We have posted an article on pricing, one on proper presentation, and now we will share some information about marketing.
Marketing, is the promotion of the product, your home. It involves advertising, but ads are a very small part of the process. In selling your own home the best place to start is having a nice looking professionally made yard sign. Remember that you have just gone to great lengths to make the outside of your property look inviting. It does not make sense to mess up the yards appearance with a cheap looking sign. The sign should have a contact phone number on it. Since you want people to be able to reach you, it is probably best to provide your cell phone as the number. It is also a good idea to say “Agents welcome” on the sign. You would not want to lose a qualified prospect because they are already working with a real estate agent. Qualified prospects are not easy to come by, and most agents will work with you to arrive at a mutually agreeable fee for their services.
Next you need to put together a description of the best features of your home with a flattering photo. Give enough information to get the interest of the people, but do not tell them too much. These flyers that you are creating can be placed inside a weatherproof box that attaches to the sign in the yard. Potential buyers can then pick them up and learn more about the house. In putting together your flyer, sit down and think about the reasons you like your house. What made you think it would be a good place to live? What are some of the special features that you have enjoyed? Does your house have extras to make folks more comfortable? Have you replaced any appliances recently? Have you replaced the roof? Write all these things down. Measure the rooms and include the approximate sizes. We stress the word approximate. You do not want to be too specific, because believe it or not there have been cases where people have purchased a home, moved in, measured it and found that the room sizes were wrong. We live in a world where people have been known to sue over discrepancies. Even when the rooms ended up being larger than represented, people have actually lost such law suits. Just remember the word “approximate” and use it whenever you are representing anything!
Once you put your home on the market, spend some time thinking about what sort of person is going to want your home. Where does that person work? How can you reach them to let them know about the availability of your home? This exercise is one of the things that will help you decide where to spend your advertising dollars.
When you design your ad, use your location. Let people know where you are. Rosehill? Tomball? Cypress? Magnolia? The1960 area? Spring? Think again about what people want, and where your home is. What special features does the area offer? Peace and tranquility plus towering trees appeal to some, and urban concrete and modern will little upkeep appeal to others. Where does your home fall in these regards? Design a line that will grab peoples’ attention. Things like “New garbage disposal” will not impact desire to call, but tree shaded, privacy fenced yards very well may appeal to the masses. Ads do not sell homes. Statistically only about one caller in eleven will actually come to see the property they called on. A sign in the yard, an ad in the paper and a prayer that the property will sell has been a frequently used marketing method to sell properties in days past. Today there are far more compelling methods to conquering the sale. There is incredible competition for every product out there. Based upon the advances made in the technology in the past ten years, it appears that more marketing choices will be available in the market of tomorrow. For today, be sure to utilize things like the internet, Facebook and email.
Be sure that you have given the information about your property to all your neighbors. Chances are that they may have a friend or relative who would love to live in the neighborhood. Every one around you will want to know about your home anyway. What you ultimately sell for has a direct impact upon the value of their house too. Getting the word out about the availability of your property is important. As you can see there are a myriad of creative ways to do it, spending as little money as you can. Saving money was the reason for selling the property yourself in the first place, wasn’t it?
As soon as calls are coming in, you will need a way to see which callers are actually able to buy your home, and who you should show your home to. The process for this is called “qualifying the prospect.” The next blog will go into that in detail.