Home Staging Marketing Strategies to Sell Properties

Is Your Marketing Hot?

The number one question that I always get from all of my clients, whether they are Certified Home Stagers, Home Stagers in Training, Real Estate Agents or Investors, Small Business Owners, Speakers, Entrepreneurs – you name it, this is their question: How do I market my business?

Many have some idea how to market their business, but they don’t know how to effectively market, in order to get the results they desire, which is the key. Usually, they delegate their marketing to an advertising channel such as the yellow pages, some random online marketing or a flyer or two that has been passed out at a meeting in the hopes that everyone that takes one will call you back keep hoping!

I love the coffee cup above as an extra hot marketing tool. Not only is the Bakery advertising with each cup of coffee, but they are in turn selling advertising to other clients on the mug. Super Smart! And of course the mug makes sense to their customer since they serve all sorts of coffee drinks at the Bakery.

Could they have done better with an extraordinary offer and a guarantee? Of course! The problem was lack of space, so they worked with what they had.

The real question though, is what does it take to make your marketing hot?

1) It must speak to your customer- Just like the coffee speaks to the customers buying a croissant, yours must do the same. Ask yourself who your customer is and what appeals directly to them. Is it a real estate agent, an investor, a home seller who is your customer and what speaks to them? Then, make sure your message sizzles!

2) Scare them or speak to their greed- Yes, that is the truth. The best way to capture your customer’s attention is by scaring the pants off of them or appealing to the sense of greed. So, if you are marketing your Home Staging Services, then you would send them a message like; Are you ready to sit on that listing for another 6 months? Or, Would you like to make an extra $5,000 this month?

3) Make in Incredible Offer- You can do this in a variety of ways. It can be accomplished with a 100% money back guarantee, the offer of a FREE flatscreen TV, 50% off, Buy One Get One Free, or even thru a great prize that your customer wins by participating in your contest. The idea is to give them something so juicy that they feel compelled to give you a shot.

4) Market Consistently- One of the most attractive things to potential clients is that they see your marketing consistently. Now they know you are not a, fly by night, home stager, running your business as a hobby instead of as a real company, and that you are smart enough to know how to market. That in and of itself is often appealing enough to some future clients.

5) Surprise them with your Marketing- The coffee cup was a surprise, so it was fun. When we stage homes and hide a pocket of emotion in the drawer and the buyer opens the drawer, that is fun (and it is house marketing). Having a message like the 25 reasons a rubber duck can sell your home is a fun surprise because they don,t expect it. If you really want to have ..hot..marketing, surprise them with the unexpected.

I think the last thing I would say about marketing is to simply look and see what your competition is doing and do the opposite. They are the ones inclined to post an ad and then not get any calls so they quickly determine the ad does not work. Hmmm, maybe they did not place an ad in a location that their customers see, or the ad just was not compelling.

The best example I can give for this is when I started my own Home Staging company, I looked around at all the other Home Stager Certification Program out there talking about making houses pretty and it dawned on me that there marketing was all about them instead of the results they could achieve for their potential clients. That is when I came out with our tag line of “Anybody can make your house pretty, we make it SELL.” Obviously, that did the trick.

So, let’s get you a great list of customers beating down your door so you can show them how extraordinary you really are, while introducing them to your hot marketing.

Sincerely,
Karen Schaefer – Home Staging Training and Certification APSD
Karen Schaefer