If you're considering selling your condo or townhome in Vermont or anywhere in the world you need to make sure that these Four essential marketing pieces are being used to market your property. In the following sections, Im going to break down how these marketing pieces can be used to not only enhance the perceived value of your property but also create a sense of urgency amongst buyers looking at your property.  Whether you're selling with a Realtor or you're selling your condo by owner, missing any of these marketing pieces means you will be leaving money on the table. It always shocks me to see how many listings I find online where I know the owners are paying a huge amount of money to the broker to sell their property and they're getting very little real marketing in return. If you're an agent reading this post I encourage you to start implementing these marketing pieces into your marketing plan for your clients so that you can do what your job requires you to do which is to get them the most possible money when selling their property. So let's break this down.

Here are the four essential marketing pieces that every listing should have implemented on it.

1 | Pro photos.

Today more than ever how your condo shows online really matters. Most buyers will decide whether to even see your property based on how it shows online. Even in a strong seller's market, it can still mean getting an even higher price. We find that brokers often don't want to spend the little money it takes to professionally photograph a property because they want to keep those profits for themselves. But in actuality by not having pro photos, the property is almost guaranteed to sell for a lower price and because of this, the agent is actually leaving money on the table for both themselves and the client. Just look at this data from a Redfin study...

As you can see professional photos are essential. Don't put your home online without professional photos. And when we say professional photos this does not mean using an iPhone 13 Pro it means hiring a photographer who specializes in photographing real estate! If you're not willing to do this then you must be willing to make less money selling your property.

2 | Professionally Written Copy. 

Professionally written copy is copy that triggers an emotional response. Buyers can see all the things that are in the photos… they don't need you to retell them what they can already see in the photos. How many times have you been online looking at a property and the description says something like this...property has hardwood floors and granite countertops and stainless steel appliances... or something like this …condo features two beds and one bath? These are all things that you can easily see looking at the pictures so writing this is redundant and is a huge waste of the valuable little space you have to write a description about the property. Professionally written copy that's designed to trigger an emotional response is significantly more valuable because when a buyer falls in love with your property they're willing to pay the highest price the market will bear. What your description space should be used for is as a space that describes the things that made you fall in love with the property in the first place. Maybe the property has an amazing location that's convenient to really important things like schools or shopping or nightlife or maybe the property has something else unique about it that makes it really special like a view or a certain layout that's unbeatable that you can't find another building. Whatever it is that needs to be in your description and not the cookie cutter this property has two bedrooms one bath and granite countertops… remember they can see all of those because you took professional photos that show all of those! So, if you're interviewing an agent ask how they would write the description for your property before you hire them to get a gauge as to whether they really know how to market and if not refer them to a blog post like this to learn:)

3 | Guided Video Walkthroughs.

Guided video walkthroughs are essential these days. In today’s world buyers have become more and more used to doing virtual tours. Most virtual tours consist of the agent or the broker doing a FaceTime walk through of the property for their out-of-town clients and answering questions they have as they move throughout. But what if you could make a higher quality version of this so buyers could tour your property over and over again from the comfort of their own couch? Well, you can make a video just like this very easily.  We always recommend doing it while the photographer is there or right after they finish since the condo is in the best showing condition at that time. All you need is a simple gimbal like this one and an iPhone or some other nice type of camera set in landscape view you don't even need to worry about talking while you do it.

Gimbal we like...>

 

The best way to do it is to do the walk-through at a nice even pace and then edit it over afterward with a voiceover or some sort of thing like that explaining key things the buyer should notice while moving through the property. Here's an example of one we recently did for one of our clients.

Example of a guided video tour of a Colchester Vermont Condo that we recently sold!

 

Now that you've watched this think about a scenario like this…

You're a buyer who might be getting a down payment from a family member. That family member is not local but they are going to have an impact on your decision-making process.Now let's say this buyer is looking at two properties and sends them both to that parent or family member to say “hey check these out which one should I buy?” Well one of them is lacking marketing pieces like this preventing the parents from getting a good feel for the property and one of them has a video like this which allows them to really get a good gauge for the property (and by the way having a video for this implies that the property is nicer because the marketing is nicer and the buyers perceive it this way) so the family member is going to clearly encourage the buyer to make an offer on the property with the video walkthrough over a similar property without a video walkthrough in most cases. The best part about this type of walk-through is that it can be done for just a few bucks and can add thousands of dollars potentially to your bottom line. Also without this video walkthrough, you can not create marketing piece number four.

4 | Targeted Online Advertising.

Thanks to modern-day technology Google tends to know or have a good sense of who is actively looking to buy a property at any given time and lucky for you Google also owns YouTube which is the second largest search engine in the world. Every day millions and millions of people are on YouTube watching video content and because you already made the video walkthrough you can take it and target people on YouTube who are looking to buy properties just like yours. This has two benefits… One it's getting more exposure to your property than just throwing it on the MLS/ Zillow and two the play count is also going up creating a sense of social proof which leads to the fear of missing out otherwise known as FOMO and a sense of urgency for any buyers that are seriously looking at your property. Remember how in the last section we discussed how buyers will send the property to other family members to get their opinion and advice before making an offer? Now imagine those same family members are looking at the video and seeing the play count rapidly increase! What do you think this does to the buyer's level of urgency to buy this property? It has a significant impact and I can't tell you how many times someone's told us that the video is what helped them make their decision to buy the property.

Thank you! 

Thanks for reading this post. We hope you find this information about marketing valuable. We truly believe that missing any of these core 4 marketing pieces will cost you money! Please feel free to reach out or comment below with any questions or feedback and if you'd like us to show you how to market your Vermont Condo just email or call us anytime.