Part 3: The Hidden Truth About Real Estate Marketing – What Really Works for Sellers
Ever wonder what exactly your real estate agent is doing to market your home? Well, in Part 3 of our ‘UNMASKED’ series, we’re going to talk about the “default” – the things that pretty much every agent does. And spoiler alert: while necessary, it’s often not enough to get you the best possible price. Let’s explore what’s standard and then, more importantly, what sets a true Seller’s Advocate apart.
The Default vs. The Difference: What Really Matters
By default, your home will be listed on every website including Redfin and Zillow through MLS data sharing distribution. Open houses and broker tours are standard practice. These are all essentially free marketing activities. If that’s all your agent is doing, they’re not adding significant value beyond what the market will naturally provide.
The best agent you can hire understands this distinction. They have a separate budget and strategy for:
- Marketing your home: This includes buyer targeted advertising where your home is the star, specialized events, and creative marketing campaigns that directly increase exposure to more buyers, exponentially increasing the potential demand for your property. This might involve strategies like creating highly targeted Google data driven campaigns, reaching out to specific buyer demographics, or even hosting unique events tailored to your home’s unique features – all going beyond the standard ‘open house and online listing’ approach.
- Marketing themselves (default): This is where activities like neighborhood postcards, shopping carts, local magazine ads, local outdoor events and sponsorships, and branding come in – but it’s separate from the effort to sell your home.
If you want to truly maximize your sale price, you need an agent who invests in making your home the star, targeting those eager buyers. The key takeaway here is that just because your home pops up on Zillow doesn’t mean the right buyers are seeing it and getting excited. A true Seller’s Advocate has a separate, strategic budget and plan to make sure your property gets in front of the most likely buyers. That’s the real value beyond the standard stuff.
In Part 4, we’re going to talk about why just seeing an agent’s face everywhere in the neighborhood doesn’t automatically make them the best choice for you.