling your home alone. Hopefully everything remains well. What I mean is, You can drive without insurance but you don't (or you should'nt). Just think of all the money you could save for premiums. Yes... even more than GEICO! But nobody thinks that way, why? because the consequences far out-way the savings. Nobody says you need a REALTOR to sell your home anymore than you need a Dentist to pull your tooth. I prefer a Dentist. When it comes time to sell my home it will be with a REALTOR because I would not be insured if I were to sell on my own. There are too many things that can go wrong.
Steve and Sherri - good job on marketing the home. I think a comment made above said a lot... You marketed the home for a lifestyle. In southern AZ. it's all about lifestyle. I believe that "BBQs with friends on the patio beneath a moon light sky" is much better marketing than "4 burner BBQ with built in bar and refrigerator". The difference between emotions and an itemized list of features can make a big difference in pulling in prospects. I have your blog marked and I definitely will be returning.Brian
Tom, thanks for your comment. It may be easy to believe from what you have read that we were happy to do this without the help of a Realtor. The truth is that we asked our Listing Agent to do some marketing just like this on our behalf and he didn't understand the concept nor did he have the internet marketing skills.
After our contract was up with him and we did this process on our own, we invited yet another Realtor to work the sale with us and offered her a percentage to help us with the paperwork. She did stop by and she did enjoy the sale, but she didn't follow through on helping out with the paperwork.
We have sold homes with the help of Agents before and we have both held Real Estate Licenses. We do advocate the partnering of Realtors with homeowners when the partership can be beneficial for both parties.
Your point about employing Professionals is a good one. We hope that by sharing our ideas and experiences, we can help bring a different perspective to Realtors' marketing efforts for their clients.
Thanks again! We do appreciate you taking the time to comment.
Thanks Christy for the compliment. My brother and I created baseball trivia games that could be played along with Trivial Pursuit. Tell us what you did and what marketing lessons you learned that you now apply to your business?
LOL Ralph! I wish I had the answer to the poor market that's plaguing the entire country and dominating the news every night. Then I would really have a product!
Steve - I'll try to make it to the teleseminar tonight, but have a few other projects that might get in the way. I know you'll probably do some others, so if I do miss it, maybe I can catch another one later. Trying to wrap up a recording in the studio, and evenings are the only time we have "to git er done!!" :-) Thanks!!
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Disclaimer: ActiveRain Corp. does not necessarily endorse the real estate agents, loan officers and brokers listed on this site. These real estate profiles, blogs and blog entries are provided here as a courtesy to our visitors to help them make an informed decision when buying or selling a house. ActiveRain Corp. takes no responsibility for the content in these profiles, that are written by the members of this community.
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