The benefits of targeted marketing
By Debbie Yost, CRS
In business and life, it is important to have guiding principles. One of my favorites: “Success comes to those who get in front of the inevitable.” This is particularly important as technology has become such a force in real estate. It shines a light on my belief that each REALTOR®’s competition is not just other REALTORS®, it’s how other businesses serve their customers, and how consumers shop and make purchasing decisions.
I am always curious about how people make their buying decisions and what caused them to consider making a move or buying a particular item.
Think about the last thing you purchased. What caused you to consider that particular item? Where did you go to locate necessary information? Many times, I know that I am reacting to marketing delivered to me online.
I know that when marketing, we only have eight seconds to make an impression. The purchaser decides in those first eight seconds whether they are interested enough to continue to look or to move on to something else.
The same decision-making process is at work for homebuying. In most cases, particularly with a primary residence, people make a decision based on their emotional response to the property and later back up that decision with facts, data and logic. So, when potential buyers see images and descriptions online, our job is to engage them within those eight seconds.
When I am listing a property, I think about who is the most probable buyer for it. What are they seeking? What are the obstacles that may make it difficult to purchase this property? I want to solve those problems up front to find the buyer who is a great match for that property and make it an easy buying decision.
For example, you may be marketing a very nice home with very little yard. Instead of pretending that this potential negative isn’t there, develop your marketing with the right buyer in mind. Focus the photography and messaging on the lifestyle that such a property would support. Your message on social media would become, “You have better things to do. You don’t have to spend every weekend mowing grass or doing yard work.”
We recently listed and sold a spectacular property with several luxury features, including a unique component—a 4,700-square-foot, temperature-controlled garage that could house up to 15 cars. Clearly, we were looking for someone who loved to rebuild vintage cars or was a car collector.
When we targeted the marketing on the unique aspects of that home, the property sold at a price six times the average sales price for homes in the area in just 91 days. That’s the advantage of marketing that targets the most probable buyer niche.
The first step in that plan is to talk to the seller about what they love most about the home. We will then design our marketing to attract that most probable buyer.
This is how we can stay in front of the inevitable. It’s how we can survive in an industry pummeled by technology.
