What is Positioning?

The backbone of an effective marketing campaign is positioning and it is THE MOST important consideration when selling a home. Proper Positioning can be summed up as the who, what, where, and how of portraying your home for sale to the general public.

• WHO: We need to identify and define who the perfect buyer for your house is?
• WHAT: What is it about your home that makes it perfect for this buyer?
• WHERE: Where are the perfect buyers most likely to be found? What is the best way to deliver our message to them?
• HOW: We should craft our marketing messages to appeal specifically to the ideal buyer.

The biggest companies carefully position themselves.

We want to approach selling our house the same way a big company would approach selling their own products, like hamburgers. These companies are careful to place their marketing messages in the places that their target consumers are most likely to be. Think about it, you don’t see a lot of McDonalds Happy Meal adds during the nightly news… You see them during Saturday morning cartoons, when children are watching.

We want to take the same approach with selling a home. If your house is perfect for a couple of brand new parents, then we will create marketing material that is tailored for new parents. When we achieve proper positioning we will gain A LOT more interest in the property (because we are specifically targeting “perfect” buyers), attract more offers, reduce market time, and ultimately get a better price!

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There are 3 main ways to position your home.

1. Price Positioning

This is the most important aspect of positioning. You and your agent should have a pricing strategy in place ahead of time, just in case you don’t get any action at your list price. You should know ahead of time when and by how much you will be willing to adjust your price to prevent accumulating too much market time. Excessive market time will actually reduce the price you can ultimately get for your home.

Price is the main criteria buyers use when looking for a home. They will usually give a “price range” to their agent, or plug it into a website when they search. Depending on local home prices, these ranges will be in increments of $25k, $50k, or $100k. For example, if you list at $529k, you will most likely be found by buyers searching in the $525k-$550k price range. If no one seems to be biting at that price and you decide to lower it to $519k, you will now show up in the $500k-$525k range.

Pricing Strategy

This is what I mean by having a “strategy.” Price reductions should be designed to place your home in a new range of prices. This will introduce your home to a whole new set of active buyers it had not previously been exposed to. The strategy should introduce your home to a brand new set of buyers for EACH potential price adjustment.

2. Description Positioning

This is where we connect the “perfect buyer” with the “perfect home.” The wording of your home’s description should tell your home’s story. Avoid anything that sounds like a hard sell. Remember, we want to keep the perfect buyers we defined earlier in mind and write your home’s story for them.

If our ideal buyers are new families moving up, we may want to highlight the neighborhood, quality and distance of schools, nearby parks, does the house have a swing-set, etc. If our ideal buyers are investors then our description will focus more on numbers like rate of return, gross rents, needed repairs, and expenses.

What is it that you love about your home? Is it walking distance from the beach or around the corner from your kid’s school? The things that you love about your home make up its unique story. Tell your agent about them because these details will help set your house apart from the competition.

3. Marketing Positioning

Your home’s marketing plan should be focused on reaching your ideal buyers. A good agent will be actively pursuing those buyers. A run-of-the-mill agent will simply put up a sign, list in the MLS, and call it a day.

A quick note: Not to disparage my colleagues, but there are a lot of agents out there who’s entire marketing plan is to put a sign in the yard and throw it up on the MLS. The problem with this is that it doesn’t specifically target the ideal buyers for your house, or do anything to set your house apart.

Remember, the perfect and ideal buyers are the unique people we have identified that are most likely looking for a home just like yours. With a proper marketing plan we will be showing your house to a lot more of THESE buyers. These buyers are more likely to make an offer on your home. More offers gives you (the seller) leverage, which ultimately leads to a higher price. More offers from buyers that are in love with your home, leads to even more leverage!

In today’s market of low inventory, pretty much any marketing can get a house sold. But, only the BEST MARKETING PLAN will get you the BEST PRICE.

There are a lot of ways to identify and target the ideal buyers for your home. Social media advertising allows us to get extremely targeted with advertising. We can target people based on specific geographic locations, demographics such as age, income, marriage status and more. We can even show our ads to only people with specific interests and hobbies.

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Once the perfect buyers have been identified, your agent should be able to determine where the best places to connect with those buyers are. Do they read certain magazines or papers? Let’s put an open house ad there. Do they live in a nearby neighborhood, let’s tell them about your home. Are they looking for a neighborhood like yours, let’s make sure they find us in their online searches.

Positioning is key

If we list at the right price, tell the right story in our description, and implement the right marketing plan, then we have achieved effective positioning. Not only is this home going to sell, but it’s going to sell for top dollar!

I hope this article has helped you understand how to use positioning when selling your house. If you have any questions don’t hesitate to get in touch, I live to serve!