Real estate agents should learn the difference between listing a home and marketing one, as there truly is a difference. If you're just listing a home or property for the purpose of selling, you're actually putting the "cart before the horse". Marketing the listing should be the first step.
When realtors learn how to market their listings, they find that selling the home becomes easier and more profitable. One of the great marketing strategies that can be applied to real estate listings is enhancement. Adding a photo series of the home or property is an enhancement. So is a virtual tour.
Buyers get much more of a feeling for the listing if they can actually see it. Yet so many realtors don't add multiple photos or virtual tours to their home listings, especially those found on the internet.
Why is this considered marketing and not listing? Well, to tell the truth, it's both. But the marketing aspect of enhancing listings has wide spread ramifications for the realtor and this shows with a return on investment (ROI). We're in a times when many home sellers are questioning the value of realtors, while looking closely at FSBO.
Realtor.com states that most agents won't spend $50 for a virtual tour or provide a series of multiple photos to enhance their listings to sell a $300,000-500,000 dollar home. It's no wonder that sellers question the need for paying a realtor commissions when they appear too lazy and cheap to properly sell their property.
If you're enhancing your listings, your clients will see that you are doing a fine job for them and will surely tell others of your outstanding efforts through word-of-mouth. That's the marketing aspect of enhancement.
Another marketing aspect that you should be taking advantage of is the use of the benefits of the home in the listing. Too many realtors simply list the features of the home and ignore the benefits. It's benefits that have been shown to sell.
In this aspect, you should come to "Know Thy Customer". Put yourself in the mindset of the buyer. Imagine what the home will mean to that buyer in terms of benefits like close to good schools, work, shopping. Maybe it's the seclusion and quiet that the home has to offer.
Too many realtors rely on the features, how many bedrooms, baths, the size of the living room, or garage. The neglect to get the buyer enthused with the benefits that hit home through the emotions, wants, and desires.
Don't feel that when you list a home, your job is finished. Listing a home or property in the MLS is not the same as marketing that home to prospective buyers. If you fail to enhance the listing properly, you will most likely come across to buyers as lazy or uncaring. The potential buyers aren't going do understand why your listing doesn't have the information they're looking for, like more than one photo.
Your seller will become upset and enraged to know that their home is not being marketed properly and that the public is seeing your "shoddy" job as their home representation. Word does get around about the look and feel of your listings and neither buyers or sellers will be impressed by you as an agent. You don't want to market a home that poorly as you will suffer in the long run.
Yet, when I review listings that I come across on the internet or locally in homes magazines, I'm still seeing about 25 percent without even one photo. Statistics show that there is a 550 percent increase in page views on the internet for listings with multiple photos over those with no photos.
The lesson to be learned is that enhancements to listings (multiple photos, selling benefits, or virtual tours) has a return on investment (ROI) for you as a realtor. And, the marketing value is that the word will get around that you do a better job of selling homes, thus increasing your client base.
The biggest threat that real estate agents face is diminishing their value to sellers. Sellers feel fees and commissions are being pressured by the agent without results. In an atmosphere like this, you should feel it is your responsibility to home sellers to provide them with an important listing tool that satisfies your client and is a marketing tool for yourself.
