Create Five Business Opportunities Out of One Listing

Imagine your next listing. Think about everything that happens between the listing appointment and closing day… 

You photograph a home, put out a sign , introduce the property to the neighborhood, post it online, talk about it on social media, invite people through the front door, answer questions, gather feedback, negotiate offers, and eventually put a SOLD sign on it. Phew!

Along the way, dozens — and sometimes hundreds or thousands — of people interact with you and your marketing.

 Great listing marketing is more than promoting a property. Done well, one listing can become a business-development engine with at least five opportunities hiding inside it.

1. Sell the Current Home

This one is obvious. Your seller hired you to help them achieve an outcome and every marketing decision begins here.

In the Marketing Your Listing Playbook, this responsibility is boiled down to four promises:

1. Make the home look its best in your advertising.

2. Price it to attract the right buyers.

3. Expose it to as many qualified buyers as possible.

4. Create a plan and adjust the plan as the market responds.

These four promises turn marketing from a simple checklist into a strategy that creates attention, and great listing agents harness this attention into a sale for their client.

2. Capture the Buyers Who Don’t Get the Listing

There can only be one buyer for the house, but there doesn’t have to be only one buyer opportunity on each listing.

Imagine twenty people walking through your open house. Three schedule second showings with their agents, two make offers, and one ultimately buys the home. It would be easy to celebrate the sale for your seller and move on, but think about the other fourteen people! Many of them still need a house and this is your opportunity to help them.

Good follow-up makes all the difference in this buyer agent opportunity. From the second a new buyer is in your CRM, begin asking questions and look for opportunities to be useful. Ask questions like: 

• What attracted you to the property?

• What kept you from writing an offer? 

• Where are you in the search process? 

• Do you already have an agent helping you?

• What are your biggest insecurities about buying right now?

When you add value to someone’s life as a real estate advisor, you market yourself as an agent who is ready and available to help buyers with their home searches. 

3. Find Another Seller in the Neighborhood

Never underestimate how interested neighbors are in the house for sale down the street. They want to know what it looks like inside, what improvements the owners made, how much it is listed for, how much interest it receives, and, eventually, what it sells for.

Underneath all that curiosity is often another question: What does this mean for my house?

So don’t leave the neighbors out of your listing marketing! In fact, use the listing as a business opportunity to meet them, invite them to your open houses (or even host a special one just for them), deliver useful content and information about the listing and their micro market, and ask if you can keep them informed of the sale.

Once you’ve created a relationship with them, keep giving them reasons to know who you are before they ever need a real estate agent. A neighbor may not call because they got your postcard or saw the for sale sign go down. But you want to be ready when they call because, after months or years of seeing you work in their neighborhood, hiring you feels familiar.

4. Create Reusable, Local Authority Content

This one feels like a no-brainer to the real estate agent who is always asking, “What should I post or write about next?”

One listing can give you weeks of things worth talking about. For example, you can:

• Show how you prepared the home before photography. 

• Explain a feature buyers might otherwise miss. 

• Walk through the neighborhood. 

• Introduce a favorite local business.

• Answer a question from the open house.

• Explain what buyers can get at this price point.

• Share what you learned from the first week of buyer feedback.

With content like this, you’re able to avoid posting the stuffy “Just Listed” graphic seven different ways. You’re teaching people “how” instead of “what,” and helping them learn about real estate in your market (plus, having fun!).

Better still, much of the creative content you use for one listing can be used again after the house sells, slowly providing evidence that you’re a local expert. Here are some examples of evergreen content you can promote on your websites, in open houses, or during listing presentations:

• A neighborhood guide can become the foundation for future neighborhood content. 

• Frequently asked questions can become videos, newsletters, or social posts.

• Great photography and property videos can become proof of your marketing in future listing presentations, web pages, or advertising.

5. Create Proof of Performance for Your Next Listing Appointment

Sellers hear promises from agents all the time. But there’s a meaningful difference between telling a seller what you are going to do and showing them proof of what you’ve already done.

Herein lies business opportunity five: Every listing gives you another chance to build proof that you know how to create results.

Capture the decisions you made along the way and the results those decisions produced. Then include these in your next listing presentation, so you can capture sellers with your stories.

Even a listing that did not sell immediately can become powerful proof when it demonstrates your ability to read the market, communicate clearly, and lead a seller through a difficult decision.

One Listing Should Never Create Just One Opportunity

Now think back to the last listing you marketed.

1. Did you help the seller achieve the outcome they wanted? 

2. Did you meet buyers who still need homes?

3. Did you start relationships with homeowners in the neighborhood?

4. Did you create useful content that can continue to bring you business?

5. Did you document enough of the process to make your next listing presentation stronger?

This is where listing marketing becomes bigger than marketing just one listing. Everything about your listing marketing model should be designed to create multiple results!

Ready to build the complete model? The Marketing Your Listing Playbook walks you through the entire listing marketing process, from pre-marketing, to price conversations, to pending promotions, and closing case studies.