Market the agent, not just the property

Agents spend thousands marketing a property the vendor has already handed them, and almost nothing marketing themselves to the vendor who has not decided yet. The listing is won long before the campaign ever goes live.

I spent seven and a half years working in real estate before I started OAA Media. Long enough to watch the same pattern run in every office I sat in. The marketing on a property is sharp. The marketing on the agent is almost nothing.

The property machine actually works

Credit where it is due. An agent wins a listing on the Tuesday and by Friday there are professional photos, a floor plan, proper copy and a video walking through the house, live across every portal. That machine is fast and it sells houses. Nobody should be pulling it apart.

Every dollar of it is spent after the decision

Here is the problem. All of that spend lands after the vendor has already chosen the agent. The photos, the plan, the video, the portal upgrade, the lot. By the time any of it goes live, the decision that mattered was made weeks earlier at a kitchen table, with two or three names on a list. The campaign is not winning the listing. It is servicing one that is already won.

So what is speaking to the vendor who has not picked anyone?

For most agents, nothing. A headshot from four years ago on a sign board. A logo. Maybe a page on the agency website that the agency wrote. Meanwhile the bloke thinking about selling in November is out there right now, quietly forming an opinion about who he trusts, and nobody is giving him anything to form it on.

Vendors choose the agent before they choose anything else. Before the price, before the method of sale, before the campaign. And that choice usually happens months before a listing exists. If your marketing only switches on at the listing, you turned up after the vote.

Market the agent, not just the property

A monthly market update, on camera. Not scripted, not read off a page. Just what actually sold that month, what it went for, and what that means for someone sitting on a decision. Two minutes is plenty.

Just sold content where you explain why it sold. A red SOLD sticker tells a vendor nothing. Thirty seconds of you saying we had four bidders because of the shed and the north facing yard tells them exactly how you think, which is the thing they are actually buying.

And vendors talking about what you were like to deal with. Not a star rating out of five. A real person saying you rang them every Friday whether there was news or not. That is the one thing a stranger cannot fake and a competitor cannot copy.

Spring is the deadline

Spring is starting now and it is the busiest selling season of the year. The listings that come up in October were decided on in August. If you are reading this and thinking you will get to it after the spring rush, you will be having the same thought next August.

We are a two person team based in Myrtleford, working across the High Country and Australia wide. We shoot property, and we shoot the people selling it. If you want to talk about what marketing yourself might look like, get in touch.