Devising your property marketing strategy: an overview

Put simply, a property marketing strategy is a plan used to sell or lease a property effectively (here, we’ll be talking about selling a home). A property marketing strategy should combine various techniques and channels to reach potential buyers, by highlighting the property's features and benefits.

Typical elements of a property marketing strategy include:

1. Target audience identification

Understanding the ideal buyer or tenant for the property is crucial. This could include demographic factors like age, income, lifestyle, location preferences, or business needs (for commercial properties).

2. Property positioning

Defining how the property should be presented in the market, including its unique selling points. For example, the property's proximity to schools, public transport, or entertainment can be key differentiators.

When you’re choosing an agent to sell your home, one of the first conversations you should have with them is around their ideas for how they would sell your home. In other words, what is their plan for your property marketing plan?

The reason this is so important? Because much of the marketing budget will come out of your pocket. As well as paying your real estate agent fees, you’ll be asked to pay a separate advertising bill, most likely up front. That’s not to say that you’ll be footing all of this, the estate agency will typically include a certain level of advertising and marketing as part of their services.

This is why we recommend that you meet with several agents before selecting one to sell your home. You want to get a feel for the different ideas that prospective realtors have, and how much they’re expecting it to cost. It’s also important to talk to prospective agents about their networks of buyers, and whether they already have a few buyers in mind for your home.

It’s important to make sure you have an itemised breakdown of what any marketing or advertising costs are going towards. This is particularly true if your home has been on the market for a while and the agent comes back to you with a new proposal that involves additional costs. Of course, you want to keep the costs of selling your home to a minimum, so you want to be as confident as you can that any extra spend will move the needle.

As with all aspects of your relationship with your estate agent, you want to be an active participant in the process of selling your home, rather than setting and forgetting.

While many of the marketing channels will be the same, the difference when selling a property privately is that you’ll be the one executing the marketing campaign.

One important thing to note, especially if you’re new to selling homes, is that there’s a big difference between showing the property in its best possible light, and misleading buyers. Hopefully this is a given, but everything you put in your advertising materials needs to be factually accurate, or else you can run into serious problems further down the track. This can include cancelling a sale after they have made an offer.

Wondering where to start? A great first step is to hire a professional photographer who can capture high-quality images of every room, the outdoor areas, scenic views, and any unique features that make the property stand out.

After that, you’ll be getting stuck into the types of channels we mentioned above: advertising on Trade Me Property, putting up a for sale sign and perhaps even advertising on social media.

Of course, if you aren’t using a real estate agent, you won’t be able to make use of their networks. However, it’s important to get your friends and family to spread the word. We all know that Aotearoa is a small world, and you never know who might be searching for a property exactly like yours!