Selling Your Home Charleston SC

Today I am going to cover some important things to consider if you are selling your home Charleston SC. There are many important factors to getting a home sold–you have to make sure the house looks great (curb appeal, clutter control, etc.), you want to make sure there are no issues with the condition (necessary repairs have been completed), and you have the home priced correctly.

But from there, the most important factor to getting a home sold is the marketing. Simply putting the listing on the Charleston SC MLS (Multiple Listing Service) and waiting for a buyer to come along isn’t enough. Unfortunately, this is the marketing strategy for many agents.

To get a home sold, it needs to get as much exposure in front of as many potential home buyers as possible. And to do that, you have to go where the buyers are. In today’s market, that is on the internet.

According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), home buyers are turning to the internet more and more for their home search. In fact, 92% of home buyers are on the internet.

 

So, most agents will get their listing on the Charleston SC MLS, which syndicates automatically to several buyer targeted websites such as Realtor.com, Trulia and ZIllow. They will also upload to their personal website as well as their company website. That’s great, but it usually ends there.

However, in today’s market there are several other places many agents have available to them, but don’t take advantage of. There is social media sites, as well as video sharing sites. While most agents can get their listings to a handful of sites, they miss out on several hundred, if not thousands, of other places.

It is easy to get lost in the jungle that is today’s internet. The more places you show up on the net, the better. This is known as Web Visibility. It is also important to show up on the first page of search engines such as Google and You Tube (in fact, You Tube is the second largest search engine in the world behind Google). The more places your listing turns up, the easier it is for home buyers to find you, and the quicker you get your home sold.

One mistake is to assume that if someone types in the address of your listing and several results pop up, then that is effective marketing. It is unlikely that someone will search that way–by the time they learn what your address is, they are already interested in your home. But first, they have to find your home and see that it is for sale.

So, how do they get to that point? Chances are, they started their home search with a generic search term–such as, Charleston SC real estate or Homes For Sale In Charleston SC. So, your listing needs to be found for a variety of search terms, and not just the address itself.

This is accomplished by effective marketing. Effective marketing means Web Visibility. To increase web visibility you need to saturate the internet in a variety of ways. One important way is video–very few agents utilize video in their marketing. Video includes virtual tours, but also videos that educate buyers.

Virtual tours attract buyers, yet few agents are using them. Agents that do video tours also fail to properly market them, same as the listings. Again, simply uploading to the Charleston SC MLS isn’t enough. Getting the videos syndicated across the web to increase visibility is key. 

Statistics show that video is increasing in popularity on the internet. There will be over 1 billion unique visits to You Tube this month, and those viewers will watch over 4 billion hours of video.

(According to this forecast, it will be more popular than social media).

Home buyers are looking for videos and virtual tours, and this is an important way to capture buyers. Buyers will pass over online listings that do not have virtual tours for ones that do.

An online listing with a virtual tour will get clicked on 40%  more often, and buyers will spend 3 times longer viewing those listings. Which listing do you think will sell faster?

When it comes time for selling your home Charleston SC, it is important that you choose the right real estate agent. One that has a solid marketing plan that will get your home the maximum exposure in front of as many potential home buyers as possible.

They need to have an internet focused strategy that will create as much web visibility for your listing, so your home will get sold. If you are considering selling your home Charleston SC, then be sure to check out my Pam Marshall Realtor website for helpful information and videos to learn more about my marketing strategies.