Brian Balduf is the CEO of VHT Studios.
Every week, we ask a real estate professional for their Short List, a collection of tips and recommendations on an essential topic in real estate. This week, we talked with Brian Balduf, the CEO of VHT Studios, who shared his tips for marketing like a modern day mad man.
With today’s real estate market growing fiercer, agents may want to steal a page from a popular TV series for turning prospects into clients. How do the marketing pioneers in the AMC series Mad Men score clients from their Madison Avenue rivals? They use creative, vivid visuals that capture their prospects’ attention and emotions, and motivate them to act.
Unfortunately, many real estate marketing tools in use today – printed brochures, paper folders and sell sheets – turned heads in Don Draper’s late 1960s era, but not today. It’s time to for agents to stay competitive with high-tech online and mobile tools, stunning visuals and next-generation storytelling – to wow prospective clients. Here are 10 strategies to grow your business by marketing like a modern Mad Man:
10. A home is the most expensive asset your prospect will ever sell. They will want to work with a marketing maven who uses the best material – professional photography, top graphics and great design. Partner with professionals to present yourself as one of the best marketers around.
9. Make your personal website look just as great as top brand sites by hiring a Web designer that has the experience to create a big brand feel. Your designer will have to translate that into a responsive Web design as well so that it’s mobile ready; your site is your prospects’ first experience with your personal brand, and a majority of Web users will visit your site from a mobile phone or tablet.
8. When pitching a prospect, be strategic – be selective with the number of photographs that you show clients to. Prioritize areas of the home prospects care about most: kitchen, living room, master bedroom and bath, landscaping, and home theaters.
7. Are you using Pinterest to attract new clients? A recent survey showed over 80 percent of active female Pinterest users trusted the site for information and advice – more than Twitter and Facebook. Also, nearly half of women social networkers said Pinterest influenced a purchase decision.
6. Move beyond your printouts and folders. With wifi-enabled high definition televisions in most living rooms, you can use your prospects’ 60-inch TV to showcase your presentation. Take the time to learn how devices such as Apple TV can stream your presentation from your tablet or iPad to the big screen.
5. Can’t use a big screen? How about a high-def mobile tablet or notebook to show potential clients great photographs of your past listings? The prices of these devices have come down, and they are easy to carry with screens that can really impress prospects.
4. Ease clients’ worries about photographing their home on a cloudy day. There’s no need to wait for sunshine when image editing can turn grey skies to blue and brown grass to green.
3. Starting a Facebook community page can make you a go-to resource about the schools, local businesses, shops, restaurants and events in the community in which you live and work. With a few posts each week, you can enhance your reputation as a community resource.
2. How do you manage all of your social media? Use social content management tools, such as HootSuite and Buffer, to stay on top of your interactions, as well as schedule posts on the different networks.
1. Impress clients with your attention to detail by offering interactive floor plans that help them walk through the home without visiting. Use beautiful photographs that link to a virtual floor plan to give prospective buyers a real feel of the listing. Look at the layout, click on the kitchen and, voila, you’re virtually standing in front of the sink!
While using data about past sales and days on market establishes your expertise and credibility, a great portfolio with stunning visuals will help you close the deal, get the listing and boost referrals to keep prospects coming through your door.
Brian Balduf is CEO of VHT Studios, the nation’s leading provider of exceptional real estate photography and marketing services, delivering to real estate agents their most powerful selling tool – high-quality photography – as well as innovative and reliable solutions for sharing and distributing multi-media content when and wherever real estate professionals need it. Learn more at https://www.vhtstudios.com/gowithapro.