A Quick Summary of how we market our homes
Our Dot Com Advantages ...
Of course, we belong to and strongly believe in Realtor.com and the Multiple Listing Service, but we don't depend on them to find the buyers for our homes! Realtor.com is bloated, often inaccurate, frustrating to work with, and only provides a minimum of information on any listing. Buyers today are searching on a multitude of search engines including Google. At the same time we are branding our company name locally, we are spending the money marketing our homes to the world! Anyone, from anywhere in the world, with an Internet connection can easily find our homes just by typing in and of the following domain names in their URL locator ...
If the agent tells you they do have an Internet marketing program, ask them to show you (not tell you) how many people are visiting their site every week. We track that information very closely along with what day of the week most people are visiting, what time of day most people are visiting, and of course, where the visitors are coming from. By the way, if you would like to see where the visitors to our site came from last week alone, Just click here!
Effective Internet marketing programs start with good domain names, and those don't come "cheap". Our most recent domain name purchase, allentexas.com, cost us $8,000 alone! We never wasted our time with catchy names like "tomshomes.com", "buyahomefromtom.com" or any of those other "ABC.com" names that mean nothing to anyone except the person who owns them. How in the world is anyone ever going to find a home posted on a site with names like those?
There is another powerful advantage we have over the competition by owning all of these dot com city domain names. Even the most novice Internet user probably know about Google, the world's most popular search engine. Google keeps their secrets about the algorithms they use to rank companies on their site, but there is no question that the number of visitors is one of the main factors in determining placement. The name of the game on the Internet always has been and always will be to get your website on the very first page. Most people just don't look any further than that.
Once people find our site, we want them to keep coming back. We make sure our site is fresh, updated daily, and full of good information. The only thing worse than not having a website is having a stale or inaccurate website! We are continually updating and replacing older sales with new sales. Hardly a day goes by when we are not adding a listing, announcing the sale of a listing, changing a price on a listing, or posting pertinent area information to our site. We sometimes make 3-4 changes a day to our site during the busy season. Every single day we feature a new listing on our front page with a Flash presentation to keep all of our homes in the public eye.
We turn over every stone to make sure we are continually capturing Internet traffic locally and from all over the world! Once people find us, we keep them coming back. Hopefully, they will buy a home from us some day!
You might notice we update our "homes on market" data weekly on our site. You will always see the date when that information was posted. Look at the other websites out there. If the agents do provide some kind of market information, see if there is a date associated with it. If not, the information could very well have been sitting there unchanged for months. And in a fast moving market like we have, old information is of no use to anyone, buyers or sellers alike.
If you are interested, you can even see how many hits each home on our website is receiving on a daily basis. Just look at the very bottom of the first page on every one of our listings and you will see a hit counter. Once that hit counter is placed on our site and set at zero, we will never touch it again.
Nothing happens on its own, whether it is selling a home or keeping a website current and accurate. We have to make it happen. We are continually updating information on our homes, on the cities in which we specialize, on the schools, the marketing statistics, etc. I cannot remember the last day we did not make at least one addition to our site, and most days we are on 4-5 times keeping everything fresh and updated. We never know how or when the next buyer or seller is going to find us, so we always want our site and our homes to be at their best. I have often said, the only thing worse than not having a website at all is a stale website.
You have probably seen hundreds of real estate websites by now. With the exception of new listings, those websites might not have changed in a year. The home presentations all look exactly the same ... maybe 9 or 10 tiny pictures, a virtual tour, a brief description of the home, and the room sizes. That's it. It might take their webmaster 10 minutes to pop all of that information into their stamped out template. Sellers deserve more than that.
On the other side of the spectrum, it takes us about 20 HOURS to put together one complete marketing presentation for a home on our website. And keep this in mind ... regardless of the price, we market all of our homes with the same amount of pride and effort. We don't have different levels of service based on the price of the home.
We are not just selling homes on our site, we are selling our areas. This is a one-stop source for anyone wanting to learn about these cities. From the current number of homes on the market by price point, to taxes or water costs, and even schools, our site is always updated with the most current information. We know without question that today's professionals are looking on their own for homes on the Internet. They have high speed Internet access at their office, home, or both and when they get the urge, they can surf the entire web from the comfort of their home. We want to be ready for them when they find us, and if the are looking in this area, they will! Whether it's the MLS, Realtor.com, our many city domain names, our multitude of signs on listed properties, or even Google ... if people can't find our website, they aren't looking. And once people find our site, they continue to come back. This is all what we mean by our website advantage!
Postcard Mailouts
About once a month, we send out beautiful, oversized postcards on one of our recent home sales to about 4,000 homeowners within Fairview, Lucas, McKinney, Parker, Prosper, and Richardson. These cost our company about $1,500 per mail-out, so they are not inexpensive. Why do it?
The homeowners who receive our cards may already be looking for another home in the area, either larger or smaller than their current home. They may want more land or less land. They may want a larger home or smaller home. More expensive or less expensive.
We have sold homes to people living in Allen who wanted to move to Fairview. We have sold homes in Prosper to people who started looking in Fairview. We have also sold homes in Richardson to people moving out of Fairview. People tend to move within the same general area and we have a good mix of properties in all of these cities. Although it is expensive, we can tell you first hand that local marketing works or we wouldn't be going to the expense.
If you call an agent from a postcard, your most important questions should be "OK, you found me, but how are you going to market my home outside of my neighborhood? What are you going to do to introduce my home to the world?" If the agent says they rely on the multiple listing service and Realtor.com to find their buyers, they have no Internet marketing program of their own.
Our Signs and QR Codes
You
might
already have noticed QR codes on all different types of printed media, from
newspapers to merchandise.
They are very similar to bar codes.
These codes can direct anyone with a smart phone
(or Ipad with camera) to a specific site on the Internet.
For instance, the QR code you see below will take
you right to our main home page if you scan it.
There
are hundreds of free apps anyone can download to read these
codes. If you have a smart phone
(like the Android, Iphone, Blackberry, etc.), all you have to do is open the
software and point it at the QR code.
This is the future of
Internet marketing. We were the
first to use this technology in the Lovejoy area. We like being on the
leading edge with our marketing.
So how does this help
us market YOUR home? As of 2011,
31% of all American cell phone users are smart phones.
Those numbers are already staggering, but it’s only the tip of the
iceberg. Some day in the not too
distant future, it will be difficult to find a cell phone that
isn’t a smart phone with a
camera.
Our signs are specially
modified to carry the QR code for each individual property we are marketing.
Other Realtors may or may not have a QR code on their signs, but if they
do, you can be sure they direct you to their main home page.
But that only takes the visitor half way home.
From there, they then have to find the home they are sitting in front of.
Our QR codes are all designed
specifically for that particular
property. When you drive up
to any of our signs and scan the QR code, you will find yourself at the portion
of our website dedicated to THAT home.
We are selling the home, not ourselves to potential buyers.
This
technology means the end of cheesy flyer
boxes that are either, the information is out-dated, or the print quality is
terrible. You can see our listings
in full color on your phone, laptop, netbook, anything that has an Internet
connection and a camera. You will
see the exact, beautiful presentation of that home on your display as you will
from home on your desktop. Below is
what one of our modified signs looks like …
Our Pictures
You will never find a bad picture of any home on our site! Guaranteed! You will also never see a picture of a home taken on a cloudy day! We have gone to homes three, four, and even five times over a one or two week period to get the right shot with the sun at the right angle. If you do see the picture of a home on a cloudy day, it is because it is a new listing and we are waiting for the sun to come out. Is this overkill? Look at our site, then compare it with the competition
We never use a flash inside the home as you so often see on other sites or the MLS. Flash bulbs cast shadows and reflections, hot spots, and can really make a room unattractive (if not scary). We always work without a flash. That means we have to spend extra time to edit every single inside picture. We give a lot of thought to our pictures. We don't just click and shoot.
If you don't think pictures are a big deal when it comes to selling a home, click here to see some examples? Every single picture that goes onto our site is edited three times. The first edit is a color balance, brightness adjustment, or tonal correction. The second edit requires a re-sampling of the image from a high resolution to a lower resolution (for faster Internet downloads). And the third edit requires the selection of a border color which accentuates the picture. These may seem like little things, but they make a big difference. We are very, very picky about our pictures because they are a reflection of our company as much as they are a portrayal of your home.
Flyers
You will never see flyers in front of our listed homes. We consider this "dinosaur marketing". But you will always see full color, professional flyers left inside the home. Here’s why ...
First, we don’t want a prospective buyer making a decision on a home from the curb. No home can be accurately portrayed on an 8 ½” by 11” sheet of paper. We want buyers to have to go to our website where they can see the home in great detail, see multiple interior and exterior pictures, take the virtual tour, and learn about the area. At the same time, they are seeing all of our other listings which benefits all of our other sellers. Again, we have found that once buyers discover our site, they tend to bookmark it and check back frequently.
There is another reason we leave such detailed flyers inside the homes. We could never expect any other Realtor showing our homes without us to know our homes as well as we do. Our home might be one of 9 or 10 that agent is showing to their buyer that day. The agent and his buyer may or may not notice or appreciate many of the things that the Seller has done to the home, so we make sure the flyers are there for them to pick up. If the buyers like the home, they are going to visit our website to learn more about it and the area. That's where we can really point out all the great features of the home and area. We have unlimited space our server.
We Offer Free Staging Services
Staging can be a very valuable tool. While some homes might need extensive help with staging, others might just need some help in selected areas like closets, studies, etc.
I've said many times, "Everything starts with pictures". Removing distractions and coordinating items in the same room can make a big impact on how a home is presented.
The staging is provided at our cost on every listing, regardless of price. We market all of our homes identically, whether the home is listed for $2 million or $250,000. We don't have different levels of service depending on how much money we are going to make when it sells! If we list your home it's going to be treated with the same great care as all of our others.
We "Sweat" the Details
We have a 50 point checklist of things to do when we obtain a new listing. That checklist remains in front of us every day until every single item is checked off. First, we make sure that everything we are responsible for is done correctly. We then verify that everything that is supposed to be done for us (by Realtor.com and the multiple listing service) is also done correctly. One mistake by anyone along the way can be the kiss of death for that home, and sadly, the seller will never know it because they don't have access to the MLS.
Seller feedback
The #1 complaint we hear from sellers is “We never heard from our Realtor. We never got any feedback. They only called us when the listing was about to expire." That is the infamous "List 'em and Leave 'em" syndrome. Whether your home is being shown or not, you can be sure you will get detailed feedback every week from us including ...
The total number of hits on your home (and all of our other homes) on our website over the past 7 days
The number of hits on your home (and all of our other homes) on the Realtor.com website over the past 7 days
A bar chart showing whether the hits on your home have increased, decreased, or held steady over the past several months
The number of showings on your homes (and all of our other homes) over the past 7 days
Any other new activity on all of our listings
How many homes are currently on the market in each price point
And every other week, we will send a list of all home sales that have taken place in that submarket
Our clients will know as much about their market as we do if they choose to take the time to read these reports. It takes about four hours every week for us to compile and distribute these reports, but our sellers genuinely appreciate it.
When your home is not being shown, sellers need more information, not less. Unfortunately, this is when the less committed agents tend to avoid their sellers. Who wants to make a call to tell a seller "Well, no showings again this week?" The seller knows that already, so they probably aren't happy. The last thing the agent wants to do is call a seller and explain why the home wasn't shown. Chances are, they don't know why. So what happens? The agents lose contact with the seller and the seller feels like a mushroom in a closet.
What We Don't Do
Sign-in Sheets
We don't put out "sign-in sheets" for a good reason. We consider that dinosaur marketing (much like leaving flyers in front of a home). If a buyer walks into a home and sees a sign-in sheet with the names of 50 people who have walked through it, what does that say to that buyer and the buyer's Realtor? And what if the home has been on the market for 2-3 months and there are only 3 names on the sign-in sheet. What does that tell the buyer or their agent? We know who is going through our homes. We are immediately notified by our showing service prior to every showing so why tip our hand to the buyers?
Public and Realtor Open Houses
Open houses are dangerous to the agents, they are dangerous to the personal property in the homes, and in our opinion, they just don't work. Who knows who is walking through that home? We prefer to always have an agent with any prospective buyer so there is some accountability.
So why do some agents like open houses? They are hoping they can meet a buyer. They know the chances of any one buyer walking into a home off the street and purchasing it are slim, but if the agent can develop a relationship with that prospect, maybe they can sell them another home. With the web traffic our site generates, we don't have to hold open houses to find buyers.
If you're wondering why we don't do Realtor open houses, .
So Do You Really Need Us?
Of course, only you can answer that question. If none of these things we talked about in this section are important to you, you certainly don't need us. There are thousands and thousands of agents out there who will place your home on the MLS and Realtor.com for you and do it for almost nothing.
But if you believe, as we do, that the professional manner in which we introduce our listings to the world will give your home a distinct advantage over the competition, please give us a call. We're the ones for you!
972-359-1553
Tom Grisak Estate Homes Realtors, Inc - Texas License # 0329533
Your Realtors for Allentexas, Fairviewtexas, Lucastexas, McKinneytexas, Murphytexas, Parkertexas, Richardsontexas