Real Estate Marketing "F-ort" Part 2

It's expected that you're going to get a box of flyers in the front yard and this sounds like an easy enough task for any agent worth their salt.  Truth is, most real estate agents don't have the skills to do this in a manner which best represents your residential real estate. They often don't even attempt to provide you with color flyers as to save themselves a few pennies per flyer.

With color copies constantly on sale at any office supply store or even strip mall mailbox shops for 39 cents there's no excuse not to have color flyers.  Some agents will start with 30 or so color flyers just to impress you a little but once the nosey neighbors grab those few then it's black and white flyers from then until the listing expires.

In today's ad driven society, without color and decent photography (I'll touch on photography later) of your real estate offering you're as good as invisible. Let's imagine for a second that you're in the grocery store and in the market for a can of soup.  You stand there pondering all of the delicious possibilities of 200 varieties.  You finally make your decision.  It's my prediction that you didn't select the brand with the white label, black lettering and without the steamy soup bowl photography.  Hmmm, I wonder why.  It's because your impression of that brand didn't create a sense of warmth, fulfillment, quality and eventual satisfaction.  No matter how big and bold they made those letters or how many fonts they used or even if they had a black and white photo of a steamy bowl of soup you're just not buying.  

Now think in terms of todays real estate market.  Hundreds if not thousands of buyer choices but only one will make them feel a certain way.  There's just one that caught their eye when they saw the good photography online.  There's only one that had a memorable color flyer that was well designed and stood out from the 20 others they collected that Sunday afternoon.  My hope is that one house for sale they recalled and fell in love with was yours.

The first impression of your home could be that black and white soup can label style marketing the agent has graciously spent 4 cents a copy on.  Don't expect a positive reaction especially in this market.  Again, our natural selection theory we presented in part one of this article is at play here.

The point here is that home buyers are currently few and far between so don't miss the opportunity because your agent in scraping by on 4 cent black and white flyers.  And just one more thing when your discussing real estate marketing services with your agent, make sure they know how to spell or use spell check.  Nothing more embarrassing for you and the real estate agent than typos on your flyer.

There's not a lot I can say about real estate marketing signs. On the one hand, going with a more well known real estate chain can add a level of confidence for the seller.  Of course you're going to end up with one of their homogenized signs that looks exactly like the other 10 on your street.  Nothing too eye catching about that.  The alternative in going with a smaller more customer focused real estate agency like L&M Property Group with unique signs.  It's not that they use anything amazing like a glow in the dark sign.  It's the fact that their brand and color scheme is going to stand out in a sea of Remax signs at the entrance to your neighborhood.  I think it shouts, "there's something unique here, have a look!"

This concludes part two of Real Estate Marketing F-ort.  Subscribe to my real estate blog to ensure you get the remaining chapters.  In the meantime, contact me if you are in the Atlanta area or are relocation to Atlanta.  I would appreciate the opportunity to discuss being your realtor.