The majority of FSBO properties fail to sell because of ineffective real estate marketing strategies implemented by the seller. The main detriment to being an unrepresented seller is that the marketing responsibilities fall into your court; and frankly, if your home doesn’t sell there is no one to blame but yourself. Traditional methods of real estate marketing are expensive, have a low response rate and generally do not lead to a sale. Why, you ask? The answer is simple: Traditional methods of real estate marketing don’t target a specific demographic.
Anyone can place an ad in a newspaper, anyone can buy radio time and anyone can place a flyer in front of the post office. But, guess what? Anyone can turn to the next page in the newspaper to avoid your annoying real estate ad, anyone can tune in to a different radio station in order to avoid your annoying real estate ad, and anyone can ignore your flyer when walking into the post office to pick up their package. Notice a pattern here? These people are annoyed by your ad; it’s an inconvenience.
Let’s Talk Demographics
You need to start marketing your property to people who actually are interested in what you have to share. Real estate marketing, and all marketing for that matter, come down to one thing: targeting the right demographic and presenting them with an opportunity that they can’t refuse. Make your home the opportunity they can’t refuse. This may sound simple, but it’s not. Narrowing down your target demographic is going to be the hard part. So, let’s get to work.
What’s Your Unique Selling Proposition?
In order to cater to your target demographic, you need to know figure out your home’s unique selling proposition. What do you have to offer that is different from all of the other houses on your street? What do you have to offer that will be beneficial to a select group of home buyers? Does your home have ample square footage and a generous amount of spacious bedrooms? If so, you can market your property as a potential bed and breakfast. Market your home to retired couples who may be looking for a little excitement and profit in life. Does your home host a professional grade kitchen that has been approved by the state for commercial use? If so, you can market your property as home-based bakery business ready. Market your home to stay at home moms who may be looking to bring in some extra income. Both of these are unique selling propositions. And most homes have them. If you feel that your home doesn’t have a built in unique selling proposition, create one. Creating a USP can be as simple as mirroring the walls of an entire room and adding a ballet bar. It’s truly as simple as that, now you’re unique selling proposition is an in-home ballet studio.
Let’s Get Down to Business
So, you’ve got a unique selling proposition, now what? The next step is to purchase direct mail leads to a list building provider. You can purchase direct mail leads from Experian.com. Experian allows you to narrow down your local direct mail leads by specialty, life style, occupation, consumerism and business, so you can create a pretty targeted direct mail lead list for your real estate marketing campaign. Expect to pay anywhere from $1.50 to $3.75 for a single lead.
You’ve figured out your unique selling proposition and have purchased a local direct mail lead list, are you done yet? No, now it’s time to create the marketing collateral. In this real estate marketing campaign, your marketing collateral will be postcards. Take high quality pictures of the front of your home, the backyard, the unique selling proposition and the kitchen. After you have taken a batch of photos that you are happy with, you need to create your property description. Click here, for a step by step guide to writing compelling property descriptions.
Once you’ve created the property description you need to hire a graphic designer to create your marketing collateral. You can find an experienced graphic designer for a reasonable price on Elance.com. When you have chosen a designer you would like to hire, send him your property description and photos and let him get to work. The designer should be done with your postcards within a four weeks and deliver your postcards via snail-mail within six weeks of the project’s start date. The next step is the easiest and most rewarding step of the process. Place a stamp on each postcard and address them to each recipient. Now, all you’ve got to do is walk over to the post office, mail your postcards and wait for the inquiries to start rolling in. Isn’t real estate marketing fun?!
Jazmin Espinal is a professional freelance writer and the owner of Capital Web Writing, a web content solution for businesses and webmasters. To contact Jazmin or to see samples of her writing, please visit CapitalWebWriting.com.
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Your points are well taken. A USP is mandatory nowadays but is only a small part of a comprehensive marketing strategy. To help, we have published a free 7 Step Action Plan for Realtors at http://www.bizmeds.biz/. I hope it proves interesting.