An Unexpected Benefit Of Investing In Local Marketing

Tim Chermak:
Hey, guys. Welcome back to another episode of The Platform Marketing Show. This is another mini episode with Anngela Musgrave, and I wanted Anngela to share a real quick story of how she's used listing marketing to actually get her buyers' offers accepted. So let me say that again: how she's using her listing marketing to get her buyers' offers accepted.

Tim Chermak:
Even in this crazy low-inventory market, where some people are giving away all their money and their firstborn to get an offer accepted, she has found a way, again, to leverage her creative listing marketing to help her completely unrelated buyers get their offers accepted.

Tim Chermak:
So Anngela, share the story of what happened and how you've stumbled upon this realization that you have this asset in your business that maybe you didn't realize you had before.

Anngela Musgrave:
Yeah, happy to do it. So I had a buyer come up. He's from out-of-area. He wanted to just look at a couple houses really fast. We weren't planning on actually putting any offers on anything. He had three houses, one of which was on market for nine days, which is uncharacteristic for our current market that we're in. Houses go on market and they maybe sit three days, and that's because agents are holding offers for three days. He said, "Okay, when I come back up, if we can find another house just like this in two weeks, this is what I want." And I said, "Well, why wait? It's been on market nine days. Let's just call the agent and see if they'll take a contingent offer," because that was his hesitation on putting an offer in. And he said-

Tim Chermak:
Which is a phrase I haven't heard in a long, long time: a contingent offer. It's like, "What's that?"

Anngela Musgrave:
Right, exactly. And so I called the agent and said, "Hey, are you guys taking contingencies at all? I know it's been on market for a few days." And the agent sounded frazzled, obviously. I'm sure he's getting a lot of pressure from his sellers. And he told me the story of what was going on. The sellers for that property that my client wants to buy had bought it two months previous. They had another house that they had on market, their house that they were currently living in, which is 3,200 square feet. They said, "We're going to downsize," move into this house that they had bought two months ago, and sell the big one and live in that other property that my clients like, forever.

Anngela Musgrave:
Fast forward. It had been about two months, and they couldn't get the big house sold, so the sellers said, "Just liquidate the smaller house. We know we'll sell it quicker, and then we'll just retool from there." So that's where me coming in, showing that smaller property, comes into play. I asked if they would take a contingent offer, knowing that that second house, the smaller one, had been sitting a couple of days, also. And he said, "Yeah, we've got another person that wants to put an offer in, contingent, as well." And I said, "Hey, I market on social media a lot here in the Treasure Valley, which is where I live, and nobody else really markets like I do. And I don't have reach of everybody in the Valley. The Valley's about 700,000 people, and I think my marketing can hit about 100,000 people, just by how we market."

Anngela Musgrave:
And so I told him that, and he said, "Hey, wait a minute. What's your name?" And I said, "Anngela Musgrave," and he's like, "Holy crap. I see your stuff all the time. Literally every time I pull up my Facebook account, I see your name and you advertising properties all the time. Your marketing is fantastic." And I said, "Well, if you'll accept my client's offer, then I'll shoot a video for the property that your sellers can't get sold. I know that doesn't help them for staying in the property that they really love, which is the one my client's going to buy, but I'd love to try and help you, if it'll get my client's offer accepted."

Tim Chermak:
Yeah, if it helps sway your opinion, I'll basically do free marketing for this other home, if you accept my buyer client's offer.

Anngela Musgrave:
Right. And I think the hangup that a lot of agents have, and I had this at the beginning, before I started working with Platform, was spending money on marketing to sell a house in the market when we're really, really busy. You honestly don't need to put a lot of money into marketing a house to get it sold. If you price it appropriately, take decent pictures, it should pretty much sell itself.

Anngela Musgrave:
And I have really tried to put an emphasis on filming more listing videos, just because it's an opportunity for me to pick up more business. And so heck yeah, I'm going to offer. One, it's twofold for me. I'm going to offer that same service to this agent to help me get that buyer's offer accepted. And two, it'll help generate more business, because it's a higher-end listing in my market, and more people will say, "Hey, she's got a cool listing coming up. That's awesome. Let's let's use her, because she knows how to get houses sold." So it's a twofold approach, so I was like, "Hell, yeah, I'll ask him and see if I can sway the offer over to my buyer."

Anngela Musgrave:
They accepted my buyer's offer at list, which is uncharacteristic right now. Everything I'm writing right now has to be 20,000 over waive appraisal. No inspection. I didn't have to write any of that in the contract. They took it contingent. We've got two weeks to get their house under contract. I've got a phenomenal agent on the other side that's going to help sell his house out-of-area. And it sounds like we should have an offer on his house in the next couple of days, that they just listed on this last Monday, so a couple days ago.

Tim Chermak:
And so really, you used your reputation for listing marketing to help get one of your buyers' offers accepted. So that just shows the power it creates in your business and the momentum. When you commit to creating content, filming videos, doing lots of retargeting, it affects all areas of your business. Not just the listing pipeline, but in this case, it can even help you get buyers' offers accepted.

Anngela Musgrave:
Yeah, and I think the really cool thing is this agent's a part-time agent. He told me he works for a commercial building company in town, and he also builds a couple spec homes a year. And I said, "Hey, any time you have a spec home, I'd love to go film a video of that, too. I'm happy to help." And he's like, "What? You'll spend your own money to market it?" I said, "Yeah, it'll benefit me, too, because if I get any buyers off of it, I'm going to work them." But he's like, "Holy crap. This is just amazing."

Anngela Musgrave:
I got him in touch with my stager, who is actually my mom. I just had my mom start getting into staging, because my other stager said they didn't want to do it because of COVID any more. So I'm getting her business. I got my photographer some business from this agent, as well, because his photographer is crap, and I was like, "Dude, you've got to get new photos on that house. Have me come out, film a listing video tour. Have my photographer take good pictures of it. Have a stager come out, because it looks like old people live there."

Tim Chermak:
No offense to old people listening to this.

Anngela Musgrave:
No offense. So I just think it was a really great way to leverage some of the stuff we're doing.

Tim Chermak:
Because it looks like old people live there.

Anngela Musgrave:
It does, and they're not that old. That's the crazy thing. They're in their 50s.

Tim Chermak:
That's just a hilarious way of phrasing it, and it's funny, because I totally know what you're saying, but I've just never heard it worded that way: "It looks like old people live there."

Anngela Musgrave:
So I say that, because when I go and show clients houses, they're like, "I bet old people live here, huh?"

Tim Chermak:
Yeah, no, totally, totally. It's not hip and modern at all, or updated, or anything like that.

Anngela Musgrave:
Right, right, yeah.

Tim Chermak:
Well, that's just a cool story, and I wanted to highlight that on this mini episode of The Platform Marketing Show. Again, just to emphasize that when you create content, when you execute on this Platform marketing strategy, it affects your businesses in ways that you probably couldn't imagine or predict when you're just getting started. It's not just about generating leads. It's not just about getting listings, as great as those things are. It's about building a reputation in your area and creating that reputational asset that will create dividends in ways that you probably couldn't imagine.

Tim Chermak:
So guys, thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next episode of The Platform Marketing Show.