Thanks to technology, open houses are a great way to bring in buyers and potential clients for these reasons:

Brand Yourself, Brand Your Property

One of them, according to Inman, is branding.

Multimedia marketing builds the brand of a product, and your product is your listing.

Effective open house marketing includes posting on the MLS; syndicating to as many websites as you can; targeted social media posts; inviting the neighbors; and alerting the cooperating agents in the area.

But don’t forget to link back to your product. Every piece of marketing should have a link back to the information page for your listing.

Try doing this: add the URL to your email signature, put it on your business card, or even better, make up property-specific business cards to hand out with a QR code and a photo of the house along with your contact information.

Make Connections. Work From Anywhere

According to the NAR 2013 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, buyers report that open houses are a part of their search and that they visited a number of open houses as part of the search process. The study also breaks down the methods buyers use to search by age group—and it found that both the echo boomers and the millennials are visiting open houses, not just browsing through their phones or computer screens.

Another interesting data point is that buyers interviewed only one agent for the job of helping them find a home.

Use this to your advantage and think of the open house as your satellite office and set it up that way. Have helpful information on hand such as the homebuying process, area info, school info and any other “stuff” buyers may like and would be of value to them as they search.

You’re a community expert. Use your best judgment.

Also, try using an iPad application like Open Home Pro. It takes the buyer through a few questions, has them enter their contact information and sends a follow-up thank-you email to all who sign-in.

The agents using the Open Home Pro app report that they get better-quality contact information than they did when they used a paper and pen sign-in sheet, Inman says. Open Home Pro also eliminates the chicken scratch that you can’t read when trying to follow up. And I bet we’re all thankful for that.

Photos Don’t Do a Beautiful Home Justice

Even if they are good-quality photos, the photos of listings often do not do the property justice.

It’s like online shopping. You can see how gorgeous a piece of clothing is on the store’s website, but you can’t try it on through a computer.

People need to get in and see a property to truly appreciate it. It is common to hear a buyer at an open house remark that the house is much better than what they expected to find based on the photos.