| You have a wide range of choices for high-tech marketing collaterals, including: Virtual tours, which are video or slide show presentations, to help potential buyers see a property in depth without actually having to go there. Virtual tours often have audio narration and are usually provided on a CD or viewed via the Internet. Audio tours, which combine images (individual photos and/or videos), documents, and even audio provided on a CD or DVD for potential buyers to review on their computer. Individual Web sites or pages providing flyers, photos, and perhaps virtual tours and disclosure documents for specific properties you are listing. Electronic seller presentations, such as PowerPoint slide shows or animated presentations, that you customize for the property you are hoping to list. PDF presentations, which combine information and photos of the property into one electronic document that can be e-mailed or downloaded from a Web site and provide more details than available via the local MLS. Talking houses, which use a low-power radio at the home to transmit a recorded description of a property to car radios when people drive near the property.
Producing electronic materials can require more skills and technology tools than the printed materials you're already creating. And providing all these high-tech materials for every property would be overkill. So you first need to decide what high-tech materials would be most effective for the properties you are listing and for the target market. Then choose one or two types of materials. Checklist Virtual Tour pros and Cons The pros of virtual tours include: The use of video or extensive photo slide shows to "walk" the viewer through each room of a home and the surrounding grounds is very compelling. Virtual tours help out-of-area buyers evaluate potential properties more easily. In some cases, you can provide the virtual tour over the Internet (site visitors would simply download a browser plug-in to view it).
The cons of virtual tours include: The tools used to create the tours are complex and expensive. You need a video camera, software to convert the video into a computer-displayable format, software to edit the video into a presentation, and a microphone and software to add the audio presentation to the video. The recipients often need specific computer hardware to view the virtual tour, and they may need specific software to view it as well. (Many video-editing tools include free viewing software that you provide the recipients along with the virtual tour, although most of this viewing software works only on Windows PCs.)
As you decide which technologies you want to use to create these materials, also keep in mind what your recipient must do to access them. When possible, offer two or three choices of access, such as HTML file, PDF file, or a QuickTime movie. Be sure to stick with document formats that are available for both Macintosh and Windows userssuch as HTML, PDF, QuickTime, and Flash, as well as common cross-platform application formats such as Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. (That means you should not use Microsoft's Windows-only formats such as AVI video.) |
