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Do you want to sell your home for top dollar and are wondering what the best marketing strategies are?

Here are the best marketing strategies to sell a house for the most money, particularly the top 3 strategies to use during covid-19 when buyer showings are at an all-time low 🏡

These tips will help give buyers all the online marketing tools they need, to experience a full-on, immersive virtual tour of the property so that buyers can narrow down which property they end up visiting in-person to purchase, and in some cases, buyers may even feel comfortable purchasing the property without having to see it in-person given all of these phenomenal marketing tools.

If you have any real estate questions or needs that we can help with, give Karen a call at 647-836-2895 🏡

Thank you for watching!

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Full Video Transcript:

Hey guys, it's Karen from Toronto here.

Now, some of you might have to sell a house during this time of covid-19. And because there's such a significant decrease in the number of buyers showings, it's more important than ever to have effective marketing strategies in place. Specifically, we're going to focus on the marketing strategies that enhance the online buyer experience, so that they don't leave the page with any unanswered questions.

So in today's video, I'm going to share with you the top three effective marketing strategies that our team uses to really enhance that online shopping experience.

The first very effective marketing strategy to use is called Matterport. And Matterport is the latest most realistic virtual walkthrough that you can do of a property. You'll notice in a Matterport tour that there are white circles on the floor throughout the property and these are suggested areas for you to use your mouse to click on, to help walk you through the property virtually. Now at each of these points, you can always span the property 360 degrees to see what's around you. You can also scan the flooring below you as well and you can also look above at the space above you such as the ceiling or the floor above.

You can also click on other parts of the flooring throughout the property that don't have a circle there and you can move sideways, you can move forward, you can even move backwards. Another neat feature about Matterport is the dollhouse. And so the dollhouse gives you the floor plan view from all sides of the house and you have the option to click on the floor plan to have a bird's-eye view of each of the floors in the property as well.

So as you can see the overall experience with Matterport is incredible.

You're essentially walking through the property. Matterport also gives you the option to have different viewpoints that are not even possible in real life.

So even if you went to go see the property itself in person, you would not be able to have a dollhouse view and you also wouldn't be able to have an interior bird's eye view of the property for each floor. Now the only drawback about Matterport is if you have a slow internet connection, it can take a longer time to fully load.

And for those of us who have a very slow internet connection, the tour might not even load properly itself.

Other than that, I strongly recommend Matterport to be used as part of your marketing strategy in order to give buyers that full-on virtual experience of a home tour.

This is especially the case right now during covid-19 when there are so few buyers that are out actively on the market. The type of buyers who are out right now, they're not the type that are seeing several properties every other day.

Most likely they are starting their home search online first and if a property is not showcased with a ton of good photos or the marketing is just pure -, that potential buyer is just going to move on to the next listing because they're not going to risk their health and go out and schedule a showing to go see the property. They're going to move on to a listing where the agent did a phenomenal job in marketing the property from all different angles of the home.

Now speaking of health risks, there are strict health and safety protocols that are currently in place for both buyers as well as sellers. And if you'd like to know more about all of those health and safety protocols, just click on the link right here on the top right-hand side of your screen. And in that video, I review all of the health measures with you.

Now, the second effective marketing strategy is the live open house streaming feature. And this is where the listing agent walks through the property while they use a software program such as zoom and that allows anyone in the public to join in virtually. The neat thing about the open house virtual tour, is that while the agent is showcasing the property's highlights and features, anyone in the public is able to engage with that agent by asking questions as they go along. And you can ask a question by either typing it in or you can use the built-in microphone on say your desktop computer or maybe even your smartphone as well. Now being able to virtually walk through a property with potential buyers has been a tremendous help because as of Saturday March 21st, the province of Ontario had banned all open houses and there has not been an update yet as to when that ban will be lifted.

In speaking about the positives of these live streaming open houses, there are also a couple of huge drawbacks. So as much as I love the concept, it really hasn't been executed that well. The Toronto Regional Real Estate Board or TRREB for short had launched this feature back on Monday, April the 6th and from hearing feedback from clients as well as my own experience myself, it's not a very user-friendly experience to access the live streaming of open houses.

I find that TRREB could have done a much better job of promoting these live stream open houses particularly to real estate agents. So for example, when real estate agents log into their MLS system, we can see the date and time of traditional open houses. But guess what? When it comes to these live streaming open houses, there is zero indication on our MLS system that there even is one being held. So TRREB could easily have inserted a link for the live stream open house. Perhaps a link where the virtual tour usually is or they could even have given us the option to insert the date and time of the livestream open house where we usually put the date and time of a traditional open house, because real estate agents work with a lot of buyers and we can easily promote that live stream event to some of our clients who are looking for a property just like that.

So really the only indication right now that a live stream open house is coming up is if you find the property on the public realtor.ca website. And even if you go onto the realtor.ca website, it's not obvious that this feature is a new feature that is available to everybody.

I think it would be a really good idea for TRREB to maybe showcase on their homepage a big image or a link saying "click here" for the live streaming events of open houses that are coming up. In addition to all of this when you do see that live streaming open house symbol on a property on realtor.ca, it's not obvious how you're going to get the link join that tour virtually.

So basically you have to go back to that property's website page on realtor.ca, very close to the open house time and at that moment there will be a new button called "join" and you'll click that button to get the link to join virtually.

So now that we know all the functionality and promotional issues of this live streaming open house feature, let's talk about a couple of tips on how to make this an effective marketing strategy.

So my first tip is to all of the listing agents out there. So in your listing, mention either in the client remarks or under extras, with asterisks around it, that there is a live stream open house coming up and to have them contact you or your office to get that online link.

The second tip to make this an effective marketing strategy is to have your agent promote the live streaming event on all of their social media platforms. This way it will help to drive more traffic from potential buyers over to your open house event.

Now the third effective marketing strategy to use that's especially helpful during covid-19 is to have a professional floor plan done up. Now Matterport has the option to measure certain parts of a room, but that functionality is not quite obvious to the user.

And I find that when it comes with buyers, a lot of them still find a traditional floor plan very helpful. The benefit of offering a floor plan to potential buyers is that at a quick glance they can quickly decide how they're going to arrange their furniture and living space within your home. And as soon as they can start envisioning themselves in your home, you know that they're one step closer to submitting an offer. There's really no drawback when it comes to offering a traditional floor plan to potential buyers.

The only negative is that probably about 95% of agents, or even more, they don't offer a traditional floor plan as part of their marketing strategy. And the reason is that it just adds on an extra cost to their marketing. So it costs extra money to hire the right professional to draw up this floor plan.

So as a homeowner when you're looking to sell your property and you're looking to connect with the right, real estate agent to represent you and to sell your property for top dollar, you'll want to sit down with them to review their marketing plan.

And any good real estate agent will be able to review a customized strategic marketing plan with you while communicating the benefits of their marketing.

So now you guys know three extremely effective marketing strategies to enhance that online home shopping experience for buyers.

If you're selling a house, implementing these marketing strategies are really going to help buyers narrow down whether your property is the right one for them or not.

And the good news for buyers is that if a property offers all of these online marketing tools for you, you may only have to see a couple of properties in person before submitting an offer. In fact, in some cases, you might feel comfortable as a buyer purchasing a home after using all of these online marketing tools, and not having to go see the property in person.

So I'm curious have any of you purchased a property without seeing it in person?

Maybe it was a property that you bought pre-construction off of a floor plan. Or perhaps maybe you bought a property that was located out of town and you had a trusted real estate agent or a trusted friend or relative in that city, who previewed the property for you and assessed it in person on your behalf.

So let me know in the comments below if you've ever purchased a property without seeing it in person first. Now, I do want to mention that there are many other effective marketing strategies out there. This video just covered the top three marketing strategies that would be really smart to incorporate especially during covid-19 because they really help to enhance the overall online shopping experience for potential buyers. Now some of you who have to sell a home, you might be thinking: 

"Hey Karen, I've got to sell a home but you know what, because of covid-19, I really want to minimize all the contact with anybody in person. I know if I have to market my home I've got to sign a ton of paperwork. I'm not technical savvy. So how easy or how difficult is it to sign all of the paperwork electronically?"

Well, if you're thinking of the same questions as well, go ahead and click that "like" and "subscribe" button now because in an upcoming video I'll walk you through the electronic signature process and you can see how user-friendly it really is. 

And in the meantime, if you have any real estate questions or needs, give us a call.