Ninja Selling Podcast "Okay" Is Not Good Enough: Taking Your Listing Marketing to the Next Level
Today's "Quick Hit" episode looks at the importance of taking your listing marketing seriously. A recent study by Inman reviewed 25,000 listings across Zillow and Realtor.com, and found that the vast majority of real estate listings lack good visuals, with only 10% of single family home listings including a floor plan, less than 30% of the photos on the listings meeting best practices, and 94% offering no video or virtual tour whatsoever. This is a huge missed opportunity for agents, and today Matt and Garrett explain why. Lack of floor plans, poorly lit, grainy or upside-down photos, and "just okay" online listings give the impression of unprofessionalism, and tell potential buyers that you are "just okay" as an agent as well. As Garrett points out, you want to give your listing every opportunity possible to be the "cream puff" people will want to check out right away.
Matt and Garrett break down the many excuses they hear agents make for not taking their listing marketing to the next level, beginning with the expense of hiring a professional. Hiring a skilled photographer will make your listing truly shine. This will not only help your current listings sell faster, but it will also attract more business as it speaks to the kind of quality work and attention to detail you offer. Next, they discuss the importance of a floor plan as it helps potential buyers visualize themselves in the home after they've walked away from it, and can even limit potential barriers for them putting in an offer.
Hiring professionals to include exceptional visuals in your listing sets the stage for who you are as an agent. It also ensures that you're making the best use of your time by keeping the focus on phone calls and other important Ninja systems. And at the end of the day, it isn't an expense - it's an investment in your business that will pay you back over and over again.
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Episode Highlights:
- Today's "Quick Hit" episode looks at the trend of people not taking their listing marketing seriously
- It's important to be a professional and show up for your clients to make their listing as attractive as possible (e.g., professional photography, getting floor plans done, putting together a virtual tour)
- A study conducted by Inman searched 25,000 listings across Zillow and Realtor.com and found that the vast majority of real estate listings lack good visuals
- Only 10% of the single family home listings had a floor plan, less than 30% of the photos on the listings met best practices, and 94% had no video or virtual tour
- More and more people are using professional photography
- Floor plans are very important as well, but a lot of agents make excuses for not using them
- Floor plans help potential buyers visualize themselves in the home when they're away from it
- This is a huge missed opportunity
- With photos, even if the quality or lighting are slightly off, it can give the impression that no attention to detail was paid and cast doubt in buyers' minds
- Give your listing every opportunity possible to be the "cream puff" that people will want to go check out
- It's okay to hire professionals to help you do this
- Make your listing "shine"
- This will not only help your current listings sell better, but it will help you attract more as it shows what kind of high quality work you do
- Understand your dollar per hour as a real estate agent
- Even if you're a great photographer, it's a much better use of your time to be on the phone than to be taking listing photos yourself
- It is absolutely better to hire a professional in these cases, and it also limits your stress
- If you're not including floor plans or you're using poor quality photos, it speaks to your lack of process and conveys unprofessionalism
- Photos that look "okay" are not good enough, especially when it doesn't cost a lost of money to make them exceptional
- Every single thing you put out there relates to who you are as a business
- If a photo is just "okay," people will think you are just "okay" as a realtor, too
- Hiring a professional to do the floor plan or take exceptional photos takes it to the next level and sets the stage for who you are as a professional
- It's not an expense, it's an investment in your business
- Floor plans can help eliminate potential barriers to buyers putting in an offer
- There's no excuse for not having a floor plan - Home Depot and Lowe's offer them
- Again, just because you can do it doesn't mean you should - there is a better use of your time
Quotes:
"It's one of those things that they are starting to document more now, they are starting to pay attention to more now. And it's funny that people still don't show up and do it. And we watch people cut corners all the time."
"[This study by Inman] searched 25,000 listings across Zillow and Realtor.com and found that only 10% of the single family home listings had a floor plan, less than 30% of the photos on the listings met best practices, whether they were done 'professionally' or not. And 94% had no video or virtual tour."
"My first installation that I went to, Larry talked a lot about floor plans. And still to this day, so many Ninjas don't use floor plans - Well, we don't need that. Well, I don't know where to get that. Well, nobody will do that. And it's just the excuses that come out. I love a good floor plan. It makes it so much easier to understand a home and connect with it at a different level."
"Give that listing every opportunity it has to be the 'cream puff'. And if you're the weak link in it, figure it out! Go hire a professional to take you out of the equation. And it's okay to be the weak link. I don't want you to all become professional photographers - you're professional real estate agents."
"Part of this isn't even just making your listing shine so that they sell better and all that. It's also, if your listing shines online, as Larry [Kendall] says, people are going to see that. And so the next listing pitch that you go on, they're going to see what type of work you do."
"More of you are $1,000 per hour people than you realize."
"There's a better use of your time in this industry that you're in. I would much rather you be on the phone calling people for that whole time... You will pay for your photographer over and over and over again by you not being there."
"If you're not putting some of these things up, what it says to me is you don't have a process. There is not a process. There is not a marketing plan that exists, at least not a high quality one, when it comes to you launching a listing."
"If a listing gets launched with 10 photos, and one of them is an upside-down photo, or it's just 10 photos, and they're grainy, if there's no floor plan listed in the documents - it just shows to me that you're not using a good process. And that's not somebody that I'd want to work with as a professional."
"Even the ones where those photos look okay - okay is not good enough when it comes to this, because it doesn't cost a lot of money to make them exceptional."
"Every single thing that you put out, whether you are directly putting it out, you're directly having a conversation with somebody, or it's a piece of marketing that goes out directly, relates to who you are as a business."
"When you bring in a professional to take care of it for you, when you take that little extra step to have it done at that level… This is your opportunity to set the stage of who you are as a business owner."
"At the end of the day, every single dollar you put into this is an investment into your business. It is not an expense because every single dollar you put into this will help you get more business. It will help you be more successful."
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