Old Rule: The Internet will disintermediate real estate professionals. New Rule: The Internet makes personal service even more priceless.
It's long been a widely accepted principle that real estate professionals prefer listing properties over working with buyers. After all, the potential profit is greater with listings, because they are more easily managed and require less personal attention. Yet, curiously, many agents market online almost exclusively for buyers.
Fortunately, the online opportunity is already in place to accelerate a shift in the balance between marketing to buyers and marketing to sellers. Agents who have cut their teeth on the Internet by marketing mainly to buyers have only a bit of rethinking and website tweaking to do. Here are a dozen actions you can take to boost your listings online:
- First, market to home sellers as if they were buyers. Since most sellers approach the internet first as interested buyers, ask on every response form if the buyer prospect has a home to sell. Include features in your website designed to capture seller prospects. Offer free, no-obligation trade-up "coordination" services that appeal to the double commission sell-to-buy prospect.
- Grab sellers early and don't let go. Once you have the seller's contact information, follow up fast with drip e-mail responders. According to NAR's October 2004 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, 73 percent of prospective home sellers list with the first agent they contact. So make it your #1 marketing mission to be that first contact.
- Ask for the listing. Entitle your response forms with a straightforward phrase such as "For Sellers," "I want to Sell My Home!" or "What can I get for my home?" Don't be shy. Appeal directly to home sellers on your top level navigation.
- Determine a timetable for your follow-up campaign. Include a simple qualifying question on your website response forms by providing two check-off boxes: "Planning to move in less than six months?" and "Planning to move in more than six months?" Offer different information kits to each self-qualified group.
- Cultivate prospects with drip-marketing follow-up. Use automated e-mail responses, based on the seller's timeline for moving. Send more e-mails more often for prospects that plan to move soon. Include response links in every e-mail.
- Drive prospective sellers back to your site again and again. Give prospective sellers the keys to the mansion with easy access to your rich content library filled with accurate, up-to-date information, buyer and seller tips, calculators, and forms to request related services.
- Make it easy for sellers to request a competitive market analysis, which you can deliver by e-mail, postal mail, or in person. Refer to your personal visit as a prelisting home inspection or marketability evaluation visit. Offer a quick "over the Internet price opinion" alternative by e-mail where the prospect doesn't have to speak to an agent.
- Continue to market to sellers by phone and mail as well as online. Feature continuous direct response offers designed to demonstrate your knowledge and skills and convert e-leads to live appointments. Often making "buyer" offers to prospective sellers (latest listing updates, relocation information, schedule a showing, etc.) will alert you when a long-term prospect is ready to list.
- Promote your promise to provide an all-out marketing campaign for each listed property. Set up a unique website address for each listed home; feature virtual tours plus multiple photos. Highlight their home on e-cards, e-brochures and printed flyers as well as on multiple websites. Establish an e-mail first alert network of company colleagues and area co-brokers who have active buyers for new listings.
- Invite nosy neighbors in. Include a response form in your website that neighbors can use to find out what a house down the street sold for. Feature this free service in your neighborhood direct-mail farming newsletters and "Just Sold" postcards. Archive sold information on your website to bring homeowners back to your site for "Market Updates."
- Create a plan to pull in FSBOs. Offering genuine assistance to do-it-yourselfers is the most effective rapport-building technique. Have an automated system that lasts a minimum of five weeks. A minimum of 10 contacts per prospect is recommended, including five e-mails with helpful advice on pricing, marketability, and property promotion. You can also send market updates, your guarantees, your commission rate, and a complete run-down of your listing services. Ask for the FSBO's "extra buyer" referrals in exchange.
- Convert expireds to listings. Establish a web form on your site specifically for expireds and prominently label the navigation button with an apt title such as "House Didn't Sell?" Offer to provide a report that explains "How to Sell a Home That Didn't Sell" and a free room-by-room "Marketability Analysis" if they want to re-enter the market.
;)
;)
