Marketing Will Not Sell Your House
No amount of marketing will sell your house. The goal of real estate marketing is to alert actively searching buyers that your house is available for sale, that it may fit their needs and desires, and to get them to come take a look at it. Then the house itself will either meet their needs and desires, or it will not. Don’t pretend otherwise. Any marketing that stretches beyond this goal is a waste of time, effort, and money.
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The goal of marketing is to get buyers in the door. It can do no more. What sells a house, the only thing that sells a house, is the question:
Does the house meet the needs and desires of the buyer?
Will a lower price open up the buyer pool? Absolutely. Will fresh neutral paint in the photos draw more people? Sure. Is price a buyer need and/or desire? Most often. Can a buyer desire a home that is move-in ready? Absolutely. But the buyer can have any number of needs and desires, and the seller can only guess what they are or might be.
Let me give you a not uncommon example using neutral color. I have seen more than one buyer take possession of a house, a freshly painted in a neutral color house, and immediately repaint it in yet a different neutral color.
I think as a rule, it is healthy and just good business practice to have a certain level of respect for the buyer. It is important, even vital, to consider residential real estate from the perspective of the buyer’s needs and desires.
What does this mean? This means that the goal of marketing, the basics and even the unnecessary extras, is to simply alert actively searching buyers that the house is available for sale, that it may fit their needs and desires, and to get them to come take a look at it.
And if the property meets their needs and desires, they will make an offer. If it does not quite meet their needs and desires, but it is the best fit given the alternatives, they might still make an offer. If there is a better alternative, they will not make an offer at all. And there is nothing a seller can do about that except wait for another buyer.
Don’t forget, the seller certainly has no control over those alternatives. The seller only controls two things: One, are the buyers able to discover that the house is for sale? And two, the price and presentation of the house, along with any changes in these they might be willing to make. That’s it.
Now, do buyers ever buy houses for other reasons? It would be naive to say no. Let’s make up an example: The wife of the buyer’s boss is a real estate broker, and she has a listing that is close to what the buyer is looking for. Maybe the buyer will buy that over a better alternative. Maybe. But even here, is that not really meeting a desire of the buyer? In this case, the desire to please or appease his boss. But for the most part, this is such a large expense, that the buyer’s actual needs and desires will be paramount.
Okay I hear you: This is obvious and redundant; why are we talking about this?
Because so many real estate brokers think of themselves as sales people. They did not get the memo, back in Chapter One, that conveying real property is not a sales job, but rather it is a customer service job. Or perhaps more likely, they are so wrapped up in the sales aspect of client acquisition that they don’t even understand the two primary jobs.
And don’t get me wrong, I do not care what brokers think or how they think of themselves or even if they think at all. But don’t let them tell you that they, or their marketing prowess, will sell your house. Don’t let them convince you that it is worthwhile to pay more for marketing that stretches beyond this stated goal. Besides, odds are, that such marketing does more for the broker than it does to, you know, sell the house.
Now if you put this chapter in front of them, they will slickly explain that the writer is indeed the naive one because everyone knows that real estate is a sales job. So don’t kid yourself Mr. Seller; like it or not, you need a salesperson. It’s a sales job you idiot.
But dear reader, let me ask you: Did anyone sell you your current home? See, I think the answer is no. Because otherwise you would not be reading this book. And even if the answer is yes, I think you are reading this book because you now know that was a mistake.
Isn’t it time that we all got serious?