Selling a home is a numbers game – more potential buyers through your door means we find the right buyer sooner, resulting in a quicker sale and usually a higher price. But how to do that? Many realtors are still using pre-internet age techniques that simply don’t work anymore. 97% of buyers today shop online and over 80% don’t look anywhere else. This means that a successful marketing strategy focuses on leveraging online marketing tactics along with home presentation techniques to bring more buyers through your door.
Selling Your Home with The ZOOM Marketing System
Step 1) Home Staging. Most of us keep a neat, clean home (or at least as much as possible given the demands on our time such as work and family). However, we don’t look at our homes through the eyes of a potential buyer. As the first step of the ZOOM Marketing System I’ll provide a professional home stager at my expense who will spend several hours with you at your home helping you find ways to present your home in the best possible light.
Step 2) Professional Photography. There’s nothing as important in your listing as the photographs of your home. The photographs are what will grab the attention of buyers and convince them that it’s worth their time to read your listing. I provide professional photography to my clients – wide angle shots taken with natural light using long exposures that create a much warmer feel to the final product. Photos will be taken after the home staging is done.
Step 3) Online Presence. Because the vast majority of buyers shop online your home needs a dominant online presence. It has to compete with thousands of other listings for the attention of a limited number of buyers. While the MLS does provide a very accessible means for buyers to find your home, there are other tools that can substantially increase traffic to your listing. Obviously your home will appear on realtor.ca (formerly mls.ca) but I also place it on Craigslist and Kijiji to drive even more traffic.
Step 4) Online Curb Appeal. In the old days before the internet it was understood that curb appeal was crucial to selling a home. Why? Because people shopped for a home by driving around looking for ‘For Sale’ signs. When they found a home that was appealing ‘from the curb’ they would call their realtor to see the inside. Today we need ‘online curb appeal’. Your home needs to stand out from the crowd, but how do you do that when your realtor.ca (mls.ca) listing has exactly the same format as thousands of other homes?
I create a custom listing for you on my website where I have room for unlimited description and unlimited photos. This allows me to really ‘sell’ your home because I have far more assets to work with than the realtor.ca listing allows. By linking to your home’s listing on my site from realtor.ca, Craigslist and Kijiji I drive virtual traffic, then capture that traffic with online curb appeal.
Step 5) Feedback. Without feedback we don’t know what buyers are saying about your home. I follow up with realtors who have shown your home to find out what their buyers had to say. This feedback is crucial to getting your home sold and allows us to adjust our strategy where necessary to effect a sale. I also keep a record of these showing realtors so if we do make a change to your listing I can call them back to make sure their buyers are a made aware of the change.
Step 6) Convenience. OK. This isn’t really a step but it will make your life easier! Showings are typically booked in a one hour window, but what if the showing is done in 15 minutes? You spent over an hour away from your home when you didn’t need to be. What if there was a way to know when the showing is done? There is. It’s called a ‘Showing Beacon’ and with a press of a button the showing realtor can notify you by text message that they are done and leaving so you can return home immediately.
This is the ZOOM Marketing System and it works! It’s designed for the internet age and it can in many cases result in substantially more traffic to your home. In one case I listed a property for a client that had been listed with another realtor for four months. She’d had a showing every seven to ten days on average. I relisted the home at exactly the same price just four days later. Using the ZOOM Marketing System she had a showing per day. Her home sold in just a few weeks, even though there were serious issues that had to be disclosed to the buyer.
