Quite often, I hear from clients who have interviewed multiple agents that the marketing presented was all very similar. I always scratch my head on this, because in most instances, that’s not the case. So I invite clients to really drill down the various marketing plans and when we do that, we find that all the marketing plans were actually not the same. With that said, here are some things to ask and to look out for when grading marketing strategies of Realtors.
1) Often you will hear from Realtors that they can and have email marketing campaigns to Realtors.
Questions to ask: A. How many Realtors can they email at once? Can they send to all 1 million Realtors in the US? We can. B. How effective are their email campaigns? For instance, what are their open rates and click through rates. The industry average is 2-3%, we are averaging 6-8%. What are they doing to ensure that their email blasts don’t go directly to a Realtor’s junk mail or spam filter? We are building our email campaigns with new HTML5 code, staying away from JPEG images or PDF’s and limiting links or images that traditionally are filtered by most ISPs.
2) Not many Realtors are engaged in aggressive PPC campaigns.
Questions to ask: A. Do you do PPC campaigns? If so, how long have you been running them? We have been engaged in them for over two years. Where do you target your PPC campaigns? We use Facebook, Google AdWords, and Bing. B. How effective are their PPC campaigns? How are they measuring them? We have aggressive analytics on every page to track each PPC campaign. We know where they came from, what page they entered, what page they exited, how much time they spent on the page and from there, we built the page for lead capture. C. What PPC ads have they tested and which ones are the most effective? Do they believe that text ads are best? Or a combination of text and pictures? Or text, pictures, and video? Do they place those ads in the sidebar advertising, or do they place in the newsfeed, or do they just boost a post for a few dollars? D. How do they measure or select the demographic targeting?
3) International marketing. I recently saw a seminar on Luxury real estate and in the presentation, they had a stat that said 80% of all multi-million dollar homes were purchased by someone living within a 5-mile radius of the home. Moreover, our experience shows 92% of those multi-million dollar homes were purchased by someone within the same state. Take our sale in Coronado, CA. The house was priced at 16 million and closed for 13.3m. I think I told you that the buyer was from Denver, but his second home was on Coronado Island. He actually lived a few blocks over from the house. In this case, we spent 14 months marketing to local, national, and international buyers and all along the buyer was 3 blocks away. When it comes to International marketing, this is the one area where all the Realtors and Brokerage Firms ARE THE SAME. We all use a system called Proxio Pro. It’s the international MLS and it syndicates your property to about 300 plus international websites. In addition, Keller Williams International employs a luxury website and drives international buyers to that site. Outside of these two avenues, there are really no good additional international marketing techniques. When a Realtor says, “We have exceptional international marketing,” ask them for specifics. Is it more than just listing syndication? If so, what are some examples? Are they placing print ads in Italian Magazines? That would not be cost effective. Are they sending emails to International buyers? If so, who is doing their messaging, how are they getting their lists, and how are they getting past international ISP spam filters? All good questions to ask.
4) Are the Realtors employing any out-of-the-box ideas? A. Do they have a team of bloggers writing about the property and spreading it across social networks? We do. B. Do, or have they in the past utilized a PR firm and developed good press stories/media attention? We have. C. Have they done specific events to the Realtor community or to reach out to consumers/potential buyers? We have.
These are all good questions that differentiate REALLY good marketing from just so-so marketing. In the end, the really good marketing does not look like all the other plans.
More than 95% of all buyers today including luxury buyers and international buyers are finding their homes on the Internet. While this plan seems overly dependent on the Internet, that’s what it takes to sell homes in today’s market. The recipe is as follows: 1) People need to find the home easily online. 2) They need to think it’s appropriately priced. 3) They need to see something they like (i.e. photos, video tour or 3D tour) in order for them to pick up the phone and schedule a showing. Great marketing can create showings, great homes sell themselves!
If you would like to speak with us and see what makes our real estate marketing better and different please don’t hesitate to contact us at team@thehawaiiteam.com or 808-913-0899.
Dan Polimino is a Broker/Owner with The Hawaii Team, Keller Williams Realty Maui. Contact The Hawaii Team at 808-913-0899, team@thehawaiiteam.com.
