We've been staging crazy lately - spring is here and our local agents and sellers are really 'getting it'! Because I've been updating my status with all our progress this week on twitter and facebook, I've gotten a lot of comments and questions on how we get this kind of volume.
The answer is really pretty simple, we market ourselves like crazy and rely on highly competant agents to help us close the deal.
The first thing that we have to do is let everyone know what we do. Our biggest marketing push is through newsletters. Almost every new client, that doesn't come from a referral from one of our current agents, is from our newsletter. (If you want more info on our newsletters, I've written many blogs about them, just go through my archives.)
The second thing we do is to spend time educating agents. We offer lunch & learn courses, agents courses (where the goal is to teach them how to talk about staging to their clients, not teach them how to stage) and of course office presentations (though we do few of those really).
The third thing we do is to flood the market with statistics, photographs and visual tours of our work. Each vacant home we stage gets posted in all the local communities of AR, which also gets linked to in Facebook and Twitter. We put the RES on our website and provide photos and RES for our newsletters. We provide quality statistics and photos to agents to use when discussing staging with their clients.
Sometimes the simplist actions lead to the biggest rewards. You don't always have to be elaborate. Sometimes being direct and targeted will provide you with the market penetration you strive for.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
First Impressions Home Staging & Interior ReDesign is a nationally award winning company owned and operated in Summerville, SC a suburb of Charleston, SC. We provide high quality staging for both occupied and vacant homes in the greater surrounding areas and beyond! For more information please visit, www.WeStageSC.com. If you are interested in learning about making Home Staging your profession, please visit, www.StagingAndRedesign.com for more information.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Melissa Marro, a published artist, now turned staging advocate and national speaker speaks her mind about real estate and the home staging industry. In her 'no holds barred' approach, audience members find real answers to the industries pitfalls and learn how to overcome them with tried and true information and guidance. With marketing as her passion, she turned a small home based business into one of the nation's largest home staging and training facilities. She now operates as the CEO of First Impressions Home Staging & Interior ReDesign as well as an instructor for Staging And Resign and regularly speaks at the StagerList Expos and Real Estate Staging Association (RESA)'s trade events.
For more information on having Marro speak at one of your real estate functions, please contact her at 843.822.2622 or email at marro.melissa@gmail.com
If you would like Marro's team to provide information on staging a property in the state of South Carolina, or the Greater Charleston Area, please visit www.WeStageSC.com, email marro.melissa@gmail.com or call 843.822.2622.
Hi Melissa! Newsletters are always a common theme......... Congrats on all the vacants coming your way. Don't really love Facebook but I have never thought of posting there for stagings. Thanks for the tip!
Melissa, you are so right! We did the same thing and now Ryan and I going like gang busters. If you want to survive, you MUST market yourself in every way possible, even more so in the off times. That is the only way to go now, work and market... they go together like a P&J sandwich ;))
Melissa, I agree. I'm just a one person show (other than the movers I hire) and keeping up with marketing and staging is a full plus time job. I know it's important to keep up the marketing, but it's hard sometimes. I'll be glad when I can hire additional help.
Wendy - it always comes back to the newsletters for me - glad you noticed.... lol!
Lori Kim - I always figure that if I'm not working then I need to be working & will do nothing but market myself. Of course you need to keep up when you are busy too so that you are always busy & not running in so much ebb & flow, feast & famine....
Donna - believe it or not I pretty much do the marketing all myself. Bevin does the books, I do the marketing. We each do our own jobs but share the resources to make ourselves stronger. I have an assistant, but she is manual labor (steaming linens, cleaning glass, helping manage the movers when they take stuff out of the warehouse, etc)
You're awesome - 7 stagings in a week! You know after I trained with you that marketing has always been a big thing for me, which is why I decided to move to Wilmington... so through marketing, I would make it easy for people to find a home stager (ME!) :) I have definitely seen results with name recognition and buzz, and aspire to reach the level you guys are at with volume results from your efforts. It's always encouraging to hear what you're doing and know it's possible... hopefully one day SOON, I'll be up there too! :)
Meilssa - You are unreal! I'm exhausted just thinking about doing 7 vacants in one week. You're like the energizer bunny. I definitely need to check out your newsletter. You go girl!
Hi Melissa, that is great that you are so busy! I'm envious. How do you get prospects on your newsletter mailing list?
You've given me a great idea about the educational seminar for agents on how to present staging to clients. While I hand out tools they can use to do this when I make a presentation during their weekly meeting - a script to use with homeowners, Client FAQs/Objection Busters, and client handouts on staging - I think I will ask the office manager if I can do a follow up lunch seminar which focuses strictly on how to present staging to clients. Thanks for the great idea!
You're on fire Melissa! I think much of it is the good Karma coming back to you for all you share with us "newbies"! You continue to inspire... www.debrasdesigningdetails.com