The Adobe Flash Player is required to view this multimedia interactive. Get it here.

Looking to sell? Think marketing, start at home

Thanksgiving tips to make the holiday meal easy and delicious
11/20/09
Are you willing to watch your children fail?
11/20/09
Animal clinic collecting food to feed hungry family pets
11/20/09
When it comes to health, Michigan tops Ohio
11/20/09
Dad goes into overdrive with daughter at the wheel
11/19/09
> More lifestyle headlines

By Alan J. Heavens, The Philadelphia Inquirer 3:44 PM Thursday, April 2, 2009

Say you really need someone to buy your house. You recognize that the market going into this spring selling season is tough, credit is tight, and it's unlikely that anything short of giving the place away will attract a lot of prospects.

Location, location, location alone won't cut it these days. Instead, think marketing, marketing, marketing.

Marketing, of course, starts at home. What will sell quickly has to look good and be in move-in shape, with not even a drip coming from any faucet. In a word, perfect.

That doesn't mean you'll need to put in a state-of-the-art kitchen or finish the basement.

It does mean that the kitchen should be spotless and user-friendly, with appliances purchased in this century. Clean out the cabinets, clean the doors, change the hardware if it looks dated.

A lot of people don't have much wiggle room in the credit department, but they'll buy smaller houses if they can be reassured there's dry space for expansion in the basement — for a family room, an extra bedroom, a home office. So, no dampness, no mold, no dog smell.

But let's say everyone on your street is going to follow this advice, and put their houses up for sale in equally good condition and at the same price.

That's where marketing comes in again. Though many real estate agents are good at it in the traditional sense, a lot of sellers are better at adding technology to the marketing mix.

If you are computer savvy and have a digital camera, it doesn't take much effort to produce a slideshow or video of your house and your neighborhood on CD or DVD.

We aren't talking Cecil B. DeMille and "Ten Commandments"-like special effects here. We're talking about a movie-maker program that comes with the Windows XP package.

Add narration, then burn as many discs as needed for your agent to pass out to prospective buyers and other agents.

Put the slideshow or video up on a Web site or a blog, where you can talk about it.

Another Windows program will let you produce e-mail blasts to agents and buyers, with photos and links to Web sites. In addition to photos of your house and neighborhood, you can show the local schools.

These photos can link to your agent's Web site, your blog with the slide show, the school district's Web site, and many other places.

Great tools, especially if you're selling a house that looks like a million dollars in April, when the dogwood and azalea bloom, but like $100 a week before — a chance to present your house when it's looking its best.

Oh, and a blog or a Web site or an e-mail blast attachment can have links to Web sites that show how the basement of your small — but potentially bigger — house can be refinished into living space. You can create a blog entry with another slideshow of products that can be used.

We haven't even talked about audio and podcasts and still other marketing opportunities yet.

We'll save those for another time.

(Contact Alan J. Heavens at 215-854-2472 or aheavensphillynews.com.)

The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Visit Philadelphia Online, the Inquirer's World Wide Web site, at http://www.philly.com/

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

Share this article