Real Estate Marketing: How To Take Advantage Of An Open House

Real estate marketing is a tricky business. You must have the right marketing mix that sustains and builds your brand image and brings more customers through your door. Hosting an open house is an excellent idea to spread your marketing messages.

Realtors often assume that real estate marketing is all about sending email blasts and promoting them on social media. While those are undoubtedly essential components of an effective marketing strategy, hosting open house sessions is critical for potential customers to take tours of houses and experience them first-hand before making a purchase decision. But hosting an open house requires promoting it — here’s how you can do that.

Post a visual-heavy article on your website blog

Assuming that you have significant traction on your website and social media pages, the best way forward is to post an article on your website blog about the house(s) open for the public to visit. Be sure to add lots of photos of the house from the inside and out so that interested people can have a glimpse of it before coming so they’d know what to expect.

Also, at the top of the article should be a dynamic real estate flyer that contains all the information about your open house, including house addresses, days and timings, and your contact information. You don’t have to design a flyer all by yourself when you can use a nifty online graphic design tool like PosterMyWall with dozens of real estate flyers.

Include the open house in all your marketing collateral

Apart from flyers and banners on your website and social media pages, you should mention your open house in all of your other marketing collateral. For example, you can have a card rack placed in your office and at the open house. 

Fill the rack with rack cards — handy brochures that have all the information (area of the house, price, etc) about the house your customers would need before making a buying decision. They can even take those brochures home if they want to and have a look at them again later. Use these stunning rack card templates to craft them in just a few clicks. Just make sure you have them printed out on thick glossy paper.

Update your existing customers via your weekly newsletter

Email marketing is one of the best ways you can get the word about your open house out there. Your existing clients should know about this so they’ll visit you, and even if they aren’t necessarily looking to buy anything, they can come to check out the properties to update themselves about the property prices in a particular area.

Your weekly newsletter about the open house should be succinct. Avoid writing long paragraphs — no one wants to wade through a wall of words. Instead, punctuate your text frequently with images and colorful banners. And of course, don’t forget to insert a call to action (CTA) and mention all the relevant details about the open house.

Social media is the best way to reach out to new people

Posting about your upcoming social media on your social media pages is the best way to get new eyes on your channel. However, social media marketing can take a lot of time. Don’t expect to have any impact by posting about your open house if you haven’t been posting regularly on social media and keeping your audience engaged.

You need to have a sizable audience before you can promote your open house on social media. If you do have enough traction, consider posting the URL of the article on your website blog, accompanied by a catchy caption. You can also post a flyer about your open house — visual information is easier to consume especially on platforms like Instagram.

Go live on social media

Lastly, have a live feed on social media. There’s nothing better than a live feed as it provides a channel for people who didn’t visit your open house to have a glimpse of what they missed out on. This gives them ample reason to attend your future open houses.

Also, going live on Facebook and Instagram is great for audience engagement. It preserves the entire event for anyone to view later. However, make sure you have all the equipment ready to go live. This includes a high-quality camera, a stable internet connection, and a host and cameraman who can film the entire event and showcase different parts of the houses in HD.

Some parting thoughts

Promoting a realtor’s open house is challenging. If you want fast results, you can even pair up with a social media influencer and pay them to advertise your open house. Just make sure you pick the right influencer who’s relevant in your industry. Since no two real estate firms are the same, you’ll have to tweak your strategies to your specific business model, niche, and target audience to get the best results out of the above-mentioned strategies.

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