The 3 Most Valuable Ingredients

The NAR’s Real Estate in A Digital Age Report interviewed home buyers to find out which web features are most valuable to buyers. The three top digital features included:

• Photos (87%)
• Detailed Information About Properties (85%)
• Floor Plans (52%)

Photo Secrets

By now, every listing agent knows that having a professional photographer is key. For a good laugh, check out these agents who didn’t and ended up with listing photo fails.

But many agents don’t realize how they can get the most out of their photographer. To get Instagram or frame-worthy photos, agents should be sure to ask for:

• a sunset or sunrise photo session
• post-production filters or presets
• wide-angle lenses

Asking for these small tweaks are the secret sauce for over-the-top listing photos.

Description Secrets

Listing descriptions are the cornerstone of any great listing. It is where prospective buyers turn to learn about their potential, new home. But not all descriptions are created equally. To see the worst of the worst, check out the Broke Agent’s description bombs.

There are some tried and true methods to create strong descriptions, though. These include:

Highlighting neighborhood/community features:

This type of information helps buyers picture what their new life might look like and is often not available anywhere else on the internet.

Knowing which type of words to avoid and which to use:

Zillow gathered the data and put together a list of words sure to help or hurt listings. Top words to avoid include “nice,” “potential”, “investment”, “cosmetic,”and “fixer.” These words scream “crappy house” to potential buyers.

If applicable, words that buyers respond positively to include “captivating,” “impeccable,” “stainless,” “granite,” and, “landscaped.”

Word count:

When it comes to writing listing descriptions, more is more. Home buyers are looking to gather as much information as they can about a home online before they contact an agent to see it. Most listing descriptions average 60 words, which is less than an average paragraph. No one would make a major purchasing decision based on less than a paragraph of information.

Taking the time to describe a listing, its features, and community in detail are key to hooking buyers. To bulk up the word count, agents should focus on creating a picture of what it would be like to live at that home. And, they should maximize the home’s best features.

Floor Plans

Floor plans for older properties can be difficult to come by, but they are vital to home buyers. Agents don’t have time to learn CAD software. But, free lightweight software like Home Sweet 3D is perfect for mocking up floorplans. It is quick and free and allows any agent with room dimensions to instantly mock up a floorplan for any listing.

Because online homebuyers value floor plans so much, it worth utilizing this free software.

Interactive features

After building a strong listing foundation with the 3 most valuable ingredients (photos, detailed descriptions, and floor plans), agents should add a dash of creativity.

Looking back at the NAR’s Real Estate in the Digital Age Report, 76% of all home buyers found the home they ultimately purchased online. Additionally, 73% of all buyers used mobile devices or tablets to search for homes. The internet is the #1 place home buyers are shopping for homes.

While the internet has changed the way people shop for homes, it has also created opportunities for buyers to creatively experience homes before stepping foot inside. Interactive features including video and virtual tours are the best features to invest in.

Video

Inman reported that 85% of home sellers want to work with an agent who uses video. That statistic is staggering. But roughly only 10-15% percent of agents are using video as a marketing strategy! That is insane. Most agents don’t use video for two reasons:

1. They don’t know how to create them
2. They don’t want to pay for them

But it is a huge marketing opportunity to miss out on, especially for listing agents. Videos should be a part of any real estate listing marketing plan.

Video Secret: There are services out there that populate listing automatically. This includes Single Property Sites. SPS automatically builds and populates free listing videos for agents when they create their listing websites. Agents can check out a live example, here.

Virtual Tours

Virtual or video tours are becoming a hot marketing tool, too. Jason Fox reported that listings with virtual tours got 87% more views than those that did not. After a strong foundation of photos, a killer description, and a floor plan have been laid. Virtual tours are a powerful tool for moving inventory more quickly. Realtors can check out a review of the best virtual tour software, here.

Virtual Tour Secret: Most agents avoid virtual tours because of the investment and low amount of views. But virtual tours move inventory faster and attracted serious buyers. Check out Inman’s report on why virtual tours are actually creating a good ROI for agents.

Secret Real Estate Listing Marketing Plan

The secret to a successful real estate listing marketing plan includes the 3 most important ingredients: professional photos, detailed descriptions, and floor plans. Adding more creative elements like video and virtual tours can lead to a greater ROI and are often not as difficult to produce as some agents think.

And, for agents looking to bring all their ingredients into one dish, Single Property Sites are a great way to show off every virtual tour, video, photos, floor plans, and detailed descriptions on one, high-quality real estate website.

The post The Secret Sauce Real Estate Listing Marketing Plan appeared first on Real Estate Marketing and Property Marketing Blog by Single Property Sites.

We get a lot of feedback from users about features they’d like to see included in Single Property Sites, and we’re always looking to enhance our product. But occasionally we find some features customers request are already included in our ProSPS system!  Here are four different things you can do with your SPS account that you might not know about yet.

1. Embed a Video in Your Single Property Sites

More and more agents are starting to use video as part of their listings marketing, as new technology like the FlipCam makes it more easy and affordable to record and edit video.  We get a lot of agents asking if they can include video on their Single Property Sites, and the answer is YES.

SPS makes it easy to put video online. The first step is to choose a host for your video –  SPS is compatable with nearly every major video hosting service online, including Youtube, Google Video, Vimeo, Real Estate Shows, WelcomeMat, and many more.  Once your video is hosted on one of these video-sharing sites, it’s time to login to SPS and edit your site.

You’re looking for the Video icon under the “Photo” menu in the SPS site wizard…it looks like this:

Once you’re in there, you’ll have the option to embed your video from the hosting Web site.  This is a simple procedure that takes a minute or less to complete.  Just select your video service, paste the “snippet” of code the service will provide you into the box, and choose where you’d like your video displayed.  You can add the video to the menu and home page of your Single Property Site.  It even can replace your main photo if you’d like!

2. Add Google Analytics for More Advanced Tracking

Google Analytics is the Web’s leading free statistics package for Web sites.  It lets you track in great detail the habits and statistics about your visitors as they move through your Web sites.

SPS includes some analytics functionality that lets you share basic statistics with your buyers, but we also give you the option of including Google Analytics for more advanced analysis and tracking.  To start, sign up for Google Analytics.  Once you’re done, you’ll receive a profile ID (something like UA-123456-3). Take note of this number.

Now, login to your SPS account and choose one of your sites to edit.  You’re looking for the “Web Site Statistics” button, which looks like this:

Click through, and look for the link that says “Setup Google Analytics”.  You’ll have the option to enter your profile ID and start tracking.

We’ll put together a post on how to use Google Analytics at a later time, but it gives you the option of tracking all sorts of statistical data about your visitors – their locations, the time they spend on the site, the information they’re looking at and so forth. It’s a goldmine for agents, and SPS makes setting it up easy!

3. Get a Sign Rider for Your Property

If you’re not getting a sign rider with your property, you’re only unlocking part of the functionality with your Single Property Site!  A sign rider makes promoting your Web site easy.  It includes the domain name for your property in a sturdy, attractive sign rider so you can start capturing more drive-by traffic.  And now, with our new SPS Mobile Marketer, you’re able to include SMS Text Flyers on your sign riders, too!

Getting a sign rider is an easy process.  The first step is to purchase the domain name for your Single Property Site. This serves as the Web address for your property, and it’s what will be included on your sign rider so make it memorable! Typically, agents use the street address for the property, but it can be anything you want.

As soon as you purchase your domain name, the option to purchase a sign rider will become available. You’re looking for the icon that looks like this in your control panel:

We will deliver you a 6″ x 24″ or 6″ x 18″ solid, bright-white, flexible plastic board (about 4mm thick) that goes on top of your For Sale sign, directing customers to your Single Property Site for this property.  As soon as you order, we’ll produce your sign within one business day, and you’ll receive it within four to five business days.

4. Create E-mail Flyers

This is one feature we’re working on adding to your Single Property Site control panel, but there’s a workaround for creating e-mail flyers right now: you’re able to create e-mail flyers using our Craigslist Autoposter.

Start by going into your Feeds and Promotion Wizard:

Now, look for the Craigslist Autopost tab at the top of the page.  Click this, and you’ll get our wizard for promoting on Craigslist.  Proceed as normal, entering an e-mail address, the city in which you’d like to post, and choose “Plain HTML” for your code option. Choose Save and Continue, and SPS will automatically open up a Craigslist window for you to complete the posting.

Here’s where things are different.

Instead of posting to Craigslist, you’re going to take the code our system generates and use that for your e-mail flyer!  Simply copy (Ctrl+C) the code in the property description box and save it somewhere on your computer.  The box looks like this:

This code typically is used to present your Single Property Sites on Craigslist, but it works just as well for an e-mail flyer!  Just paste this code into a new e-mail in your favorite e-mail client and you can start sending gorgeous e-mail flyers to all your potential leads!

What other questions do you have about SPS?  Send me an e-mail and I’ll be sure to get back to you immediately.  You might even get it answered in a future blog post!

Not an SPS member yet? No problem! Click here to get your free account.

The post Four Features You Might Not Know About in SPS appeared first on Real Estate Marketing and Property Marketing Blog by Single Property Sites.

A recent survey conducted jointly by VHT, Inc., and PropertyPreviews.com highlights the impact that videos and professional photography have on the perceived value of a property. According to the survey results, the use of a video in marketing a property increases the perceived value of a home by nearly six percent while professional photography increases the perceived value by nearly 12 percent. On a $500,000 home, this equates to an increase in perceived value of $30,000 and $60,000 respectively.

There should be a larger market for professional real estate photographers if this is the case.  If there’s a $60,000 increase in perceived value, they pay for themselves pretty quickly….

The post Cool Study on Photography and Video’s Impact on Real Estate Marketing appeared first on Real Estate Marketing and Property Marketing Blog by Single Property Sites.