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New Customer Topic #8 – Win the Listing, Sale & Relationship

New Customer Topic #8 – Win the Listing, Sale & Relationship

by | Oct 31, 2023 | New Customers

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Win the Listing & Sale

To wrap up our welcome aboard series, I want to tie it all together with an old saying: Content is King. 

Fortunately, we create some of the best content out there, including the core foundation of every home, the floor plan.  Remember the Zillow research we showed in Topic #1, where it listed the top activities buyers viewed as important as part of their home search? Here they are again, and how the content we create is associated with each item:

1. Take a Private Tour – we do this with our 3D Walkthrough Tour where a browser can explore every inch of a home, from the comfort of their own couch.

2. Access to Pre-Inspection Report – it can be uploaded as a document.

3. View Comprehensive Data & History – it can be uploaded as documents and will be pulled from HomeDiary in the future.

4. View a Floor Plan – we have been creating interactive floor plans for 19 years now, plus we add a 3D designer/planner tool and it can all. be used by the buyer post-purchase.

With the HomeDiary Story, we can do all of this and show the content all in one comprehensive single property website that keeps your brand on it when viewed from the most popular websites like Zillow.  This has proven to help our clients win more listings, and win the sale because this content has also been proven by different studies to help sell homes faster and for more money then the market average:

  • A Pre-Inspection Report (2.5%) or Certification Report (5% for a Pearl Certification Report)
  • Floor plans – up to 26% more commission for agents
  • A 3D Tour – up to 9% and 20% faster
  • Professional photos – 2.5%

Ultimately, it is about alleviating buyer fear – the more information people have about one of the most expensive purchases they will ever make, the more they will pay for the asset they are buying, and the more people you will get bidding on that asset, thus increasing the price.  That is why with covid and the increase in virtual selling tools, 55% of buyers said they would be willing to make sight unseen offers if it had the right kind of content (64% of Millennials). Amazon found this early on selling books, where at the time you could get more info on a $10 book than you could for a $1 million real estate listing.  This concept translates into the car industry too – cars with a Carfax or a Certified Pre-owned status sell for more than cars without those designations.

Zillow also has come out and said that listings on Zillow with interactive floor plans get saved 79% more often and get 60% more views than listings without.  This is why Zillow is aggressively trying to create floor plans – because they know buyers want them, but we think this kind of data should be kept out of the hands of Zillow – look at what they did with your listing photos – what do you think they will do with floor plans, the core foundation of every house that can be transferred from owner to owner?

Because we can also provide this content to the buyer once they purchase the home via our Claim Home process, it really helps you win the sale as well because the content lives on as a useful asset for the next owner. Plus, you get content attribution on the content claimed by a buyer.  We think this can lead more business back to you in a subtle way – I say this because we have been around long enough that we have had the same listing agent relist the same house 3 times now (another agent we know of has relisted 9 houses multiple times).  It’s not that the agent double ended each transaction, it’s that each person that bought the home wanted the same content to sell their home as they got when they bought it, so they sought out that original listing agent.  Again, content is king, and sellers were once buyers, so the above Zillow stats are equally important to communicate at the listing appointment.

More importantly with HomeDiary, the buyer/new owner becomes the owner of their home’s floor plan, not Zillow (who claims exclusive rights to use the floor plans they create…again, why?).  We are the ONLY tour or home management platform that allows the homeowner to be in control of their floor plan and where the floor plan can be shared, edited, reused and used as a remodeling and “what if” tool, just like I have done with my home and a future first floor bedroom/bathroom remodel idea that took me 3 minutes to do in HomeDiary that could have a potential $100,000 increase to my home’s value.  We have some exciting future ideas on how this tool can be shared in a collaborative way with connected home pros, so look for more in the future.

what if tool for visualization

Win the Relationship

Finally, the HomeDiary platform helps you win the relationship with tools to help you stay relevant over time.  For your seller, they can claim their old home right from our tour and get the photos and floor plans put into their own HomeDiary account – it’s a great keepsake for their old home, and they can use HomeDiary on their new home, for free.  If you want to be the sponsor of their HomeDiary, just invite them into the platform first.  See this article on how to become a sponsor at no cost.

With our new Collaborative Diary option, you have even greater input and potential in your client’s homeownership experience because you can actually put content into their HomeDiary, such as closing docs, reminders, To Dos, ideas and even create a floor plan if one did not exist.  You get a lifetime of put access for a small one time fee.  Worst case, if you did nothing, you are still providing a valuable tool to your clients, that includes our 3D floor plan tool, at no cost to them, and your info is on the home screen of the app, just a call, text or click away from a referral or relist of their home.Our app provides a pathway for you to be a home consultant. It’s up to you how much, or little, you put into it.

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New Customer Topic #7 – Get the Tour Seen

New Customer Topic #7 – Get the Tour Seen

by | Oct 31, 2023 | New Customers

Topic 7.  How to get the tour out there on the Internet so it, and you, get seen.

Publish the Tour – this is the last step but often overlooked.  Once the tour is ready to go live, hit the orange Publish button to get the tour distributed. Go to Stories, select Publishing under Actions and click the the Publish button. Note the Publish button should show under Media, Presentation and other spots if you have not published your tour, so it is kind of hard to miss. 

We also need a valid MLS number in order to do the linking to the MLS for you (not available in all areas).  So go to Publishing and make sure the MLS number is in the field you see next to the MLS you select.  Note you can also change this under Details – see the MLS/Listing Number field.

publish tour

See this video on how to publish and get your tour seen.

 The Tour is your friend. It also wants to be everywhere, so just make sure you publish it.  We can show your brand on the top sites with Brandkeepr, but the tour does need to be published so it can get distributed via the MLS feed.  The unbranded tour is what you need to put into the MLS.  With Brandkeepr, we keep the branded version on the top sites like Zillow.
Besides having the tour on the listing portals like Zillow, how do you get your tour seen?  We create several content pieces for you to use on social media sites, email marketing and more:

  • Video – every tour has a slideshow video.  Your can download this on the Photos/Media page and upload it to Facebook or other sites. Add some text and the tour link, and you have a great little ad for your listing.  Or just paste the tour link in Facebook and it will pull back the default image (you can also use the Share button when you click on the detail pages for your listing).
    • We also have options to create a custom slideshow video with more interesting content and effects and a social media video, great for Instagram, Facebook and Linkedin.
  • Call2Action – every tour has a Call2Action photo (see below for an example), a compilation of photos and the floor plan, if applicable.  Some people print this out on an 8×10 sheet, laminate it and staple it to the sign or put it in the flyer box.  It has the tour link and a QR code so it keeps your listing green when flyers are low.  Hand it out along with the flyer at open houses too.  It shows the floor plan (if applicable) and every 5th photo from the photo gallery.
  • Use Adwerx or other listing advertising service?  Try using the floor plan image or our Call2Action photo as the photo for the ad.  You might be amazed at the results. According to one ad network source, their best performing ad was one that showed a floor plan image of the house.
  • Print the flyer and distribute it to the neighborhood.  They may have friends or family looking to move, and you can showcase the great content you create for the listing.
  • Use text messaging for hot alerts to your clients. Our tour works great on mobile, including the interactive floor plan, unlike the other guys!  You can even see the 3D model of the home.
    446601 call2action branded

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    Good luck and if you have questions or need help we are a call or click away:

    New Customer Topic #4 – Customer Support

    New Customer Topic #4 – Customer Support

    by | Oct 31, 2023 | New Customers

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    Topic #4 concerns customer support. 

    We pride ourselves on actually providing great customer support, as we know it is frustrating not being able to get in touch with someone. So we want to let you know we are here to help if you have questions along the way.  Our support team, led by Tammy Rutledge, gets high marks and even letters of praise, and we think this differentiates us from others. Here are our various support tools.

    • Call:  206-384-4400, option 3 during normal business hours (9 am-8 pm EST), M-F
    • Email/Support Ticket – Click here
    • Knowledge Base – Click here.  Lots of articles available 24/7 and we are adding more videos, so start here as many questions are probably answered already.
    • Chat – we have live chat on our Contact page. 

    We are here to help so you can maximize your marketing dollars and get the most out of our system, so please get in touch if you have questions or issues.  Just check out how this one team is leveraging FloorPlanOnline to get more Listings, Leads and Repeat business. 

     

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    New Customer Topic #5 – Customizing the Story

    New Customer Topic #5 – Customizing the Story

    by | Oct 31, 2023 | New Customers

    Topic #5. Customizing the tour, or Story.

    In this post we are going to go through how to edit the overall presentation (the look and feel), the content itself, and some some unique settings and uses of your virtual tour and how to leverage it to get people coming back to your website.

    First, let’s look at some Unique Uses of the Story:

    1. The default tour theme people see – Select from our Story (4 themes) or our new Tour Viewer (top bar).  See #2 below for Customizing your tour to pick a theme. You can also do this when you first create a tour order and there is a default setting for this under Profile (top right). As a bonus, you can have a default view, such as the Story, but still use another version, such as use the Tour version to embed on your blog or website. For example.

    Once you have a tour, you can distribute it beyond your MLS, because you have both a branded and unbranded tour link.  So leverage the branded version on your own website or blog, and on social media channels.  For example, write a blog post talking about your new listing, get a quote from the owner, and then embed the tour into the blog post. See our Spotlight Gallery for what we do on our website.  Post the blog link on social media to get people coming back to your site, and seeing you and the cool content you create for marketing listings. You can learn more about embedding the tour into your blog on this post here.

    2. Customizing your tour.  You can edit most things, including the “hero” section and the order of the content displayed on the tour. See the video below on how quick and easy it is to edit the presentation of your tour, or Story as we like to call it.
    3. Customizing your slideshow video.  We provide a completely customizable slideshow video that is embedded on your tour, and it can be downloaded and then uploaded to YouTube.  You can also use it on your website or social media channels.  Here is what you can do with our new video editor:

    • Upload video clips to add real movement, an animated logo or a clip of you introducing your new listing
    • Add a text explainer slide to communicate a space, complete with emojis, or create a custom call to action slide
    • Select different music or transitions for each photo, including the time to display. Music is under the Settings icon.
    • Add floor plan images in the sequence, all sync’d to the floor plan database.
    • Add any kind of branded content and showcase it in the video or photo gallery.  See this post on how to keep it only on the branded version of the virtual tour.
    3. Customizing the Floor Plans.  We provide a real-time floor plan editor – in fact we are the ONLY virtual tour platform we know of ANYWHERE that has their own floor plan tool that allows you to change anything, instantly. Change the text, hit update tour and new plans get generated, everywhere.  So, if you want to add flooring, beds or other furniture to the plan, you can use Edit FloorPlan and customize it and update the look of the tour.  It basically acts as a virtual staging tool, similar to what you see below.  We can do some of this customization for you with the 3D Enhanced plan upgrades.
    3D
    4. Flyers/Printable Plans/Brochures/Documents. We have various flyer templates to choose from and we set up a default one when we produce a tour.  To edit it, just go to Photos/Media and scroll down to Flyers.  Select Edit can pick a template, customize the colors, select photos and reposition the floor plans (if applicable) and then generate the PDF of the flyer.  It is instantly added to the tour and available for download as well.

    flyer

    As you can see here, for floor plan oriented tours, we also provide 1 and multi-page printable floor plans.

    You can also add your own custom flyer.  Just go to Documents under Photos/Media and upload a custom flyer there.  You can select a display name and mark if it contains branded content, and it will only show on the branded version of the virtual tour.  You can do this with any custom document you might want to add.

    Documents are also a great way to add other information about the house, just as a pre inspection report (#2 on Zillow’s list), pest report or disclosures.

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    As always, we are also here to help so if you want to talk to someone, please:

    New Customer – Topic #6 – Claim Home & HomeDiary

    New Customer – Topic #6 – Claim Home & HomeDiary

    by | Oct 31, 2023 | New Customers

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    Topic 6 concerns Claim Home & HomeDiary

    The HomeDiary platform is very unique in that we have tools for the whole lifecycle of ownership and we are the only home or virtual tour platform that includes an editable and reusable 2D/3D floor plan tool that can be used throughout the whole lifecycle of ownership, by the seller/owner, the buyer and you, the connected Home Pro.

    3D FloorPlan Engine. We built our own 3D floor plan/space planner tool from the ground up to work on any device. Browsers of the tour can experiment with the floor plan and edit it on tablets as well as computers, doing things such as changing flooring or wall colors, fragging and dropping furniture, doing landscape planning, or even adding or removing walls to see what an open concept might look like. Its all temporary, but it helps them visualize the space, right from the virtual tour.

    We did this because we want to extend this tool to any homeowner and any home and let the content live on through the HomeDiary integration.  Once a person buys your listing, they can claim it and then get a copy of the floor plan put into their own private HomeDiary account.   They can use the floor plan to manage their home, visualize home improvement ideas, and even plan their move by creating a Moving Guide (example below), where they can virtually stage the home and use the Note tool to put “post-it” notes of what boxes go in what rooms – print it out, hand it to the movers for a hassle free move.

    Every 3D Walkthrough Tour or FloorPlan Tour has this capability to create a moving guide, to visualize improvement ideas, or to share the floor plan with others.  So talk about this at your open houses and in your marketing.  Check out our editable Canva template you can use at an open house as well to talk about the HomeDiary features, they get for free just by claiming the home (see more on this below), compliments of you.

    PS, if you use this to differentiate, if people have a home to sell and like this feature, who do you think they might want to sell their home too?

    moving guide
    Claim Home & HomeDiary for owners.  Every Story (tour) has a Claim Home call to action section (which you can turn off if you do not want it), that allows the buyer (and the seller) to claim the home right from the virtual tour, and when you approve their request, we automatically copy the listing photos and floor plans, compete with the 3D Space planner, into their own private HomeDiary account. The buyer gets a great management tool for their new home, and the seller gets a keepsake of their old home, and they can use HomeDiary on their new place. You get some attribution to the content provided, but you are not their official sponsor.  If you invite your seller (or buyer) to HomeDiary before they claim the home, you can be their sponsor.  If you are representing the buyer on the buy side, we suggest you first invite them into HomeDiary via your HomeDiary invite link, and then have them claim the home. When they do, you will be the official sponsor of their new home!

    Click here to learn more on Sponsoring HomeDiaries for clients.

    claim_home

    With Claim Home, the great content created on the “For Sale” side can live on into “For Living” compliments of you!

    HomeDiary PRO & Collaborative Diaries – We now have official “closing gift” options for each buyer or homeowner you work with.  At the top of our the new HomeDiary PRO website are options for Stories and Diaries.  Diaries is the new option – think of it as a digital closing gift on steroids.

    Diary
    The Diary is a collaborative Diary, meaning you can add content into your client’s home, and it is not just one time or one year, it is for the life of their ownership period for a small one time fee.  You can use our web interface you see here, or your can ue your mobile phone (and our iOS app) to create the content.  So the same actions you do to document your kids or pets lives (take a photo or video) can be used to document and manage your clients homes.

    What can you do with the Diary?  Add:

    • Closing Documents
    • Ideas & Reminders – like the HUD statement for tax time or the reminder to get that leaking hot water heater replaced in 18 months.
    • Before Photos – use our app at possession day and take a photo or 2 of every room so your clients have a Before Photo view of their home – it’s aways a great reference and new buyers always forget to do this.
    • Use our app to scan to get a floor plan – it takes about 5 minutes for 2500 sq ft and the device you already have works.  Once you have a plan, they can create a moving guide (see below) to help with the move.
    • Upload any floor plan source

    Check out the overview video of the power of the Collaborative Diary.

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    If you have questions, give us a call at 206-384-4400, option 3 or send us an email on our support page or check out our Knowledge Base.

    New Customer – Topic #3 – Brandkeepr, for free leads

    New Customer – Topic #3 – Brandkeepr, for free leads

    by | Oct 26, 2023 | New Customers

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    Topic #3 details our patented Brandkeepr functionality and how the HomeDiary Platform exclusively keeps your brand on you tour on 98% of the top 10 real estate search sites, for free. 

    How does it work?  It’s pretty simple really.  Publish your tour and if we can’t link the tour to the MLS for you, just select the copy url button next to the unbranded Tour link provided in your account under Photos/Media – Presentation Links, or in the email we send you. Then, just paste it into your MLS’s virtual tour or virtual media field for your listing.  The tour gets distributed across the web, and when clicked on from select sites, if we can recognize where the user was coming from, like from Zillow, we automatically convert that unbranded tour back to the branded version, all while keeping the unbranded tour on your direct competitor sites to comply with MLS  rules. It’s like a breadcrumb being left back to you on the sites that people actually use most, and it has been proven to win you more business, leveraging your HomeDiary Story.

    stories page

    Key Steps each time you have a tour to get it distributed.

    • Make sure we have the MLS number correct in our system – you can change it by selecting Property under the Actions column on the Stories page.
    • Customize your Story – you can select a different hero photo (main image that shows when the tour loads), show or hide the description text on it as well as property features, and move the content around on the tour, so if you want to feature the Matterport, the contact from or photos towards the top, you can. It is a simple drag and drop edit interface.  Check out this FAQ on how to do customizations.
    • Make sure you Publish your Story (tour).  Under status it will either say In Progress, Produced (meaning we created the tour and billed you), or Published.  When you are ready to market the property, to just make sure you click the Publish button, which makes it live and indexible by search engines. Go to Publishing to see status, or it should also show on the Photo/Media page.  If it has not been published, you will see an orange Publish button.
    • Download the photos for uploading to your MLS. We support different sizes, even custom sizes of images.  Most MLSs can resize, so we suggest the Large or Print quality size. Go to Photos/Media under Actions on the Stories page.
    • KEY: Put the unbranded virtual tour link in your MLS as a virtual tour (sometimes called virtual media).  Go to Photos/Media and then to the Presentation Links section. In some cases we do automated linking.  In others, you will need to add the tour link – it is a simple copy/paste process.  Just use the unbranded tour, which is emailed to you when the tour is first created as well.  Some MLSs do require the restricted one that removes all out links and the property address as well.  But remember, with Brandkeepr we will show the branded tour on the top sites, so who cares about the MLS version!
      • Just make sure the virtual tour link includes the https:// at the beginning of the URL – this is the key to making sure Brandkeepr works.
    • Remember, on the branded tour, you can pretty much show anything, as long as it complies with RESPA…check out our post on how to add all kinds of branded content to your tour.

    Brandkeepr helps you differentiate online

    Black & White Minimalist Business Logo (7)

    Brandkeepr gives you potential exposure to over 700 million+ visitors a month! With Brandkeepr, your logo, photo and contact info, and our lead capture form are seen on 98% of the Top 10 real estate search sites, including the Zillow, Realtor.com, Homes.com & more when someone clicks the tour link on their website listing page.

    check out the video

    This functionality also highlights the power of OUR virtual tour.  Why spend thousands of dollars (or 40% of your commission) on ads to get leads on these sites when you can leverage the free advertising you already get with each listing to be seen by buyers and sellers.  Just uploading photos to the MLS DOES NOT give you this free advertising opportunity, nor does using someone else’s tour.  With our tour, you get exposure for FREE on sites that buyers and sellers use most, namely Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com, Homes.com and Redfin.  You already have seen the Valerie story…and it is all because of Brandkeepr.

    As I can attest, FloorPlanOnline with HomeDiary can help you get more business.  

    I received a call from a potential buyer who saw one of my listings online.  While the home sold quickly and she was too late, she was so impressed with my virtual tour, powered by FloorPlanOnline, she not only hired me to sell her high-end home, but I helped her buy her new one, too. That one listing was responsible for an additional $2.5M in sales.

    I would not have gotten the new client by providing just photos.  This buyer specifically called me based on my virtual tour presentation. That’s why FloorPlanOnline is my go-to team for creating amazing content for my sellers, as well as a tool & content for new buyers through its HomeDiary integration, which can be a channel of new business too.

    Valerie MacKnight

    Broker/Realtor, Windermere Real Estate

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