Zero agent Property sales with digital & social media
Sales campaign in progress - By June 1600 visits and still no sales inquiries (4 months)
Sales generally very slow in Rural Australia, in our case a S/D ratio of 5 visitors per property
|
A case study of our zero agent property sale
Today I at 4.45 pm I was listening to drive by 3AW in Melbourne. The topic was selling your property on twitter. It was an attention grabber, but it really worked. The guy interviewed was a digital media wizard and created a highly successful digital media ad campaign. How ? He used everything from website to youtube to blogging and twittering. Don't know the details, but it was a huge success. The vendor did communicate the feel of living in this property in his blog. He also illustrated the beauty of experiencing the seasons in this property in word and picture. Something your normal agent never picks up on. He went down that path after everything else had failed. Watch our own digital media advertizing campaign We are selling a country property about 2 1/2 hours away from Melbourne. Our strategy Run a sales campaign in parallel to LJ Hookers campaign. We get the best of both worlds for an extra $ 1200.- "No agent" would be a misnomer, we use a zero commission agent who charges a small upfront fee of <10% of an agent's commission.
Why do we use a go between agent ? Because http://realestate.com.au , the Australian market leader only accepts agents as advertisers on their site. |
 forsaleforlease - click here RE-LISTED on FRIDAY 10 FEB 2012
Sales / Ad Campaign Status update Wed 29 Feb 2012 youtube 41 views, text redesigned Wed 29 Feb 2012 realestate.com.au 501 visits (w3) ______________________________________ Selling Property on Twitter (Google: 1 hit, 2 ads) Ad1 NoAgent Ad2: Sell my castle Ezynes: Down to earth investment advise from Helen Collier-K |
|
________________________________________________________________________
HERE ARE OUR AD CAMPAIGN DETAILS SO FAR Step 1 Make an amateur video tour and stick it on youtube. Result: Disappointing (Only about 150 hits in 2 years, no inquiries) Expected result: 1000 hits in 3 months Corrective action: Make a slide show with upbeat music and write better Sales copy and Step2 Build a website and ask LJHooker to set up links Result: failure (They said that they could not post URL's). Corrective action: List with ForsaleforLease and get access to http://realestate.com.au See step 3 for results Step3: Spend $800 and sign up with forsaleforlease for an unlimited sales campaign . Done 10 Feb 2012. Gone life Fr 11 Feb 2012. Off to a good start. Over 300 hits in just 10 days, that's very good for Glenmaggie. Over there you get about 6 online visits per property as opposed to over 20 where I live. The property has great views, but has only a 2 BR house on 10 acres, which makes it hard to sell anywhere near the asking price of $337k. Result: excellent view count - 500 views in less than 3 weeks (above average for country Victoria) Still in place #2 for relevance with Glenmaggie search on http://realestate.com.au, no need to spend an extra $250pm to get priority listing with http://realestate.com.au . Step4: Clean up the place and remove clutter ! TBD ________________________________________________________________________ Summary of Taking forsaleforlease on a test drive. So far a good experience. Effective, responsive and the software did what it was meant to do. I am very happy to see my website linked up and my videos as well. Now we get hits where it really matters, that is on realestate.com. Today we are on 368 visits in less than 2 weeks. The old campaign has taken more than a year to achieve 1922 visits. Over 500 Visits in less than 3 weeks. Check out my property sales website below. The slideshow was made with animoto and the pictures where edited with picnik @ flickr http://heyfield-lake-glenmaggie-cummins.weebly.com Edited 1 March 2012 ____________________________________________________________ Update 21 June So far 1605 visitors per property. 1600 visits in about 4 months. No sales inquiries. Sales price is too high for a very slow market ! Some negative feedback is that telephone inquiries are getting poorly serviced. Its a one man band and the service is located in the US and support is given 9 to 5 our time. In some instances even the message bank did not kick in and there is no agent name or mobile number displayed. In case messages are left, then the action is a courtesy call to the inquirer (I hope) and an email connect notice to the vendor. Hence it is best to actually use the email service in the first place. Email is good, because all email inquiries get automatically redirected to the owner. 4S4L should make that clear online or improve the service. ___________________________________________________________________________________________ Q&A How useful is social media in selling real estate ? Some people have started to use ebay, youtube and facebook to sell their properties. This is not a bad idea for a complimentary campaign, but on its own it would usually not get enough attention. The same holds true for building a personal sales website. It will only make sense for a complimentary website or a rather unique property (such as a celebrity estate). How useful is a website / blog / video ? It can be quite useful due to greater freedom and space to communicate every aspect of the property and its environs. Again on its own its use is limited, but combined with all other avenues it is powerful. A website has the additional advantage of tracking the depth of the visitors interest. I recommend it for luxury properties as well as hard to sell country properties. |
|
