What a Real Marketing Plan Looks Like for Your Redmond Listing

I'm Holli Cobb, a REALTOR® with REAL Broker in Redmond, and most sellers I talk to can recite their mailbox from memory: a handful of postcards a week, each one promising a free valuation, a cash offer, or a number that sounds too good to check. They all say roughly the same thing, because most of them are the same plan with a different name on it: list it, put a sign in the yard, syndicate it to the portals, and wait for someone else, the MLS, a buyer's agent, Zillow, to bring the buyer.

That's not a marketing plan. That's the minimum a license requires. A home on the MLS with no sign of life beyond that is listed, not marketed, and the difference shows up in how long it sits and who actually walks through the door.

The work that actually moves a buyer's first impression happens before your home ever goes live, not after. Real photography and video, not a rushed set of phone photos taken the morning the sign goes up. A written plan for how the home gets introduced, so the first thing a buyer sees is the strongest thing about your house, not whatever room had the best light that day.

The words matter too. Listing copy that leads with real estate filler, cozy, must see, won't last, tells a buyer nothing. Copy that describes what it's actually like to live in the house and on the street gives them something to picture themselves inside of. If your home needs work before it's ready to be seen, a plan tells you plainly which three things change a buyer's first impression and which ten don't, instead of asking you to fix everything.

Putting a home on the MLS and waiting is not marketing. It's the floor. A real plan puts video and targeted online advertising behind the listing, aimed at buyers who weren't actively searching that day, not just the ones already refreshing the portals. The channels and the spend should look different for a starter home in town than for five acres outside Terrebonne, because those two homes don't reach the same buyer the same way. A plan built around the property in front of you beats a plan that runs the same campaign on everything.

Once a home is live, a real plan gets checked every week against what's actually happening: how many people are looking, who's asking about it, what showings are turning into, and what feedback keeps repeating. If something isn't working, that's the moment to adjust it, not two months later. A home that hasn't sold in a couple of weeks isn't a crisis, it's a data point, and you should hear about it as it happens, not only when an offer finally shows up.

Before you list with anyone, ask a few plain questions: What does my home's marketing actually include beyond the MLS? Who sees it that wouldn't have found it on their own? How often will I hear from you while it's live, and what will that update actually tell me? What happens if it doesn't sell in the first few weeks? An honest answer sounds specific. A vague one, trust me, I'll take care of it, usually means there isn't a plan behind it.

This is the whole method I run on every Redmond listing, laid out in full on how I sell your home. If you want to see what an actual plan looks like for your specific house before you decide anything, reach out and I'll walk you through it.