Open for Inspections – 6 strategies to get high engagement

Why do agents promote open for inspections posts and ads that aren’t customer-centric?  Its almost like look at my busy weekend list…..

Buyers and sellers want content they can use and act on that is customer-centric. Many OFI’s are unreadable and presented in an easily usable way by a customer.

Here are 6 tips to avoid this

1.Think Mobile First

Most of your customers will view your content on a mobile device often scrolling through a feed till they find something interesting. The content needs to be easily readable without a magnifying glass!  This type of listing might work on a desktop but most people will struggle to use this effectively on mobile.

2.Categorise

Many agents have lots of opens. Think about the customer.  Would this be best presented in groups?  Maybe a suburb group, house type group – house or unit, sale type eg. Auction or Sale.

This is often done best for Auctions. An example here was 3 Auctions in the same geographic area. This was presented in an easily viewable video that featured a few images on each property.

3.Video First

It is important to remember that there are at least 3 types of video – instant, custom & slideshow. The algorithms of the tech giants rank video higher – all tyes regardless of the production costs!

Here is an example of a post including a video on Facebook. This gives the customer the best of both worlds, a list, and a video image on each property reminding them of the key details. This has very high engagement and relatively low cost.

4.Carousel Ads

Another alternative is a Carousel Ad – the example listed below is Facebook. In this case you have some text about the ad and a series of images often 3-4 (however can be more). 2 images are shown here (the first and second image)

5.Time to Plan

Many agents put the Open For Inspection List out on a Friday (maybe due to lack of organisation). We believe this is a mistake as the middle of the week is better such as Wednesday so you maximise the chances of your customers seeing the open times over a few days. In many cases property purchases involve more than one person and Saturday schedules can be tricky if family sport or work are involved with one or both of the parties have multiple things to juggle.

6.Amplifi

To get your desired results you need to Amplifi your posts & ads.  To do this your need to have a large & engaged audience or pay to play. Organic reach can be as low as 1% however with higher engagement this gets boosted. (comments, likes ect). The alternative and often recommended in Real Estate is an Ad. The best outcome is a combination of both. This is will give you the best results!