The opposing messages are crystal clear
Everyday I drive to work I see the sign on the right competing with the sign on the left.
The original traditional real estate post and sign on the right was knocked down nearly every week due to our blustery weather. Finally, probably in frustration or embarrassment or both, the owner or agent drove two treated 4×4’s into the ground, nailed a piece of plywood up and nailed or stapled the “For sale sign” on top along with the special features cascading below. To boot, if you look closely at the grainy picture, you can see the actual for sale sign down on the ground again.
Both of these homes are high end properties. Both are listed well over a million. Perhaps Robbie’s prior post regarding Realtor/Broker budgeting on technology and marketing is quite true.
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So true, so true! Team Reba spends a good chunk each year on technology for marketing purposes and for running our business. Heck, we just spent about $5k on a new server and the new Microsoft CRM tool. To heck with our old Agent Office product and I didn’t want to spend the money on Top Producer either.
The point you make here though about conveying quality is important. I’m frequently shocked by the lack of quality shown in listings with respect to photos, comments, data input, and more. If so many agents are using digital photography then why aren’t they learning how to use them more effectively? Have they somehow missed the memo that photos are what gets prospective buyers to go look at a home in person? That listings with more than 6 photos have more hits than those without or with only 1 or 2? It’s a shame that clients let the agents get away with it. Most all of the materials we put out to help with advertising a client’s listing get run by the client first to make sure they approve of the quality of the work and that there are no mistakes or clerical errors about the data.
For our own upgrade in quality services we’re rolling a out a new listing service program that we’ve cultivated over the past year and I’m excited to see how it goes once we go full force. In 2006 it helped us gain around $4 million in new listing business and client feedback has been tremendous. So far all the professionals I’ve worked with have told us that they know of no one that does as much as we do to show value for our service fees and that makes me feel pretty good.
That’s some hot marketing!
As a follow up comment on Reba’s comment regarding the photos used in a listing, I have just submitted an article on this subject to Rain City Guide that should appear soon if it’s not already posted. From the perspective of a realtor who does his or job well, the bad ones at least serve to make them look good and set them apart. So in some respects, they are performing a service, but certainly not to their client. 🙂 And this probably applies to just about any service industry.
And the clients of the bad one’s must simply not know. But not always. As a real estate photographer I have received a couple of calls from clients who were not happy with their realtor’s photos of their property and paid for the photography out of their own pocket. Now, I would think that would be an embarrassment to the realtor.
Sorry about the typo. ‘his or her job well’