Slow ’em down, speed ’em up, keep their attention

Key Takeaways

• Use professional-quality pictures overlaid with text to slow buyers down and focus their attention on a home’s unique details.
• Create urgency to speed buyers into taking action, and make it easy for buyers to schedule a showing.
• Don’t include pictures or details in a listing that might cause buyers to rule out the house too soon.

There’s a problem with the MLS: everyone uses it. The home you’re listing may get lost in a sea of thousands of other homes.

Sure, the MLS syndicates your listing to hundreds if not thousands of real estate websites, but is that enough to get noticed? How do you rise above what everyone else is doing so you can provide higher visibility to your client’s listing? You need a visibility strategy.

Visibility is not just how many people view your listing online or in person, but more importantly how many of the right buyers slow down enough to really consider it. The listing may look great and might be priced right, but if the targeted buyers are just skipping over it before they realize how great the home is, the right buyer just sailed past you.

Here are three strategies that can help you improve a listing’s visibility:

1. Slow buyers down – This is very important for visibility. Your listing might show up on people’s screens, but they don’t click through to read it. Even if they do, they might quickly move on to some other listing that grabs their attention.

It’s important to have high-quality pictures on your listing, but there’s so much more you can do. You can put text over your pictures, which gets buyers to read while they’re browsing pictures. For example, if your first picture is the front of the house but the best part of the home is the amazing city views out the back, mention this core feature by writing text directly onto the first photo.

Instead of using the front of the home as the first picture of the listing (especially if it’s not the home’s strength), show the most unique feature inside the house. Include pictures of community and neighborhood highlights like walking paths and playgrounds. Your goal is to immediately grab their attention with the things that are special and unique about the property.

If you can get buyers to slow down, they’ll spend time on your listing and explore the details, virtual tour, and all the rest of the pictures of the home.

2. Speed buyers up – After you slow buyers down to really notice your listing, speed them up to take action. They’re intrigued by what they’ve seen online, now get them to schedule a showing. Work with your seller and set a plan to make it as easy as possible for buyers to schedule a showing.

What else can you do in your marketing and listing strategy to create urgency and speed up the likelihood of getting more showings? You might offer agent bonuses to get agents to make showing your property a priority.

Create an environment of urgency — if your listing is getting a lot of interest, make sure you communicate that to the other agent. Let them know the home could go under contract very soon so you want to help them get in to see it as soon as possible. These tactics are all part of your visibility strategy.

3. Don’t let them rule it out too soon – When buyers search for homes, they’re initially focused on ruling out homes to narrow down their list. Your listing could be ruled out too soon if you give the buyer ammunition to do so.

Let’s say you get a listing. You take pictures, but online they don’t do the house justice. They’re too dark, and buyers viewing them online think, It’s a great location, but look how dark the house is. Skip. Or your pictures include every bathroom and bedroom. Buyers see that one of the bathrooms hasn’t been updated, or see a room that’s dark because a teenager painted it black.

Only include pictures that promote the listing in a positive way.