There’s a great quote from David Ogilvy, the man known as the ‘Father of Advertising’. “You cannot bore people into buying your product. You can only interest them in buying it.” The way to make your property listings interesting is to tell stories, use evocative language and include powerful facts. The more interesting you make your [...]
I’ve got a tip that will help you write better property listings. This is a tip I learned years ago, when I became a journalist, and it immediately made me a better writer. The tip is OTPS – one thought per sentence. What that means is you should present one idea at a time. After you’ve [...]
How many times have you read something … and had no idea what it was about? When that happens, we often blame ourselves – we weren’t smart enough to understand the writing or we didn’t pay enough attention. But when writing is unclear, it’s not the reader’s fault, it’s the writer’s fault. Readers shouldn’t have to [...]
When you list a property, you're not selling it in isolation. You're competing with all the other comparable homes on the market. That's why, when you write your property listing, you need to find a way to differentiate your home from rival properties. This might sound obvious, but you can't stand out by looking the same [...]
When you finish writing a property listing, give it a quick read and then ask yourself this question: "If I was a buyer, would this listing make me want to attend the open home?" If the answer is yes, congratulations. If the answer is no, cast a critical eye over your writing and ask yourself why [...]
Good writers don’t just include the right information in a property listing – they also present the information in the right order. As a general rule, you should put the most important information at the top of the listing and the least important information at the bottom. That way, you’ll give buyers the strongest possible reason [...]
Studies show most people think they have above-average intelligence and attractiveness. And I'm willing to bet most people think they have above-average spelling and typing skills. I mention this because I regularly see listings with spelling mistakes. These mistakes could be avoided if the agent would just run their copy through a spell-checker – but if [...]
I sometimes get asked how long a property listing should be. I’ve seen anywhere from 75 words to 900 words. But rather than aim for a specific word count, your goal should be to include whatever information is necessary to attract people to the open home – no more, no less. If you write a very [...]
Here’s a tip that will instantly improve the quality of your property listings: pretend you’re writing for an audience of 10-year-olds. That will force you to use simple language and to explain things in clear terms. And that, in turn, will make your arguments more persuasive. The reason you’re engaging with my video right now is [...]
David Ogilvy, the man known as the ‘Father of Advertising’, has some great advice for anyone who writes ads – such as property listings. When you write a listing, it gets read by a lot of people. However, you shouldn’t address buyers as though they were gathered together in a stadium, according to Ogilvy. Instead, you [...]
