In A Box is A Box Unless You Sell it as a Home, I discussed how to build a quality property listing with a unique selling proposition, photos, video, exclusive designation, a digital link to print SPH Classified, and adhering to SRX Property’s 5-star listing quality rating system.
But, as I mentioned, putting together a quality listing is just the beginning of what it takes to sell a box as a home. You and your agent must also promote your home to the public and break through a very noisy listing market.
Any new technology has its advantages and disadvantages. Digital marketing has been positive for the real estate market in that it has allowed agents to improve the quality and reach of their listing. It has been negative in that it’s relatively inexpensive to post listings in the digital space so there has been a proliferation of listings, most of them duplicate, open listings and some of them ghost listings.
Improved Quality and Reach
As mentioned in last week’s column, digital marketing can offer much more space and features than print advertisement. Home buyers and renters can interact with a listing in ways that is impossible with a three line classified. For example, they can review videos, photos, maps, and lengthy descriptions of features and amenities. In addition, agents can use digital listings and CVs to establish their expertise and track record, giving consumers more confidence in them.
Later I will demonstrate how digital marketing is improving the reach of your home listing. Reach is the fancy marketing term for how many people read or see your listing.
Market Noise
The downside of the digital revolution in real estate (and other industries) is the level of noise in the market. There are so many more channels in which your agent can promote your listing.
Also, inexpensive media channels, like Internet property portals, have led to the proliferation of listings. Since it is relatively cheap to put unlimited numbers of listings on the portals, there is a tremendous amount of noise in the market. Noise is the fancy communication term that means it is difficult to get one’s message out, even when that message is important and promotes something of quality.
Internet property portals have made it cheap and easy for agents to post inferior listings, duplicate other agents’ listings even though the former have little or no relationship with the owners, and, in some cases, promote listings (i.e., ghost listings) that do not exist.
Overcoming the Noise in the Market and Extending Your Digital Reach
The Marketing Ecosystem for Property Listings consists of all the advertising outlets available for promoting a property listing in Singapore.
As you can see from the graphic below, there are more advertising outlets in the digital age than ever before. More outlets means more noise. More noise means it’s harder to distinguish your home from other listings.
Also, if you want to maximize your reach, you must promote your property listing on all the outlets. The reason for this is simple. People no longer get their news and property information from only one source (i.e., the Straits Times). Study after study show that people pick and choose where they get information. Some still get news from traditional sources like the newspaper or television but more and more people are getting information from Internet property portals and social networks like Facebook and WeChat.
What does it mean for people trying to sell their home? If you want to maximize your reach, you must be everywhere in the marketing ecosystem for listings.
The good news is that the digital age makes it possible for your property agent to provide you one-stop shopping for all your promotional needs.
SRX Property, STProperty, and SPH, Singapore’s leading media company, have integrated so that it is possible for your agent to upload your property listing on a computer or smart phone and cover the entire ecosystem.
Here’s how it works. You give your agent an exclusive to market your home. She sends a video team down to your home to film a V360 virtual tour. She uploads the video, photos, and unique selling points into SRX Circles, an agent console. Meanwhile, she secures a spot in Straits Times and Zao Bao Classifieds. She receives a code that links the Classified advertisement to advertisements on SRX.com.sg and STProperty.sg. Because she has done all of this work, your listing receives a 5-star rating and qualifies for near – if not the top – of the first page of the search results on SRX.com.sg and STProperty.sg.
Meanwhile, she automatically posts your listing on Facebook and promotes your home with close colleagues (i.e., word-of-mouth and events). Next, she exchanges information (i.e., co-brokes) with the entire agent population via the mobile application Agent Connect and Internet webapp SRX Circles. Both of the applications have tools that make it easy to target and communicate with potential buyer agents.
At the same time, assuming she is an SRX Analyzer expert, she is eligible to promote your listing as part of features, eNewsletters to over 330,000 subscribers, X-TV and other media outlets.
In summary, property advertising has changed because there are so many more outlets. As a result, the ecosystem looks more complicated. However, a smart real estate agent knows how to take advantage of software applications to place your home throughout the ecosystem.