My goal is to hold at least one house open every week. I try and hold my listing open on Sunday from 1 p.m. - 4 p.m. Holding my listing open at least once a week requires me to repost the fact that I'm having an Open House on several different websites. The increase in my website stats shows me my marketing efforts may be working.
Advertising Open Houses has given me the most bang for my buck. The Open House listing I try and remember to post it to all the different portals. The websites I use most frequently to announce my Open Houses are the MLS, point2agent, Craigslist, backpages, FACEBOOK, Twitter.
When posting I try and optimize the ROI by including a website address when allowed. I can see by my personal website stats someone is finding my listings. When prospective buyers come to my Open House they normally let me know they already have a flyer for the listing.
I send an email to request the property be advertised on OpenHouse.com which consequently gets it posted to other top real estate portals as well.
Some of the marketing techniques I use to add more bang to my marketing efforts are on FACEBOOK I recently found out publishing a map helps people locate the property. One of the to-do's I've added is to include a link to a map with the property information as much as possible in the future. I got the idea from a blog post on activerain where some agents post maps on Localism.com.
I've found so many inexpensive ways to advertise via the Open House edge.
Admittedly, the most successful Open House technique has been to include a website url when advertising in the local newspaper. Of course I cannot determine whether it is from consumers reading the print version or the online version of the newspaper, but I see a drastic increase in hits when I include a website url with my Open House advertisement in the paper. A few years ago I was reading all the Open House ads in the paper and noticed no one on the day I read the paper was including a website address with their add. I received so many inquiries when the next week I placed an ad and included a website address. It was like night and day as far as exposure.
The main reason why I continue to hold open houses is because as far as business when I've seen the domino affect, one transaction falling into place right after another it has been from the business I have generated from Open Houses. They have definitely worked for me in the past.
Open houses gives me the opportunity to mix my online marketing efforts with my meet and greet efforts from when prospective buyers come through. I've been fortunate at times when the prospect coming through has been someone wanting to list their home for sale and purchase another home.
Open Houses are just that open. It gives me the chance to receive feedback from prospects and inform my seller of what type of comments we are receiving on the property. It gave us an idea recently to stage the smallest room in the house because one of comments we were hearing repeatedly was over concern the smallest bedroom was too small to set up as a bedroom. We staged the room to show a full-sized bed could fit comfortably in the room. Not once since have I heard the comment about the room being too small. Now I get all the rooms are nice-sized. What a difference an Open House makes.
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