With 50% of buyers finding their homes online and a sea of online listings, floor plans stand out to buyers. Additionally, they close faster and impress sellers, too! The #1 thing sellers look for in an agent is a great marketing plan, and floor plans are an important piece of that plan.

What Counts as a Floor Plan? 

With so many marketing real estate tools online, the lines between products and services are constantly getting blurred. Is it a virtual tour, a 2-D drawing, a 3-D rendering or something else, entirely?

Most simply: a real estate floor plan is a 2-D blueprint of a home. It is usually a black-and-white .j-peg image featuring a home’s dimensions and visual spacing.

Floor Plans Beat Out Popular Real Estate Listing Tools 

These simple, black and white .jpeg images are beating out fancy tech across the board. It is surprising to many real estate agents, but the effectiveness and helpfulness of floor plans beat out:

• Virtual Tours
• Drone Photography
• Drone Video
• And even Realtor Contact Info

Many agents are spending hundreds a month on virtual tour software and drone services, but floorplans are actually way more helpful for finding a buyer.

Why Floorplans Matter to Sellers 

Sellers are usually buyers, too. They have been spending countless hours scouring the internet to find their next home. During that time, many sellers have come to form their own opinions on what makes a good listing. The NAR data that applies to buyers applies to sellers also, since they are most often buying another home, too.

But floor plans are rarely ever featured during the marketing portion of listing presentations. This is a missed opportunity for agents to win listings. As we have covered in the past, data shows that the most effective online real estate marketing features stunning photographs, strong property descriptions, and helpful floor plans.

Creating Floor Plans Easily Online 

The good news is, there are tons of easy, cost-effective ways to create floor plans for real estate marketing online. Below, we have gathered the best options at various price points.

SmartDraw  

SmartDraw is the easiest and most cost-effective option. For only 9.99/mo real estate agents can create beautiful 2-D floor plans and even add virtual staging. Smart Draw’s integration with G-Suite and Microsoft Office make it perfectly tailored to fit real estate life.

RoomSketcher 

RoomSketcher creates beautiful 2-D renderings of properties for $49/yr. This floor plan maker is a hidden gem because they offer creation services for agents. Their team will create 2-D floor plans, 3-D floor plans, and virtual tours all-in-one, for agents. It is a huge timesaver.

SketchUp 

SketchUp is by far one of the easiest floor plan tools to learn. It also allows for simple 2D floor plans and for 3D floor plans, too. It’s price point of $399/yr may be off-putting to some agents, but for agents looking for a floor plan tool that is insanely easy to use, this is one to use.

Showcasing Floor Plans Online 

After creating floor plans for real estate marketing, agents can easily show them off with the rest of their marketing materials. Single Property Sites are one of the best ways to showcase floor plans during a listing presentation.

Floor Plans for Real Estate Marketing 

Floor plans are often overlooked as real estate marketing tools. But the data shows that floor plans are actually one of the most effective and helpful features of an online listing. There are plenty of tools available to easily creating floor plans as well as tools for winning listings with them, too.

The post Floor Plans for Real Estate Marketing: Why are so many real estate agents missing out? appeared first on Real Estate Marketing and Property Marketing Blog by Single Property Sites.

When a real estate agent lands a listing presentation, it should be a guarantee that they will get the listing. The last hoop to jump through is the listing presentation, and it should be super easy. Luckily, the NAR has done all the research on what sellers want most from their real estate agents. The best listing presentation is backed by this data. By focusing on what home sellers want statistically, real estate agents are winning every listing.

#1. Market Home to Potential Buyers

The NAR’s 2018 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers reported that there were two services that home seller’s wanted most of all. 20% of all home sellers wanted a real estate agent who could market their home to potential buyers. This was the most important thing they looked for in an agent.

This (and helping competitively price the home) should be the main focus of the listing appointment. There are many ways that agents can focus on the marketing portion of their presentation. These include:

• Showing research-backed data on how to create the most effective MLS listings (with examples).
• A video testimonial from a satisfied previous seller
• Sharing an example of  Single Property Sites listing websites, that were designed specifically to win listings. They impress buyers with custom URLs, stunning photo, video, virtual tour, and panorama capabilities. And details on listings that the MLS simply doesn’t support.
• Staging, Photography, and Video before and after examples
• Sharing multimedia examples of virtual tours and video
• Explaining online/social media promotional strategy
• Explaining how open houses, sign riders, and other marketing materials will be used

#2. Help Price Home Competitively

Helping price a home competitively is just as important to sellers as a solid marketing plan. 20% of all home sellers said that the most important thing they wanted from a Realtor was help pricing their home competitively. This topic can be a source of headaches for agents due to Zestimates and unrealistic expectations. However real estate agents should not minimize this conversation.

Sellers want their agent to be transparent when pricing a home. Agents should be prepared to give home sellers detailed comp material. Sellers should know where the comps came from, what homes of their model have historically sold for in their neighborhood, and be given detailed analytics on the current market.

Above all, Realtors should focus on educating and empowering sellers. This is an opportunity for agents to position themselves as industry leads and to show sellers what a realistic price point is. The best listing presentation teaches a seller about the best price for their home.

#3. Help Sell in a Specific Timeframe

Selling in a specific timeframe is the third most service to sellers. 19% of home sellers say this is the number one thing they look for in a real estate agent. It is a perfect segway from the pricepoint conversation because as we all know, pricing a home is very important to selling quickly.

Marketing a home and choosing an appropriate price should inform the selling timeframe. Agents should:

• Share timeframe data from past sales
• Share timeframe data on the current market
• Highlight their marketing plan, again
• Discuss how properly pricing home can impact the timeframe
• Highlight their network group

#4. Help Find a Buyer

14% of sellers feel that help finding a buyer is the most important service agents offer. Many home sellers are unaware of the professional network that most agents have developed. Agents should demonstrate how a professional network of Realtors can help find a buyer. Open houses and the marketing plan should also be touched on again.

Historically, home sellers want to know a real estate agents track record looks like. By sharing how and when past homebuyers found previous listings, trust is built.

#5. Help Seller Fix Home to Sell it for More

14% of home sellers think the most important thing a real estate agent can do for them is helping them fix up their home to get a better price. Sharing staging ideas while doing a walk-through is an easy way to show off your services.

But, before offering up a ton of unsolicited ideas on home improvements, agents should be sure to ask the seller if they are looking to make any changes or if they want to sell as-is. This will guide the conversation. Presenting data-backed research on the biggest ROI improvements is the best idea.

The Best Listing Presentation Backed by Research

The best listing presentation is the one that is backed by research. The NAR has done the research and we know exactly what home sellers want most in a real estate agent. Real estate agents can win every listing by helping home sellers market their home, price their home competitively, find a buyer, and fix their home to sell for more. Agents that are transparent, offer data and their own sales history, and present a strong marketing plan will win every listing.

The post The Best Listing Presentation Backed By Research appeared first on Real Estate Marketing and Property Marketing Blog by Single Property Sites.

Worse than Goldfish

It all boils down to science. Scientists in Canada have found that most humans now have a shorter attention span than a goldfish. Thanks to smartphones and tablets, we can typically only pay attention for 8 seconds or less!

This has been a nightmare for marketers trying to get consumers attention. But they are slowly finding that video is king. The stats don’t lie. Forbes reported that “By 2019, global consumer Internet video traffic will account for 80% of all consumer Internet traffic.” And, “After watching a video, 64% of users are more likely to buy a product online.” That is insane.

This is because video holds our short attention spans in a way that tradition print and photographs cannot. Hubspot reported, “55% of people play close attention when consuming video – more than all other types of content”

Seller Clients

The #1 thing that sellers want from an agent is the ability to market their home. This is why having a killer marketing plan before walking into a listing appointment is critical. It is the top priority for sellers. Statistics show that the best way to market online is through video engagement. Knowing this information and presenting it to soon-to-be clients is key to more conversions. Renderforest recently reported:

• Marketers who use video content get 66% more qualified leads per year.

• 70% of marketing professionals report video converts better than any other mediums.

• Video posts on Facebook have 135% greater organic reach than photo posts.

• The users spend 88% more time on a website with video.

By sharing this knowledge with sellers and then acting on it, agents can position themselves as marketing experts and get more clients.

Brand Awareness and SEO

Video is also a useful way to bump website SEO and increase brand visibility. One of the ways that Google ranks websites is by how helpful or useful it decides a website is. Part of this decision hinges on dwell time. Dwell time is the amount of time a person spends interacting with content. The longer people spend watching video and interacting with the site, the higher Google will rank it. A video is actually 53x more likely to get ranked on page 1 of Google, organically.

As far as brand awareness goes, video reigns because of its sharability. In fact, “Video posts on Facebook have 135% greater organic reach than photo posts.” And, “Social video produces 1200% more shares than text and images combined.” For growing future business, videos are going to be a vital source for the next 5-10 years.

The Hassle: Time and Money

All the stats look great and it easy to see that video is one of the best ways to market real estate. But…it takes a lot of time and/or money to make videos.

I remember sitting in one of my final college courses on video marketing and actually crying. I had never cried in school before, but Final Cut Pro drove me to do it. It took hours upon hours to even make a thirty-second spot that still was nowhere near complete when class started. I hadn’t slept in 48 hours, just trying to figure out audio layers. Plus, the software wasn’t cheap either.

For Realtors who are like me and don’t want to hassle with the learning curve and time commitment of video producing, there is always to option to hire someone else to produce videos. The problem there is the cost. Real estate listing videos can cost anywhere between $1000-$2500 to outsource. That is a chunk of commission.

So is there a way to use real estate listing videos and forgo spending an arm and a leg…or giving up hours of sleep?

Alternative Solutions

Fortunately, there are some easy ways to harness the marketing magic of video without breaking the bank or forgoing sleep:

Automatic Listing Videos

We would be remiss if we didn’t let you know that every time a Single Property Site is created, a free listing video is automagically uploaded to YouTube. The videos pull photos and details about the listing to create a slick listing video. Agents don’t need to do a thing. Here is a recent real estate listing video from a Colorado listing.

DIY Quick Editing: Splice & Quik

If an agent has listing photos or video footage on their phone, they can use Splice (ios) or Quik (android). Both of these apps were created by the GoPro brand. And unlike very complicated programs like Final Cut Pro, they were designed with small business owners and creators in mind. These apps allow agents to edit videos quickly and painlessly on their phones. If an agent is interested in compiling their own real estate listing videos, these are the best apps to use.

Video Stabilizers

For real estate agents wanting to use their smartphone to shoot listing videos, testimonials, or social media clips, stabilizers can make videos look 1000x better. A video stabilizer automatically makes videos look smooth and crisp by taking out any shaky camera effects the phone might pick up. Emulsio (ios) and Deshake (Android) are two great options.

Real Estate Listing Videos

Video is king. There is no way around it. This year 80% of all web traffic will come from video. It is the most effective way to engage leads and impress clients. But real estate agents don’t need to break the bank to harness the power of video. Options like automatically generated videos with all-in-one marketing solutions, easy phone apps for editing, and tools that make a professional looking video are all great workarounds to listing videos that cost thousands.

The post Are Real Estate Listing Videos Really Worth it? appeared first on Real Estate Marketing and Property Marketing Blog by Single Property Sites.

Media Showcase

The Media Showcase is real estate agents’ one-stop shop for sharing property listing videos, photos, floorplans, drone photography and videography, virtual tours, panoramas, and any other type of listing media imaginable.

Now every piece of media related to a listing is housed under one roof. And, the Media Showcase is embedded in the Single Property Sites agents already love.

The Media Showcase is great for:

• Real Estate Marketing Plans – The NAR reported that 73% of homeowners are more likely to list with a real estate agent who provides video of their home. Showing off video and media is a surefire way to win every listing.
• Making Online Home Shopping Easy – Instead of sending home shoppers down a rabbit hole of different links and sites, all listing content and information is embedded on one, simple site.
• Viral Sharability – Every Single Property Site comes with a simple URL of the listing address (like 1122mainstreet.com). Online sharing has never been easier. Every photo, video, floorplan, drone capture, virtual tour, panorama, open house information, property details, map, and more are all housed in one place.
• Saving Listing Agents Time – Uploading content only takes seconds. Everything is uploaded in one, simple dashboard. And agents only need to use one, simple URL to share on the MLS listings and across their social media channels. It marketing made simple.

Supported Platforms

Supported Platforms Include:

• Matterport
• Youtube
• Real Estate Shows
• Vimeo
• RTV
• Wellcome Mat
• Immoviewer
• Veoh
• Real Tour Vision
• Obeo
• Agent Casts
• Google Video
• Flickr
• GlideTour
• Photobucket
• mydeo
• Viddler
• HelloWorld
• Yahoo Video
• DVLS.tv
• VScreen
• Vidego
• And, any direct link, virtual tour URL, or photo slideshow

See it in Action

To see Single Property Sites and the Media Showcase in action, check out 1122mainstreet.com.

Closing

Single Property Sites is now the premier service for all-in-one real estate marketing. Single Property Sites includes property websites, sign riders, lead capture, print marketing, and social media marketing that agents love. And now, Single Property Sites offers the Media Showcase, too.

The Media Showcase keeps every virtual tour, listing video, photo, drone capture, panorama, and every form of media all on one slick, listing website. The Media Showcase saves agents time, makes real estate marketing easy, is super sharable, and makes home shopping online simple.

Best of all, the Media Showcase is included with the same Single Property Sites price as always (starting at $12/mo).

Have another great idea you want to be added to Single Property Sites? Let us know in the comments below.

The post Single Property Sites Launches Media Showcase appeared first on Real Estate Marketing and Property Marketing Blog by Single Property Sites.

Whenever a new single property site is created in your account, you’ll see a bunch of options for promoting those sites (directions below). An important marketing feature available on all of your sites is the “search engine metadata” option that can be found on the “Edit & Promote” page in your account.

This allows you to manually adjust the SEO tags (the keywords search engines look for when determining where your website shows up in search results). From here you can configure:

TITLE tag

This is probably the most important tag with the biggest impact on the visibility of your property site in search engines. This tag is what shows up as a clickable link in search results. When determining what to type in here, be sure to think about the specific keywords potential buyers are searching for, and include them here. Try to stay away from using punctuation, and be sure to keep this to about 12 words maximum.

META Description 

This should be a short paragraph or one sentence about the property. Don’t go crazy here! Make the description re-enforce the TITLE tag by reusing your main keywords whenever possible.

To configure your metadata options:

1) Log in to access your account dashboard

2) Scroll down near the bottom of this “Manage Sites” page, and click the “Edit & Promote” link to the right of the property site you want to configure.

3) Click the “Search Engine Metadata” link under the Promotion column

4) Follow the instructions on the right side of the page, and click the SAVE button at the bottom of the page.

We have made this as easy as possible, and all you have to do is fill out the fields and click the save button. The information will then automatically be put into the HTML code of your single property site, so you never have to worry about messing around with headache-causing HTML!

The post New and improved SEO features for property sites appeared first on Real Estate Marketing and Property Marketing Blog by Single Property Sites.

In order to provide our customers with a one-of-a-kind experience, we are constantly striving to update and upgrade our products and services. We have received a lot of feedback regarding the recently released new theme for your single property sites, and have completed a series of updates and bug fixes to the new theme.

Here is a complete list of all updates:

• Agent’s full address now shows up without error
• Description under property details showing
• The white label solution now shows correct credits at bottom of Agent profile page. If there is no agent tagline then this will not appear.
• Agent’s social media icons and links all work correctly
• “Assumptions and Disclosures” under financing options are now appearing
•  The Facebook share link has been improved, making it easier than ever to quickly share property sites to Facebook
• Image slideshows now included in menu under “Property Information”
• Video and Virtual Tours were experiencing problems when opened in Internet Explorer. This has been fixed, but you need to make sure that videos and virtual tours are not set to “auto-play” as the video will load straight away.

To see example sites for the new theme, click the links below:

• http://www.1122mainstreet.com
• http://5429flatford.2seeit.com/

There are still a few big upgrades we have coming down the pipeline, so please let us know how we can help make your experience the best possible.

The post MAJOR single property site theme updates and bug fixes appeared first on Real Estate Marketing and Property Marketing Blog by Single Property Sites.

Our old flyers were pretty good, but we wanted them to be GREAT. We have been hard at work completing the following HTML property flyer enhancements, which are now live for all accounts:

• Flyer design is now more robust and better looking.
• Previous photo distortion issues have been FIXED.
• Tidied up layouts for a sleek, clean look
• All flyers  now include Agent, Loan Officer, and Office license data

To see a couple examples of our new flyers, click the links below:

• Example 1
• Example 2

To create a property flyer for any of your single property sites:

1) Make sure the property site is turned on, by clicking the green “Turn On” button to the left of the site in your account dashboard.

2) Click the “Edit & Promote” link to the right of your property site.

3) On the “Edit & Promote” page, simply click on the “HTML Flyers” link (pictured below) and follow the instructions to copy the pre-coded HTML for your digital property flyer, and then post this code wherever you want to promote your single property site across the Internet!

The post FEATURE ENHANCEMENT: Updated HTML property flyers now look better than ever appeared first on Real Estate Marketing and Property Marketing Blog by Single Property Sites.

We have incorporated this into the SPS Property Marketing system, and have now added a new feature that allows you to utilize the Custom Audience Pixel to your advantage.

So what exactly is the Custom Audience Pixel? Here are a few of the main ways it is used:

The Custom Audience Pixel is basically a way for you to reach people on Facebook who have previously visited your website and deliver them highly relevant ads based on the interest they previously expressed in your listings or services. This means you can:

• Remarket to people using your website(s)
• Make your existing Facebook ads more efficient by excluding audiences of people who have already converted on your message
• Create lookalike audiences of people who look like the people browsing your website

How does the Single Property Websites system utilize Facebook Custom Audience Pixels?

We have added a new field on your user profile page that allows you to input your own Custom Audience Pixel. This will then be put into the HTML on all of your single property websites. You can then utilize Facebook’s advertising platform to create ads for individual property websites and target people who have previously interacted with you.

To learn more about how this whole thing works, read the FAQ section on Facebook Custom Audiences.

The post NEW FEATURE: Market to people who have previously visited your websites appeared first on Real Estate Marketing and Property Marketing Blog by Single Property Sites.

If you want to have a more in-depth statistics, you can also connect each of your Single Property Sites to your Google Analytics account!  It is easy to do just follow the steps

How to connect Google Analytics to your Single Property Site:

Go to your SPS’s MY SITES Dashboard then select the property that you want to add to your Google Analytics(Click on EDIT & PROMOTE).

Then on the top right corner select VISITOR STATISTICS.

You should be able to see an option to add the listing to your Google Analytics.

It’s going to ask you to input  a TRACKING ID.

TO GET THE TRACKING ID:

Step 1

Log-in to your Google Analytics account and select the ADMIN on the top menu

Step 2 & Step 3

Choose the Account that you want the Single Property Sites to be in — Or you can create a Separate Account for them.  After picking the account, or creating an account, on the PROPERTY section drop down menu select CREATE NEW ACCOUNT.

Step 4

Put in the information such as the URL of the listing’s Single Property Site.   And SELECT the  Get TRACKING ID.  Ignore the Tracking Syntax(code), but copy the TRACKING ID

Step 5

Go back to your SPS Account and Paste the ID Tracking onto the box

There you go. You just connected a listing to your Google Analytics. If you don’t want to connect your listing’s Single Property Sites, you can always rely on SPS’s analytics. It will tell you the important performance metrics that you need to know.

*Visitor Statistics and  Google Analytics options are only available for live single property sites.

The post Connect your Single Property Sites to Google Analytics appeared first on Real Estate Marketing and Property Marketing Blog by Single Property Sites.

However, we have steered well clear of this approach and instead offer an approach that is far more sustainable has a bigger impact with the seller.

With SPS, this starts with avoiding FLASH technologies as these wont work on Apple IPADs.
So, how to engage and impress Sellers so we can win the listing?

1. First, lets show them a REAL LIVE property site for THEIR property! With any SPS account, regardless of whether you have an active membership or not, you can use our FREE-VIEW system to create a fully functioning beautiful property site for the sellers home.
   Remember, this is quick! All you need to do is adjust the Example Website provided in your account with the right street address, a few details – and I would suggest seeing if you get a good quality external shot for the main photo – and Voila! – their sellers home all ready set up and ready to go.
   (or if you need to, copy, setup, or import another similar listing as a starting point.)
   You can even send the seller a special link to review / preview this site BEFORE you even meet them. How cool is that to have the seller engaged with your listing presentation before you even meet them!
2. To support you at your presentation, we have a professional set of PowerPoint slides which can be edited if you wish – or if you don’t want to do that (or can’t), download a PDF that you can then use. There is a full set of notes and even video where we show you how this might be used. If you don’t have PowerPoint, you can download the free PowerPoint viewer from various vendors – even Microsoft (search for “powerpoint viewer” on google).
3. The final part of this is an high quality flyer that you can leave behind or handout. Again this is available as a download for you to edit, or just download the PDF and print to use directly – just staple on your business card!

The post Unbeatable Listing Presentations appeared first on Real Estate Marketing and Property Marketing Blog by Single Property Sites.