7 Successful Strategies for Promoting an Open House
Open houses are a lot of work especially ones with lavish patios. It’s one of the reasons why only a handful of real estate agents use it as a marketing strategy. While open houses take a lot of time and effort to organize, they can generate an impressive number of leads in a few hours.
However, much of your event’s success depends on your ability to promote it effectively. In the age of technology, you need to tailor your promotional strategies to your audience.
From the channels you use to the messages you put out there, they must all take into account where your audience is, their behaviors, and how they want to engage with you.
To give you a headstart, we put together 7 tried-and-tested techniques you can use to make your open house a roaring success.
1. Video Emails
Give your prospects a sneak peek of the house you’re hosting by pre-recording a video of the house and embedding it in your email invitations. The house tour video should focus on the best attributes of the house, including standard details, and the perks of purchasing a property in the neighborhood.
Don’t forget to add vital information concerning the location, time, and contact information in your call-to-action (CTA).
Professional-looking videos build credibility and look better. If you’re not comfortable working with video, you can hire a videographer who will shoot, edit, and deliver a video file that you can share online.
Why video? Eighty-one percent of real estate agents say a professionally staged video makes it easier for buyers to visualize a home. A virtual tour can give your prospects insight into what it’s like to live in the house while making your invitation more appealing.
2. Run a Facebook or Instagram Livestream
Use the fact that people want what other people want to your advantage. Instead of creating a video of an empty house for your marketing campaign, have a live stream on Facebook or Instagram showing a house full of interested buyers. You can do this during your open house to make the property more attractive and seem more valuable.
Virtual open houses can be game-changers. They allow you to reach out to a wider audience and create additional engagement from people who are interested in buying. You’ll cover more ground and generate more interest than you would if you were to show the house to them individually.
With live streams, you can capture the attention of your target audience without visiting the house numerous times or hosting several open houses. It’s a win-win.
3. Build a Single Property Site
Potential buyers visit several open houses and compare various listings before they make an offer. To make sure your listing stands out, build a single property website that focuses on the many aspects of the house with photos and relevant information. You can also use Pinterest boards to promote your photos.
Easily format and add text to your photos with PosterMyWall’s collection of real estate templates. If you prefer going old-school with flyers, find a template you like, customize it with your own photos and text, and you’re done! No need to outsource to a graphic designer.
4. Advertise on Social Networks
Advertising through Facebook, Instagram, and AdWords can help you reach a wider audience while increasing brand awareness. You can narrow down or broaden your search based on the market or areas you’re targeting.
The big social media platforms mentioned above have made advertising on their sites accessible to small businesses, including realtors and you can flaunt everything from fence planters to appliances.
You’ll find that there’s a lot to consider starting from your objectives, your campaign settings, to how you measure your campaign’s success. It’s therefore a good idea to familiarize yourself with the different ways you can advertise a property before launching (and paying) for any social media campaign.
5. Follow Up
Make sure that you can follow up on the leads your open house generates by asking all your visitors to register by signing in. Ask for all their pertinent contact information as well as how they prefer to be contacted.
As a rule of thumb, you can follow up with interested parties the day after your event and up to 14 days after. If you do it any later, you risk losing your buyer’s attention who might forget which house you’re referring to.
If you’re using email to follow a lead, reference the location of the house and mention defining characteristics. Since buyers visit numerous properties, it’s important that they remember you and know which ones you represent.
6. Stay Old School
Sure, digital marketing is all the rage in the advertising industry but don’t let it keep you from exploring traditional yet effective marketing strategies like word of mouth, cultivating key business relationships, and print media.
At the end of the day, most real estate deals are still closed after a physical inspection of the house and a good handshake. There’s nothing like good business relationships and credibility.
7 Keep Your Open House Promotions Solid
Promoting open houses in real estate used to rely on flyers, newspapers ads, signs, and other forms of offline advertising. While these tried-and-tested methods still work, don’t overlook the potential of the internet and social media to quickly amplify your efforts.
Some of the online resources have a higher learning curve than others. However, sites like PosterMyWall will have you up and running in no time so you can focus on distributing your materials instead of creating them from scratch.
The best strategy for promoting an open house combines the old and reliable methods with new ones to make marketing more efficient while expanding your reach.
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