Real Estate Listing Marketing Plan

Thanks so much for taking the time to read this blog post. I know that you are very busy as a real estate agent, but I guarantee that it will be worth your time. As a videographer for real estate agents, I understand what realtors need to do when marketing a property online. Many of these things may seem obvious, but they are often overlooked.

The rise of social media has drastically changed the way real estate properties are marketed today. If you aren’t innovating, you’ll easily fall behind in this highly competitive industry. In this post I will lay out some steps and strategies that have worked for my clients, in order to get top dollar for their listings, and sell them fast!

Let’s start by comparing social media marketing to other methods for marketing your properties. Printing and mailing post cards is one method agents have a hard time leaving in the past. It can work sometimes, but there are many issues with this approach.

First of all, mail campaigns cannot be nearly as targeted as social media campaigns. The other issue is that printing and mailing postcards is very expensive. It is also bad for the environment. Open houses are a better tactic than postcards in my opinion. But compared to online ads they are incredibly time consuming.

The key things that distinguish social media marketing from these traditional forms of marketing is that it is searchable and sharable. This means that you get a lot more reach for your marketing dollar, and a lot more people will see your property.

Even if you don’t have a huge following, listing videos posted social media can receive thousands of views. Imagine how long it would take to show a property to that many people by traditional means. You can see how prioritizing social media marketing for your properties can save you time and money, as well as providing better results for you and your clients.

Now let’s get into some of the details of how you should approach advertising your property online. Let’s be honest, it can be an intimidating endeavor. There are many different platforms, and each have their own rules and best practices. That’s why I’m going to break it all down and provide some step-by-step instructions so you can get the most reach to sell your listing.

Before you do anything, you need to make sure you have the seller’s permission to list their property online and market their home on social media. This may seem strange, but some sellers don’t want this sort of marketing, and they would prefer to sell it exclusively. If you plan to do online marketing, make sure you have those rights outlined in listing agreement.

Now, lets get into marketing your listing. The home base for your listing is your local listing service. Here in Ontario that is MLS (Multiple Listing Service). This listing contains things like photos, videos, and floor plans, along with basic information such as price, square footage, number of bedrooms etc.

Next, you’ll want to start sharing your listing on the most popular social media websites such as YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. Let’s start with YouTube, as it’s the platform with the most users. Uploading your listing video to YouTube isn’t hard, but there are some unique steps you’ll need to take in order to make sure your video reaches the most people.

Ensure you have a catchy title and thumbnail, and remember to include tags to improve your video’s searchability. For thumbnails, you can make them yourself with Photoshop or Canva, or you can hire a designer to help you. Also, remember to include details about the property in the description. If you want to increase engagement, a pinned comment asking a question to your audience is great way to encourage that.

Next let’s talk about Facebook. When posting your listing on Facebook you’ll want to make at least two posts, one for the video, and one for the photos. Just like on YouTube you should include a thumbnail, description, and tags. Facebook allows for longer form videos, it also allows for up to 50 photos, but you’ll most likely only need 15 to 20 photos to show the key selling features of the property. Don’t forget to have external photos as well as internal, and you can even include some of the neighborhood and amenities.

Lastly, I want to discuss Instagram. This platform is incredibly popular, and users spend a lot of time browsing on this app, but it is limited in ways that YouTube and Facebook are not, and we should discuss these special rules here.

On Instagram videos are limited to 1 minute, and photos are limited to 10 per post. If you need to show more of the property, consider using a photo collage or including a link to a longer video in your bio. Instagram reels are also a great place to show your property, and this type of content get’s a lot more reach than traditional Instagram posts.

Before we conclude, lets discuss the matter of paid promotion. Of course, you can simply post images and videos of your property online, and it will get some views/comments and maybe even bring in a potential buyer. But if you want more reach, and you want to sell the property faster, paid promotion is available to you.

I recently discussed this matter with one of my clients. They pointed out that if you’re posting your listing on social media, but not promoting it, then you are missing out on a huge opportunity. Their advice was to spend around 100 dollars a day marketing a property that you plan on selling in less than two weeks. To me this was really enlightening especially when you consider the amount of money you stand to make from commission when you sell the property for top dollar.

Thank you again for reading this blog post, if you have any questions, or would like to know more about video marketing for your real estate business, please reach out to Jared today: jared@galaxycreative.ca