First, let's cut out the BS you're being sold. Every agent has a website and every listing syndicates with hundreds, if not thousands of other real estate marketing websites and search engines. It is highly unlikely that any buyer is searching for your home's address or your home's street so SEO, though a part of my marketing as well, isn't going to make a huge difference. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. You might find that needle in the haystack. But don't be fooled that hyped up SEO, wide syndication, and a brokerage's name recognition is going to sell your home for top dollar.
The fact is, hyping up this SEO and site traffic is really ignoring the reality of the Internet and any single website’s visibility; unless you’re Yahoo or Google. There is no single real estate website that’s likely to enjoy more than a single-digit percentage of searches performed by buyers looking for local properties. That’s because there are hundreds or thousands of real estate sites and they’re all fighting for searchers, but these searchers are also using a half dozen search engines or other resources to locate real estate in our area.
I'm telling you this because so many homeowners buy into this stuff and end up on the Expired Listing or Cancelled list and you're home is no closer to being sold than when you started but you're more frustrated, disappointed, and you're less trusting of my profession.
So what do I do differently? How do I sell homes and why do I get my homeowners more money in a shorter time than anyone else?
First, let me be brutally honest. This isn't part of marketing though it's a huge part of getting an offer. Your home must be realistically priced. Sellers do not choose the price they get. They can choose a price to sell but getting an offer is another story. Your home must be priced according to the market and it's only worth what a buyer is willing to pay. The right agent with the right strategy can get you closer to the top of the market, but you can't get a lot more than that.
Okay. So next is the marketing strategy.
I take a full and expert suite of professional quality images of your home. These images will showcase your property and are critical to Internet marketing. Surveys prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that buyers value high-quality images more than any other feature of real estate listings.
Virtual tours when appropriate are created for your property. Some properties are better marketed with still photographs, others with a slide show of stills, and some with a video and voice–over. I’ll work with you to produce the very best marketing approach for your property.
Thorough professionally written text descriptions and very thorough information fields to bring every facet of your property to the prospective buyer while telling a story to drive an emotional appeal to your home.
I bundle all of this in your very own single property website that all of my marketing efforts on Google ads, Facebook ads, Instagram ads, and more, go to pushing buyers to us and away from the search engines like Zillow, Redfin, Trulia, and such. Once they land on my site, they will be prompted to give up a piece of information - email, phone, social media account - and I am then able to contact them directly. You see, I don't sit around waiting for other agents to sell my properties or wait for buyers to stumble along to us on some other website, I go hunting for them.
Once a buyer gets to my site from these many conduits, I don’t just let them look and leave. I offer showings and other special information about the market and your property in exchange for their contact information. If I can get into direct contact with them, it’s going to increase my chances of selling your property to them.
In addition to the single property website, I will take the photos and video and push it through traditional marketing means like postcards, flyers, open houses, and more. My Open House strategy is worth reading about here.
I also do what's called Active Marketing, which you can read about here.
Before you leave, however, I want it to be clear that I don't use tired methods to sell your home. I research your area, find out where the buyers are coming from and then I go there online and in-person and find the one that is willing to pay more money than anyone else. I also make sure that I put all of the other 6,000 plus agents in Knoxville with buyers to work by making sure their clients see your home.
Real Estate is a numbers game and in order to get the most money possible for your home, we got to get more eyes on your home's great photos, catch them with the description and video, and then get them to your house to fall in love and make offers.