Property Marketing Plan Needs Updating- Dear Ginny WTH

Dear Ginny WTH,

I’m going into a listing presentation next week and want to wow my potential sellers with my marketing plan to expose their property. My usual plan includes placing the property in the MLS, on my broker’s site, on my web site, a personal property URL, property flyers, a just listed postcard, email to buyer’s agents, emails to past clients and weekend open houses. This seems to be a pretty standard list. Do you have any suggestions that could make my plan stand out a bit more than others? Real Estate Agent Seeking Wow

Dear Wow Seeker,

You’re right; you’ve got a standard list that might not look any different than other agents going in before or after you. Two causes to consider: first is the plan itself and second is how you present and package the plan. Let’s start with the content of your marketing plan. It’s a good bullet list but you are missing a few items. You should add is a social networking aspect. If you are on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter, you can make several posts to your network, friends and followers about the property, i.e. just listed and open house announcements. How about featuring the property on your web site? If you have the ability to highlight the property for some period of time on your home page, that’s a plus. You’re missing online advertising as well. Why not Craig’s List and other syndication? You can easily syndicate your own listing through companies like ListingstoLeads.com and others. I’ll bet not that many of your real estate competitors do that. Another component you could add is something like Trulia Voices which allows you to speak to consumers and other agents. I could go on, but you need to keep it simple and targeted so it makes sense to your seller. How you package and present the plan can definitely make you stand out amongst the crowd as well. Do you simply list the items in a bulleted fashion on the page or do you depict in some visual or graphic format samples of previous property marketing you’ve done? I assume you are using a professional listing presentation (a must!), so you need to work your marketing plan into the total of the presentation. Of course I suggest you have both a printed and power point listing presentation that you choose between depending on the client. But even if you use a power point presentation, you need to leave something behind, so getting your print presentation nailed is the first order. I would suggest either hard copy samples of each of the printed pieces, like your property flyers, just listed and open house cards, or some thumbnail layout of each piece on a four-color page in your presentation folder. It’s good to carry hard copy samples so you can show the quality of your materials. For the online marketing it’s a little harder to show in print format, but I do suggest you attempt to have something in your printed presentation that depicts your online marketing. For example, you can show a sample just listed email considering you are using a formatted template (another must!). You can also show the home pages of your social networking sites and cite how many people are in each of those networks, for a grand total number of impressions. You can also screen grab the home page of your personal web site and your broker’s site. I suggest you pay a graphic designer to lay out the plan in a visual format for you (that fits with your current presentation) and plan to update it quarterly. In the long run it will pay off to have it done professionally and make you stand out from the crowd.