Selling Your Oklahoma City Home: Beyond Marketing
Selling your Oklahoma City home takes marketing, of course. Highlighting its features—the specific details that the Oklahoma City MLS lists for every property—is only the beginning. The number of bedrooms, square footage, lot size—even the architectural style—all help buyers eliminate offerings that won’t satisfy their housing requirements.
These are quantitative marketing specifics that qualify a residence. Most have numbers attached. They’re also the basis for the “comps” that the bank or other mortgage lender will use to estimate your property’s market value. But they are only the first step in selling your Oklahoma City home. They can (hopefully, will) interest buyers—but they don’t do much more than that.
What’s missing is emotion. A point of view. A brand.
For instance, say yours is one of the oldest homes in your Oklahoma City neighborhood. Was it built before 1917? Then it’s out of the ordinary: a genuine antique! It’s historic. In fact, Turn of the Century craftsmanship can be experienced throughout—so the listing blurb will include that kind of language.
So far, so good. But now all we need is that one more thing that assures that your Oklahoma City home will be the one that sticks in prospective buyers’ memories. We need a brand!
Often, a memorable name does the job handily. If your house really is antique, but whose only identity is its street address, naming it could be long past due! 416 Plover Drive might benefit from becoming “Plover House” or “the 416 House” or if the back yard overlooks a bucolic copse, “Oakview House.”
Naming is only one way to make branding an integral element in selling your Oklahoma City home. For a residences that are less distinctive, branding may touch on some external aspect that make living there desirable. A condominium with club facilities and a particularly lively social scene could be championed as “More Than a Condo: a Lifestyle.” If the location is eminently convenient, its brand could be “Life in the Middle of Everything!” If the opposite is true, the property may well be your own “Private Retreat.”
Branding is a creative exercise, so it’s hard to describe exactly what makes it work best. But there are two qualities that mark successful branding. First, it should emblemize an out-of-the-ordinary facet that resonates emotionally (the intellectual appeal has already been covered in the listing details). The other key ingredient is truth. The brand makes a promise that must be kept. Being memorable is only useful in selling a home when the memory is positive—and that means the brand has to ring true.
Putting in the extra creative effort that adds a brand to your home’s marketing blitz is just one of many ways I bring my clients success in selling their Oklahoma City home. Another one of the reasons to give me a call!