When it comes to marketing listings, I’ve seen some pretty outlandish examples over the last ten years I’ve been in the Real Estate industry. Everything from flash based musical slideshows that add animations (picture deer walking across the front lawn, and fire flickering in the fireplace) to the high budget mini drama. One of my personal favorites, for obvious reasons!
Several months ago at M Realty, we sat down and took a good look at all the marketing collateral being used by our agents to market their listings. We also grabbed several examples off Facebook from the agents that constantly spew “check out my latest listing”. We saw the whole spectrum. Everything from print flyers with spelling and grammar errors to single property websites with QR codes on them that led you back to… you guessed it, the same single property site. Needless to say, we weren’t very impressed.
At M Realty, we think that your marketing materials should be a direct reflection of the level of service you provide your clients. I mean, it’s our job as agents to present our clients home in the best possible light, on every possible medium we can, given the marketing budget (knowing that not every listing is going to have a budget for the filming of a SWAT team rescue).
So we set out on a mission. A mission to provide our clients (our agents) the ability to have at their disposal a suite of marketing materials that rivals what any 3rd party advertising agency could produce to “tell the story” of the clients home. Examples include; a set of beautiful flyers, various postcards, listing books, high quality photos, videos and a single property site (see write up on Agent Genius) that feels good to touch, are clean and consistent in their design and have a level of detail that screams “look how well I market my client’s home!”.
Ahh, but good marketing is expensive, how can a brokerage afford this? The truth is, most can’t. But when we added up the costs of our agents time in producing flyers, postcards, professional photography and video production, we knew we could do it for less if we kept everything in-house and controlled the processes. So we invested in the equipment needed to produce stunning quality photos and prints. We just finished upgrading our video equipment to that of a small media production team, and finally we’re investing in the staffing to ensure the throughput needed to scale this offering out to all of our current and future agents (knowing that when other local agents begin seeing this out in the wild they’re going to want it) at a cost less than they’d normally pay for the materials they’ve been using.
After putting several of these marketing kits live in the world, we’re beginning to understand just how powerful this type of marketing can be. Sure we’re getting the desired results when it comes to phone inquiries, web traffic, QR scans, etc. but what has truly surprised us is how much the sellers love the material and are willing to share with their friends both online and off. Several clients have actually asked to have more materials so they can show it to family, friends and coworkers. Combine that with a matching quality open house kit (also part of the marketing suite) and you’ve got an outstanding client procurement program at your fingertips.
The thing is, we realize none of this stuff is new (well, except the dynamic HTML5 WordPress theme that changes the site structure and layout based on your browser (Example) and the concept of having beautiful marketing materials has been around forever. So, why is this such a big deal? Well, I guess it’s funny what happens when you come across something “out of the ordinary” in an industry so full of “ordinary”.
At M Realty, we’re proud to say our marketing reflects the level of service our clients (and their clients) receive every single day. We encourage you to take a fresh look at your marketing materials and ask yourself: does it reflect the level of service you provide? If the answer is no, get in touch with us… we’d love to have a discussion about how we can help.
Here’s Garron giving an overview of the whole suite of marketing materials: