Overview
A playbook is a collection of tactics or methods that simplify an action, sort of like a best practice to-do list. It often just describes a documented, step-by-step process related to a repeatable task.
BoldTrail's 'Promote a Listing' playbook, however, is much more! It acts as a wizard that takes you through a curated set of activities to streamline the listing promotion process and combines different tools within BoldTrail to work for you.
This playbook is based on proven best practices for promoting and advertising a listing successfully in BoldTrail. It will help you reduce the time it takes by simplifying and automating the workflow, potentially increasing your pipeline.
Using This Playbook
The playbook for promoting a listing contains 7 plays, analytics tracking, and a list of automatically created assets for you to use when promoting a listing.
While you can choose which plays to follow and which to skip, best practice is to leverage all 7 plays in order to get the most exposure for your listing.
To access your Playbooks, click the 'More' tab in the left-hand menu, and select Playbooks.
Clicking on "Open Playbook" under the "Promote a New Listing" button will open up the playbook library where you can revisit a past playbook, continue a current playbook, or start a new one.
Starting a New Playbook
When you need to start a new playbook, you can search or filter for a listing. You will see the 'My Listing' filter results by default so it is easy to find and promote one of your listings.
If you do not have any inventory, you can use the 'Company Listings' filter to find properties to promote or filter by a specific Office or Team you may be a part of.
Please Note: If you are going to use a brokerage listing, double-check with your Admin and/or the listing Agent that you have permission to promote it!
Once you find the listing you would like to promote just click on the green "Start Promoting" button to the right of it.
This will open the playbook and show you the suggested plays one by one.
The 7 plays are organized into 3 categories:
Announce Your Listing: Plays 1-3
Leverage Social Media: Plays 4-5
Follow-up & Communicate: Plays 6-7
Plays
Play #1 - Notify Agents
The first step for promoting any listing is to let your fellow Agents know so they can refer Buyers to you. Leveraging the other Agents in your Office and their books of business can get even more eyes on your listing.
BoldTrail makes this easy by providing Office, Team, and individual Agent filters for you to use when narrowing down recipients. If you know a particular Office or Team covers this area or price range, you can announce the listing directly to them.
You have 3 options for the email message itself:
Send the premade 'Promote a Listing Playbook - Notify Agents' template.
Create a brand-new announcement from scratch.
Choose an existing email template you created.
The premade email template was designed to not only announce the details of your listing, but it also includes a handy button that the Agents receiving your message can use to locate matching Buyers in their Smart CRM.
To find and send this message, click into the Email Template field and begin typing in the template's name. Once you see it in the list just click on it to select it and preview the message.
Please Note: You will see the merge tags that the message uses, but it will automatically pull in the listing's details upon sending.
To create an email from scratch just click on the blue 'Edit' link to the right of the Email Template field.
This will bring up the basic email editor for you to create your message in or switch to the advanced email editor.
Once you are satisfied with your email, click the green "Done" button in the bottom left to see a preview of it within the play.
Enter a subject for the email message and click the green "Send Email" button in the top right of the play to finish!
If you have already created a new listing announcement message you would like to send out, you can click into the Email Template field and search the list of your saved templates.
TIP: If you wish to edit an email template without leaving the playbook, select the template you want to use and then click the blue 'Edit' link. This will allow you to edit the template's contents in the playbook. Your edits will not be permanently saved in the template, but they will show in this specific message.
Play #2 - Contact Matching Buyers
The second step is to review the potential Buyers you have in your own Smart CRM, so BoldTrail will automatically pull in a list of matching Buyer contacts that you own personally.
What's qualifies a matching buyer?
Contacts with a matching search alert (meaning the listing will show up in that contact's search alert results)
Restricted to contacts assigned to the signed in user. (In other words - an admin won't see contacts that are assigned to their agents, only the leads assigned to them)
Please Note: Contacts that have been shared with you will not be included in this list nor will Office or Team owned contacts.
You can review the list and uncheck the box next to any contacts you do not want to send this listing to. You also have the option of sending the listing to a group of contacts you have already identified.
By clicking on the white "Custom list" button above BoldTrail's Smart List, you can easily find a premade group of contacts using a saved filter or hashtag.
Once you choose the list of contacts you would like to share this listing with, you can create a text message and/or email or choose an existing template from the drop-down.
TIP: When scheduling the email, you can choose to have it send out later that same day if you would like it to go out immediately.
When you are satisfied with the message(s), click the green "Send/Schedule" button in the top right of the play.
Play #3 - Utilize Custom Text Code
BoldTrail will automatically create a custom text code unique to this listing that you can then use on flyers, postcards, sign riders, and more to begin advertising this listing in your area.
TIP: Add the custom text code to your email signature and include it in voicemails to Buyers! You might want to provide it to the Agents in your Office or Team and tell them to have their Buyers text it as well.
The text code defaults to the first 10 characters of the listing's street address, so '9430 Wheatstone Ave.' becomes the code '9430Wheats'. If you would like to change the text code or confirm which Smart Number is associated with it, click on the blue 'Edit settings' link to the right.
You can also change the content of the text reply from the MLS ID, which sends a lead to the listing's details page on your BoldTrail website, to a message or other URL you wish to reply with.
When you have the text code set up just click the green "Save Changes" button in the top right of the play.
Play #4 - PropertyBoost: Boost Now
To make a splash with your marketing of this listing, BoldTrail suggests that you utilize a PropertyBoost, especially if you have already used it in the past.
You can see an example of a CORE PropertyBoost ad in this play and switch between the Desktop and Mobile versions. If you decide to take advantage of this "easy button" advertising on Facebook, click the green "Boost Now" button in the top right of the play.
Play #5 - Digital Promotion
In addition to automatically creating a custom text code, BoldTrail will also generate a squeeze link, landing page, Craigslist ad, and virtual tour page for this listing.
Please Note: The virtual tour option is only available if you have already added a virtual tour to your MLS or added it via ListingMachine.
You can edit the squeeze page's settings, the landing page's background image or subdomain, post the ad to Craigslist, and preview the virtual tour.
Please Note: You cannot adjust the associated hashtag for any of these tools. Make a note of it so you can filter for the New Leads generated from this playbook.
Play #6 - Initial Seller Report Email
This play can be activated in 2 ways:
Adding the Seller for this listing in the top left corner of the playbook.
Choosing the Seller for this listing from the drop-down in this play.
After selecting a Seller from your Smart CRM a preview of the Seller Report will populate and you can review an example of what the email looks like. This information will be contained within the Seller's contact record as well and the report will default to being sent every 7 days.
Play #7 - Activate Smart Campaign
The last step to promoting your listing is to decide whether you would like to add a Smart Campaign to all New Leads generated by the playbook or leave the default campaigns you have set up as they are.
Creating a listing-specific or a promotion-specific Smart Campaign can boost your response rate and help begin a conversation around the listing(s) you have available. One idea is to clone your default Buyer campaign and sprinkle in messages referring to your listing or general inventory, including the text code, squeeze link, etc..
As you complete each play you will see a progress bar on the top right of the playbook and each play you complete will have a green checkmark. If you need to revisit the playbooks this will make it easy to see where you left off.
How to Continue or Revisit a Playbook
As you run each play to promote your listing there will probably be moments where you need to step away from the playbook. Because almost every play is automatically generated and each completed play is tracked, it is very easy to pick up where you left off.
Log into your BoldTrail account.
Click on the playbook you were working on.
Select the property from the list on the right side.
It will open the last play you were working on.
Once you are back on the play you left off on you can continue to complete each one in turn until the playbook is complete!
Revisiting Playbooks with Off-Market Listings
If one of the listings in your playbook was sold or taken off market, the playbook will still display in your Revisit list. However, the listing can no longer be promoted, and you will only be able to open your playbook to view its quicksheet and playbook results.
Playbook Results
This section of the playbook displays all the tracked analytics for each marketing play you used. Just click on the "Playbook Results" button under the listing's address.
You can review each of the plays you choose to run and the activity generated by each one. You will also see a list of the Buyers that were generated from the marketing plays which includes any Buyers you had in your Smart CRM and sent an announcement to.
Quicksheet
If, after studying the analytics, you decide to re-share any of the generated links, re-boost the listing, or re-post the Craiglist ad, you can click on the white "Quicksheet" button under the listing's address.
You can quickly copy the needed link(s) or review the message(s) you sent announcing this listing initially. If you decide to reuse any of the links or send another email/text through this playbook, the new information will be added to the analytics for you to review.
Have more questions? Please reach out to Customer Support via the blue chat bubble to the right or by emailing support@insiderealestate.com!