How to Market Homes Even on the Internet

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Matthew Ferrara

Matthew Ferrara is CEO of Matthew Ferrara & Company, a technology organization that delivers training, consulting and technical support to real estate companies worldwide. For more than 15 years, he has been a driving force for real estate technology innovation. Matthew pioneered an approach to technology that focuses on objective advice, in-depth skill training and world-class technical support. Please visit http://www.matthewferrara.com/ or call 800-253-2350.

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How to Market Homes Even on the Internet

Written by Matthew Ferrara

Marketing dominates the real estate brokerage process. It is used to promote companies, generate leads, sell homes and swap referrals. Marketing is also what most agents think they are doing when they put properties in newspapers, on postcards and even on the web. Yet this isn’t really marketing. And real estate professionals need to learn how to do marketing, at least better than advertising, especially online.

ADVERTISING IS NOT MARKETING
Let’s start by making a critical distinction. Marketing and advertising are different. Placing a property in the newspaper or on the web is not marketing. Actually, it’s advertising. Writing clever classifieds that describe homes in terms of “BRs” and “BAs” and “FROGs” (family room over garage) is the worst form of advertising. Publishing a listing on a website as a laundry list of specifications, sizes, mortgage estimates and taxes is also advertising. It’s no different than the kind of advertising that catalogs use to sell products like tires or toasters. Most of this advertising is extraordinarily ineffective.

Marketing real estate is something completely different than advertising it.Especially when it’s online.

Marketing homes has little to do with the home’s specifications and more to do with the home’s opportunities. Almost every buyer will sacrifice some features in a property, as long as the overall opportunities matchtheir desires.

That’s the flaw with internet advertising in real estate. Everybody’s focused on marketing the specifications. The assumptionis thatthe house with a larger living room will outperform one with a smaller room. Yet nobody ever demonstrates people actually living in the living room. More ghastly are the homes advertised without furniture – as if the buyers are supposed to use their imagination. Marketing professionals know that a blank page – or just a product shot – is a very iffy strategy. Where real estate marketing has been reduced to advertising,then it all becomes a matter of whose stuff is bigger, better or snazzier. And that’s why most internet advertising is so dismally ineffective, because the consumer doesn’t buy stuff!

Decisions rarely about “stuff”
Homebuyers may need some “stuff” such as a certain number of bedrooms for their children or a certain city for the schools. But their decision to buy the home is rarely about the actual stuff. Instead, it’s almost always emotional – a response not to the stuff, but to the value they would gain if they lived in the home.

Make values searchable, not product
The real distinction between real estate advertising and marketing can be found on almost every broker’s website. If homes are considered commodities, then home specifications are used for search criteria. If, on the other hand, homes are considered opportunities to experience, then the site will feature tools to sort by lifestyle. The consumer’s values become searchable, not the product. When was the last time you saw a real estate site that could be focused by criteria like, I’m a new buyer, I’m a retiree, I’m a musician, I’m an equestrian, and so on?

Nope, it’s all just stuff. And as every experienced agent knows, consumers do not buy stuff; they buy emotionally. That means they buy values. Until brokers start marketing each home’s values online, they’ll be at the mercy of the competing inventory, whose stuff may be more competitive than their stuff.

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