Top 7 Ways to Enhance Your Listings
How often do you go to a Realtor’s website to search for listings, only to find them plain and unadorned, filled with only basic information about the property? Listing a property on the board with base criteria can save you a couple minutes, but the impact of time-saving and cutting corners on the presentation of your listing can ultimately cost you thousands of dollars in lost sales! Why not take the time to refine your listings so that they standout – especially on your website; add new details and pictures, virtual tour and YouTube links, add detailed descriptions of the property, even attachments such as floor plan Pdfs. Any and all of these options will help enhance the presentation of your listing, making it more appealing to potential buyers, and further satisfying the sellers as you’ve gone the extra mile to create a more impressive-looking property page. After all, presentation is nearly everything in this industry!
YouTube Videos:
Simple and easy to do. Upload to YouTube. If you don’t already have an account, sign-up and you’re good to go! Once you’ve uploaded a video, copy the link of your video. Go to Listings > Manage Listings on your account, click View and Edit Info on the listing in question; scroll down to the YouTube URL field and paste it in. Click OK to update and save the changes. You’ll now have successfully added a YouTube video to the listing, allowing people to not only read but also watch and listen to your pitch about the property as you show them through it. Some virtual tour companies will provide you a virtual tour in video form as well. OBEO even provides embed code for their entire tour.
Virtual Tours:
Another excellent way to go above and beyond the norm of a listing. By using companies such as OBEO and Real Tour Vision, you can have the tour completely designed for you from the ground up. These services come at an additional cost, but they provide some much-needed bang-for-the-buck. It helps showcase the listing in a way that static images and plain text cannot. If professional virtual tours are not in your budget, you can also use the Visual Tours option available for each listing on your account. This is a slideshow of the images you’ve added to the listing. This service is included in the cost of your monthly subscription. You can copy the link and paste it into the Virtual Tour URL field of the listing to put it into action. Don’t just leave this field blank! Take advantage of the tools, be it paid or free, available to you!
Attachments:
Now you can condense the amount of spots someone has to browse in order to find all the associated materials by taking advantage of the newly added ability to have attachments on a listing. Looking for a place to host those floor plan Pdfs? Well now you can directly on the listing! Simply go to your Manage Listings and click on the Files link associated with the listing then begin to upload!
Additional Photos & Descriptions:
Many of the Real Estate Boards have limitations on the number of images you can display. A simple way around this is to upload additional images of the property directly to the listing through your account. This way you can do the property justice by providing ample visual coverage, helping entice people to take the step from reading about the property to contacting you to book a showing! Another easy help to help enhance the listings is to put image descriptions – a good caption can truly help express the scene.
Local Amenities – What’s Nearby:
A cool feature available through the interactive mapping technology is the ability to search what’s nearby. Now you can hone in on a listing and then use the “What’s Nearby” option to bring up the amenities selector. Make your choices and click Search. The map will populate with any nearby matches. Clicking on the mini-icon will yield an information window with details about the services offered.
Now go and check out your listings. Compare them and their features to those outlined above. The difference in appeal, not to mention functionality has dramatically improved.
Description Override:
When broker-loading a listing, most MLS board systems provide very limited space for the description. Because of this, you use abbreviations that, while making sense to other REALTORS®, may not make sense to a first-time home buyer, for example. Some systems even force an upper-case letter at the beginning of every word or string of letters, so the description gets very messy. Re-write the description in plain English. You recommend to your client to make the property aesthetically pleasing so why not do the same with the description? To do this with Real Web Agent, log into the CMS and, under Manage Listings...
Text Marketing:
So your sign is on the lawn with your office number and maybe even your direct number. Sometimes when a prospect calls the office, the front desk offers to page you. If they call your direct number, they may get your voicemail. But this is an “information here and now” society so, while some may be happy to wait, why not offer them some information anytime, 24 / 7? Adding a rider under your sign directing visitors to send a text message for more information facilitates this. They could send a text message to 808080 with your “keyword” (“property1”, for example) and immediately receive via text a message like, “3 BR, 2 Bath, Finished Basement, Inground Pool – Call Joe Realtor for details – 416-555-5555”. The maximum for a text message is 136 characters, which is enough to keep them interested... and to put your name and number on their phone. But if you give away this information, will you ever speak with them? Well, you generally provide more information than this on your website, in your ads or on REALTOR.ca and you often never even know who looked. With this system, however, you are sent an email indicating the keyword and the mobile phone number that texted about the property. You are able to call them up and offer further assistance, making it easy to initiate a discussion with them. It is a solid warm lead, waiting to be converted to a client. To do this with Real Web Agent, log into the CMS and, under Messages...
Authored By: Bryan Coughlin, Client Relations
Special Thanks to Matthew!