How To Market Your Home Effectively

You have spent your time, efforts and money as necessary to make your home stand out in your neighborhood and now it is ready to put your home on the market. After this stage, the three most important things to do now, are marketing, marketing and marketing. Effective marketing is crucial to your success in selling your home. If you have a very nice home for sale with very good price, but no one knows, you wouldn’t sell it.
 
Therefore, you must spend money and efforts to do effective marketingcampaigns. You have to ask yourself this question: “Which is better, to spend few hundred bucks to market my home for sale or to pay the home mortgage for two to three more months?”, You know the answer better than. The key is whether you do it or not.
 
Please pay attention the word “effective marketing”.  The principal of effective marketing is to spend as little money and efforts as possible to target as many potential buyers as possible. Remember this principal. It is the key for all the successful marketers. The person who knows this principal and practices well makes a fortune.
 
There are many ways to market your home to effectively reach your potential buyers. Following are the steps for the effective marketing:
 
1.       Identify your potential buyers:
First, you need to figure out who are your potential buyers. Based on the price range and location of your home, you can determine who are your potential buyers. For example, if your home is an entry level house, your potential buyers would be most likely the first time buyers who live in the neighboring apartment complexes. If the price range of your home is around the median price in your area, the most likely buyers would be those with a home price one level below, probably with kids. You should know the needs for each group of specific buyers. You should use tailored messages and specific media to target those specific buyers.
 
2.      Select the media for your marketing:
There are several media you can use to market your home. Here they are:
 
a.       Online marketing.
Almost all the homes for sale are using online marketing now. It is one of the cheapest ways to market your home. The key is to use the websites with enough traffic. Or it will be buried in the ocean of websites. No one can find it rather than you.
 
There are free websites with a lot of traffic, such as http://www.craigslist.com/. You can also use paid websites specifically designed to list the properties for sale by owner. Those websites enjoy very good traffic, such as www.forsalebyowner.com, and http://www.fsbo.com/
 
You can also use http://www.ebay/, http://www.youtube.com/, www.Myspace.com to market your house.
b.       Words of mouths.
Word of mouths is the cheapest and most effective way to market your home. No marketing technique can beat that. You can tell all of your relatives, friends, colleagues, you doctors, accountant, etc, that your house is for sale. Ask them to spread the words among their friends and colleagues.
 
c.       Multiple listing services.
Multiple listing services (MLS) also use online marketing. MLS are used by all real estate agents. Through the MLS, you can reach a very large buyer pool. You can list your home in MLS for a flat fee for few hundred bucks. However, you must be prepared to pay buyer agent commissions because majority of the buyers are still using the services of buyer agents to buy their houses. You can use our flat fee listing services for only $399 to reach more than ten thousand potential buyers. Thsi is the best price you cannot find in any other places. To send your request to list with us, just click here.
 
d.       Yard signs and directional signs.
You need at lest ten directional signs around the neighborhood to bring the traffic to your home. However, You may not be able to do that in some areas since there are rules or ordinances forbidding placing those signs around roadside rather than your front yard. Check with the county or city where you live before you place road signs.
 
e.       Direct mails and post cards marketing.
You can send direct mails and postcards to the targeted buyers. To do this cost-effectively, you must know who are you potential buyers. For example, if you know your potential buyers are the first time buyers, you can send around 400 direct mails or postcard to the residents of neighboring apartment complexes. Don’t send something like most junk mails. 99% of people will throw them in trashcans. For more information on how to send direct mails and postcards to effectively get a huge respond rate, enter your email address and name to subscribe my free eBook on How to Sell Your Home with For Sale By Owner Like a Pro.

 
f.        Ads in newspapers or other printed press.
Ads in newspapers will bring you buyers. Placing ads on newspaper are relatively expensive. You should know where to place your ads based on who are your potential buyers. Depending on your situation, placing your ads by sponsoring newsletters of local communities, such as parent and teacher association, church newsletters, can be very effective and inexpensive way to target your buyers. You may want to place your ads on the local new letters on golf if your home is a luxury home. For more information on how to place ads to effectively reach buyers, enter your email address and name to subscribe my free eBook on How to Sell Your Home with For Sale By Owner Like a Pro.
 
g.       Open house.
Open house is one of effective ways to reach buyers. You can talk to the potential buyers directly, which is very good to you next step when it comes to negotiation with your buyer. You need to do it every two weeks. Best time to do it is 1 to 5 pm on Saturday and Sunday. For more information on how to open house, enter your email address and name to subscribe my free eBook on How to Sell Your Home with For Sale By Owner Like a Pro.      

3. Give tailored marketing messages to your targets.

You marketing messages should be tailored towards your potential buyers. As I described earlier, you should know who are your potential buyers and what specific needs and concerns they may have. Think like a buyer. For example, an entry-level homebuyer may have more concern about their ability to close the home than the home features. Try your best to address buyer’s concerns, or give something buyers are looking for in your message. Also study the ads in newspapers or any other marketing materials to see how they give their messages.  

4. Test and adjust your marketing messages. Monitor the responses on your marketing campaigns.

When you got a response from a buyer, always remember to ask the buyer how did he find out your home for sale. Make all records on response rate for each marketing campaign. Then, you have to decide which is effective or not based on the response rate. Stop those not effective or adjust the message. Otherwise, you are wasting your money. For other articels related to home selling tips, click following links:

1. Estimate the home selling cost:
http://besthomesellingtips.com/category/home-selling-101/estimating-home-selling-costs/
2. Reasons why a house doesn't sell:
http://besthomesellingtips.com/2007/08/04/top-ten-reasons-why-a-house-doesnt-sell-and-their-solutions/
3. Hiring a real estate agent:
http://besthomesellingtips.com/2007/07/21/what-kind-of-real-estate-agent-is-not-good-to-sell-your-home/
4. Staging a home:
http://besthomesellingtips.com/category/home-selling-101/home-staging/
5. Marketing your home:
http://besthomesellingtips.com/category/home-selling-101/marketing-your-home/
6. Pricing your home right:
http://besthomesellingtips.com/2007/07/19/how-to-pricing-home-for-sale-right/
7. Worse things that turn your buyer away:
http://besthomesellingtips.com/2007/07/12/what-are-the-worse-things-that-turn-your-potential-buyers-off-when-you-show-your-home/
8. Selling your home with owner financing:
http://besthomesellingtips.com/category/home_selling_by_owner_financing/                      

 

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