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Eric Worral: (00:00)
Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of RentPrep for Landlords. This is episode # 313, and we’re going to be talking about creative marketing techniques to get more eyeballs on your listings, whether that be, you know, for your rental property and you’re trying to get a ton of in, or perhaps you’re trying to sell a property. We’re going to be talking about that. The influencer, today’s episode came from a really funny viral listing that a happening right now in California. And it’s got a pretty funny little life, if you want to call it an Easter egg inside of the photos of the listing. I’m going gonna explain what that is all about right after this.

Voice Over: (00:39)
Welcome to the RentPrep for Landlords podcast and now your host, Eric Worral.

Eric Worral: (00:44)
So, I don’t even know where I came across this post. It was probably something on Facebook group or maybe just you know, saw it on Reddit or something like that. But actually I just remembered it was somebody I’m friends with on Facebook who’s not even into real estate, but she’s like, you need to check out these the photos on this listing. Make sure you look at them all. So I saw it as a Zillow house for sale or house for sale that was on Zillow and I started going through these pictures and it’s a beautiful house. It’s in a town called Felton, California, which is a, it looks like it’s just a little south of San Jose, kind of like the Bay Area out there. And they’re listing it for $999,000 five-bedroom, three-bath, 1800 square feet.

Eric Worral: (01:26)
And that’s right. 1800 square feet, a million dollars. I got a lot of California pricing, but I mean it’s a beautiful lot like gorgeous trees. And then just a really neat looking house and the photos are gorgeous as well. And as you’re going through them, let me count here. You get about 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, about 23 pictures in on the listing. And I will link to this if you haven’t already seen this in today’s show notes. You see like this, a Sasquatch, this Yeti sitting there and he’s playing, playing a little guitar on the porch and just kind of hanging out. And it’s a really impressive costume too. Like this is like legit, like Yeti costume. And then you go like four more pictures and then you see that same character reading the magazine on the, a beautiful outdoor porch.

Eric Worral: (02:16)
Then you see him reading inside and the title of the book is edible mushrooms, which is kind of funny. And then you see him on a zoom call with somebody, you see him baking. So he’s got oven mitts on and he’s making cookies. And then he’s just in all these funny situations throughout the house. My favorite poly being one where he’s got both his hands wrapped around a coffee cup. Like it’s like, you know, he’s having his sinful morning cup of coffee while he stares out into the distance and he’s doing yoga and exercising and all this crazy stuff. So I know my friend that posted it, it was just thought it was just kinda funny or whatever. But as a marketer, I looked at this and are, will perhaps my new favorite. The last image they have is him leaving in a car and he has a mask on for you know, COVID-19.

Eric Worral: (03:03)
But the really cool thing about this listing, right, like I said, $999,000, it has been on the market for 11 days. The view count, cause a Zillow shows you how many views and saves the property has. It has 644,000 views and 5,400 saves over 5,400. So I went into Zillow and I looked up other I put some filters on and looked at other places that are listed for sale that are close by in Fenton, California for a similar price, just to kind of get like an idea. So I found this other house is $975,000. And it has been on Zillow for 137 days and has 2,400 or 2000, 467 views and 25 saves. So out of those 644,000, I mean obviously like that’s great, you’re getting all these views. Of course, you know, 99% of them are people like me that have no interest in buying the house.

Eric Worral: (03:57)
They just think it’s funny cause they saw it posted somewhere. But that’s cool. But you got to imagine if just a half a percent of somebody that went there just to see it, cause it was funny. It looks at English. You know what? That’s my dream house. I got to have it. I’m going to go buy that house. So it’ll be interesting to see what happens with it. Maybe I can get this realtor on the show to talk about his experience of doing this and if he’s done this in other ways, but it really clever thing and what they call this as like an Easter egg. Maybe you’ve heard of this before. I know. I wondered about it like a few years ago. Basically, you know, you hide something and something that’s unexpected, and then you kind of makes you laugh and you get, you get a chuckle out of it.

Eric Worral: (04:34)
So this one, obviously the Easter egg is the Yeti showing off this house and all the different functionality of the house. So it got me thinking like for your rentals, for your rental listings, would it make sense doing something like this? Is there something about your listing that is fun or is unusual or unique? You know, is there, is there some way that you might be able to get more exposure for your listings by featuring something? You know, it doesn’t have to be a Yeti, but maybe it could be something similar to that and you could try it out for yourself. If you have a property that usually takes a little bit longer to rent. What I would do in that situation is I would try out an idea like this and then you know, I’m sure you’ve got somebody with a Halloween costume, right?

Eric Worral: (05:18)
Whether it’s Chewbacca, the jetty, you know, whatever it is. You might have a good Halloween costume and then randomly plop it into some of the images. But then if you reach out to your local publications you know, and maybe not the newspapers, they may not circulate this, but if you look into like Twitter and who’s got a good following locally in your area, you know, share it to them, share it in other ways. You may find that you ended up getting a ton of eyeballs on your listings and be able to rent that listing better, but more importantly, get a bigger tenant applicant pool. So if you go from having 20 people apply to 50, it sounds like a lot more work. But really if you have good systems set up, you should be able to get a much better renter because the more people you have apply for your rentals, the better your odds are a view finding the right renter for your rental property.

Eric Worral: (06:06)
So that’s just one idea that comes to mind is just kinda mimicking this and seeing if you can do it in your own way. And I’m sure somebody has got that Halloween costume sitting around that they can do it. And again, like I mentioned, I will have the images or the link to the Zillow posting for as long as it’s available. How’s myself soon available if you guys want to check that out. Other ideas that come to mind? Not so much, you know, fun viral type ideas, but I have been getting questions from people talking about the rental listings during this time of COVID-19, I got a good email from somebody that was saying, you know, like I’ve noticed that the qualifications to rent are starting to reduce in my neighborhood. And what he was saying was it was very standard to do first and last month’s rent plus security deposit.

Eric Worral: (06:54)
And he said he was starting to see more and more security deposit plus first month’s rent and people were dropping that last month’s rent and asking, you know, what my thoughts were on it. And, you know, not super insightful on my behalf, but basically like, you kind of just gotta listen to your local market and if you’re going to do what you’ve always been doing and then suddenly you start seeing, you know, I used to get a ton of response for this, now I’m only getting a few leads and they’re not great. Yeah. I would take the time to look at what’s going on, just do some research, not too hard. You know, go on Zillow or you know, Craigslist, Facebook marketplace and look at some comparable listings to yours, you know, set the price filters down so you’re only seeing people that are in your area for a similar price and just see what they’re asking.

Eric Worral: (07:37)
You know, are they, are they changing things? Does it seem like they’re maybe even asking for less rent because you don’t want to, you know, be caught like being the guy that’s still asking for the moon and everybody else lowered their standards and you can’t fill that rental property because of it. So I think because of COVID-19, it is a good idea to go back and look at what you’re offering and if it’s competitive compared to what the marketplace is showing in your area, because that’s always a good idea to do that. And the other thing I mentioned to him is he said he was, you know, getting less and less traction. And I know I’ve mentioned this on past episodes, but I really do believe Facebook marketplace is gobbling up quite a bit of Craigslist listings. And that’s not just for rental properties, that’s just for selling stuff.

Eric Worral: (08:22)
Everything. But I, I’m pretty sure I read that they have surpassed Craigslist for rental listings as far as how many are being posted and responded to. So if you’re not on there yet, it is a pain in the butt cause people are gonna message you on your, your Facebook messenger inbox is going to get blown up. But it’s definitely an area if you’re, if you’re willing to deal with that nuisance you can get some good traction there. Leads. So, that’s going to be about it for today’s episode. It’s kind of a tough one cause it’s a podcast and I feel like the images are so funny. Another one of my favorite ones is they actually just took of this bigfoot in the woods and he’s walking and he’s doing that classic like big foot look, you know, like he just got spotted as he’s walking. I thought that was pretty good too. Yeah, you guys can check that out in today’s show notes, just look for episode 313 and you’ll see the images or the link to the featured a listing for that property. All right guys, I hope you’ve had a good week and I’m, you know, hanging in there and I look forward to catching up with you guys next week. Have a great week and take care.

#313 Viral Marketing Tactic for Listings

Can you do us a solid?

Resources Mentioned on this Episode:

Show Transcription: