Listing marketing

Nine ways to turn every listing into more listings

If you sell 10 or more homes a year and your days on market are climbing, this is for you: a listing is not a product you market once, it is a marketable moment that repeats seven or eight times between the appointment and the closing, and almost everyone skips five of them.

Chris Smith and I put nearly a thousand agents on a call last week to walk through this. At ListingLeads we track more than 1,500 of the top creators in real estate, and in 2023 Tom Ferry and I ran 100K in 100 Days with over 200 agents, which ended with $20 billion plus in signed agreements during one of the worst quarters the industry has had. What follows is the exact nine-tactic plan we would run if we were your chief marketing officers, mapped to each stage of the listing.

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First, what "viral" means for you

Chris asked the room how many comments their average post gets. Almost everyone said under 10. That is your baseline. If you get four comments and a tactic below gets you twelve, you went viral. Chris's baseline is a thousand likes, so viral for him is 8,000. It is all relative to your own numbers, and the goal is to make what you already do three, five, or ten times more effective.

You have an advantage most industries do not. Nobody watches a show about dentists. People love houses. When the 50-year mortgage hit the news it was national news, not real estate news.

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Why this matters more right now

On our call, 361 agents said their days on market are going up. 27 said down. Every single one said seller communication is at least somewhat important, most said critical, and 120 of them admitted they have no communication plan in their listing presentation.

That gap is where listings get pulled. The first four weeks are the honeymoon. By week four, if the seller is not hearing from you on a schedule, confidence goes, then trust goes, then the listing goes. In this market you are having 10 to 15 critical conversations with a seller, not two.

Keep one line in your head as you read the rest: a bigger business starts with a bigger audience.

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Before the listing agreement is signed, the appointment itself is a marketing event. Three moves.

Alert your database. You cannot promote a listing more than 24 hours before it is available to the public. You can promote an appointment. I have taught this to thousands of agents and not one has been fined. Keep the address out. Chris would add the neighborhood.

Subject: I might get fined for sending you this

As a realtor, I'm not allowed to publicly promote a listing until 24 hours before it goes live. But this isn't a listing. It's an appointment. I'm meeting with a seller in Avalon Park today who's been thinking about selling, and if they decide to list, this home is going to go viral on Zillow. I'll circle back with an update later today. Wish me luck.

Alert your farm. You already did the CMA for the appointment, which means you now know that neighborhood better than you did last week. My friend Steve won a listing with this letter, mailed to owners within a quarter mile who have owned for 10 plus years:

Hey neighbor, I recently completed a home value update for one of your neighbors. It turns out they gained $38,000 in equity in the last two years. You live in a highly desirable neighborhood, which might be why three townhomes have gone under contract recently. To find out how much your home's value has changed in the last 12 months, text me. I'll prepare one for you.

Breakthrough Broker will pull the addresses and print the mail for you.

Alert your followers. Jason Cassidy shot a video standing in front of a house he could not name, on Thomas Avenue between Jewell and Kendall, nine blocks from the beach, and said he would probably list a house like that between $2 and $2.25 million. If standing in front of the house feels like too much, film it from the beach.

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Stop writing "coming soon." Netflix does not say coming soon. It says "leaving soon" and "notify me."

Subject: Exclusivity ends in 24 hours

Tomorrow this goes out to everyone. Right now only my list has it. If you want the price, details, and location, text me.

Include one photo. Send it as a text too. Chris would sharpen the call to action by time frame: if you are making an offer in the next 30 days, call me. If it is 90 days, text me. The reply tells you where they are without asking.

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The single biggest miss with a new listing is not telling your sphere. This is worth 10 to 20 extra referrals a year. Text to past clients, 24 to 48 hours before it goes live:

Hey Tom, I know you're not looking to move, but since you're so well connected I wanted to reach out. I've got a new listing about to hit the market and I think it's going to sell fast. Might be worth sharing with someone you know.

"Since you're so well connected" is priming. They will want to live up to it. Email to prospects, subject line "Forward to a friend":

In 24 hours our newest listing gets blasted across the internet. Right now you have something only a few people have: early access. I know it might be the wrong time for you, but you likely know someone who's looking for exactly this home.

You can get a referral from someone you have never worked with. You just have to set them up to give it.

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Chris borrowed this from a marketer outside real estate, tested it on a top team, and got the highest click-through rate he has ever seen on a real estate email.

Subject: Can you guess the price? Only 1 in 4 people get it right.

I just listed a home in Avalon Park. Four beds, three baths, 4,000 square feet, Timber Creek school district, pool, lake view. Did we list it for:

$425,000
$550,000
$675,000
$720,000

Reply and let me know if you guessed right.

All four prices are the same link, to the listing page on your site. The page shows the price. If they click $425,000 and see $675,000, they got it wrong, and you got the click either way. No form, no tool. Run it as an email, a story with a poll, or a reel that says "comment your guess."

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Once the home is on the market it gets harder to promote. The movie is already in theaters. This is when you get creative. We watch for outliers: an agent who averages 1,000 views on YouTube and posts a video that does 25,000. Two formats keep producing them.

A versus B. Kansas City, Kansas versus Kansas City, Missouri. Auburn versus Bedford. Talk about why people love each side, and mention your listing in each one. Most of you carry more than one listing at a time. This is how you promote them in one piece.

See what $X buys you. The Google search version links to an IDX results page. Your version links to your listing at that price point, which delivers on the promise better than a list ever could. If you want to move up in price point, run it for a range above where you are today.

The one that kills on Facebook ads, and the highest click-through rate Chris has gotten on a real estate ad: ranges. "See the difference between a $700K, $900K, and $1.1M listing." Three links, three of your listings. People click one, come back, click the next. Three clicks from one ad drops your cost and pushes reach. Do the same thing with neighborhoods or square footage.

We stole this from Wistia's "$1,000 vs. $10,000 vs. $100,000 video" series. Steal from outside the industry. Nobody in real estate will have seen it.

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Sam Rapp sent me a DM after a Boston event a year ago. He had made $135,000 from Instagram. Twenty-four months in, he is at $400,000 in commission from Instagram. Before that, zero. Year to date he has 3.8 million views, up 900 percent.

He never shows his face. He films the house, speeds the footage up so three minutes becomes 44 seconds, and records the voiceover later:

Want to buy a condo directly across from the Public Garden in downtown Boston? Come take a tour of 95 Beacon Street, an 1,130 square foot two bed, two bath asking $2,395,000.

He walks the rooms, ends with "Would you want this to be your next home? Let me know in the comments," and posts. He has done 50 of them. One has 118,000 likes and 2,400 comments. Many are other agents' listings, with permission.

The reel is the top of a funnel, and this is the part people miss. Reels get views and follows. Stories, now reaching a bigger audience, get the conversations. Sam posts a story that says "Who's looking for a 3 bed, 3 bath over 1,700 square feet with garage parking under $1M?" No link, no poll. Twenty-five inbound DMs from one story, and they are warm. Chris's note on the wording: "who's looking," not "are you looking." Who's looking makes people think of their cousin.

If you make money on Instagram, you have an Instagram lead funnel. If you do not, you have a hobby.

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Trey Serrano mailed 50 letters after an open house and got two listings from neighbors. Not appointments. Listings.

Hi Chris, I know we haven't met, but I thought you should know this past weekend we had a couple of open houses and seven families came through. We're reviewing offers now and my clients can only choose one. I promised the families who came through that I'd follow up with the neighbors to see if anyone is considering a move. Seven families are currently looking to buy in this neighborhood as soon as something comes on the market.

If you're in your forever home, throw this letter in the trash. Everyone says you live in an incredible community and I don't blame you for staying. If you've considered it, I may have a buyer. Text me what you've updated and I'll whip up a current value.

The anti-sales-pitch pitch. Pull the list of nearby owners with seven plus years and 50 percent equity, mail a hundred doors, and do it in the 30 minutes right after the open house ends.

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Chris sent an email with the subject "I'm sorry about your Amazon order" to 20,000 people when Amazon botched his book launch. Eighty percent open rate. He cannot get 80 percent from his own family. The listing version goes to your buyer leads after a sale:

Subject: I screwed up and need to apologize

I'm sorry. Last week I sold a listing in Avalon Park and never sent it to you first. When you joined my list I promised to send you properties before everyone else, and I didn't. Do you still want me to send you the next one early?

"Listing" links to the sold on your website. You get the opens, you get the just sold in front of them, and you get replies from buyers telling you they are still in the market. Use this once. Chris has sent it exactly one time. Maybe once a year: "I screwed up, I forgot to invite you to the client party, here are the photos." The second time in a quarter it is just annoying.

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In 2021 you sold in three days over ask with multiple offers. Now it takes 75 days, two offers, 97 percent of list, and you have decided that is not worth a postcard. Scott Steadman disagrees. Front of his postcard, over a map with the home pinned: "Not all homes are selling. This one did." Back:

The market's bumpy. Some buyers bail, others stall. Many homes don't sell until the third or fourth offer. This home had multiple offers. The first deal collapsed when the buyer got cold feet. We regrouped, kept the momentum, delivered the right price and terms, and got a clean close. Even if you have no plans to sell, knowing what this market means for your home is smart. Scan the QR code.

Show the sweat. If it looks easy, anyone could have done it. Rivers Pierce's headline at Energy Realty says "It's a challenging market. We're here to help." I would go further: you don't always need a realtor, but you do right now. Say the thing you don't think can be said.

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The part underneath all nine

Every tactic above is a conversation starter. From 100K in 100 Days we learned it takes roughly 11 conversations to produce one appointment. That is the whole math.

And every one of these campaigns is worthless to your seller if they never see it. Consumers will not appreciate work they cannot see, which is the reason Chris and I built Beacon. Drop in an address, it pulls the listing, the views, the comps, and connects to your social accounts so every campaign you just ran shows up on one seller report with its numbers. Shannon Gillette has 59 of them. Julie Gray Wells told us sellers now call her about price reductions without it turning into a beatdown. Seven-day free trial at buildyourbeacon.com, promo code NINE for half off the first month.

Pick the stage your current listing is in and run that tactic today.