What are some of the best ways to market the homes that you have for sale. I am interested in all kinds of ideas and would like to hear from everyone on what has worked best for them. I am not just interested in internet marketing, either. What about local marketing and print and things like that? Thank you in advance for all of your ideas and experiences.

It depends on what kind of homes you are selling. If you sell high-end luxury homes, you may even want to build a website for it. We have seen people doing this in the past and have some success. If you sell a home that isn't high-end, it may not justify spending the extra money.

Are you doing this on your own or are you working with an agent? If you work with an agent, selecting a good one can make a huge difference, especially when the market isn't doing that well. If the agent does what he gets paid for, he should be able to find many ways to market your home.

Hi Igraham,
I concur with the previous post. The creation of a single property site can give you a very simple way to extensively market the home in a very elegant way. The nice thing about this approach is that with a street address domain name, this then can cross over into print advertising and also make this cost effective too.

how do buyers get website to find out about the property?

Internet marketing is good but expensive. If nobody find your site on internet what is the deal?

Think about it.

Good luck!

Hi EstateReal,
Please allow me to expand a little on my previous post..

Having created a Single Property Site, a critical question to ask is "How do buyers find the site?"

Well, we need to get the listing appropriately positioned in the marketplace. The marketplace, by definition, is where the buyers are!

Are Google, Yahoo! and MSN the Marketplace?
Well, I am not sure its reasonable to expect that a single property site gets quickly ranked for a high-use search term like "wyoming ranches" etc - many websites with longevity and lots of keyword-rich content will be able to more easily dominate the search engine results pages for those keywords. And, of course, its not at all reasonable to suggest that consumers type in '1122 Mainstreet' as a search term either.
However, SPS does assign keywords in the META tags and TITLE that reflect the property address - the purpose is to cover this requirement, so that when sites are indexed, they at least stand a fighting chance in the mass of sites on Google etc!

So, get your Single Property Site in front of potential buyers with the following techniques:

Widgets:
You can easily create a listing widget to display your listings (or a single listing) and then paste that widget into your own website, broker site, forum or BLOG, to display the listing data in web sites you control. This is a great way to bring potential buyers to your listing site.

Craigslist Flyer:
SPS creates a fabulous looking craigslist flyer for you (it looks just like your Single Property Site - see image!) - just copy and paste code to craigslist. Many buyers are on craigslist and so this helps ensure they will find your property.

Syndication:
SPS sends your listing data to Trulia, Zillow, Googlebase and many other important real estate search portals. These portals play an increasingly important role in helping buyers to find properties - and we cover this too for you.

Virtual Tour Links:
You can make your SPS site a Picture Path Link on REALTOR.com and also an unbranded VT link for your MLS listing too.

Sign Rider and Domain Name
Drive-by buyers will see the Sign Rider with the street-address domain name on it and this is going to be the fastest and easiest way for them to find details about the property online.

Hope this explains a bit more!

I think it is better to promote a well know and well placed website. Once that site is established, attach the single home pages to that site. Not only will that help the pages to be ranked, it will also give you a consistent web presence.

I highly recommend realbird.com for single property sites. It's free and they syndicate to several popular sites including trulia, craigslist, google, and more....

i am surprised i haven't seen anyone mention adwords. adwords is the best way to get traffic to your sps within 30 minutes. adwords coupled with signs and craigslist you should have traffic in no time. in order to keep your budget though you need to know what you are doing with adwords or your budget will get burned within hours and your keywords will be expensive.

Very good question indeed! No one really has a magic bullet of course, but there are some things I would really recommend.

We have had great success with radio. Don't feel like you have to break the bank, but radio has been very effective for our team. Find a local station that meets the demographic you are looking for.

Print ads have been ineffective for our team. Higher end listings and sellers like to see their home in print, but the cost can get expensive for you as the agent.

Look at doing some TV ads as well. We have found these to be effective as well.

In doing all of this advertising, build a network of preferred partners that can help you share in the cost of the ads.

the mls is the best marketing tool that you will ever find. you will reach more people that are qualified than any other method. most methods that agents use are to appease sellers and to get leads.

you have already bought into a great marketing tool. get listings and use the tool that you pay for.

price the property accordingly

Funny how he specified that the poster is not interested in internet/online marketing and that he would like to stick with local /print marketing, which nowadays is pretty much a waste of money.

Joey, he said he is not JUST interested in internet marketing, meaning he's looking for more ideas in addition to the internet.

The very best route I have come across is direct marketing via PPC.