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Cemetery
Plots for Sale? There is No Magic Selling Button to Push.
Part 3 Cemetery Plots for Sale and
what doesn't work.
Newspaper
ads don’t really work. Not because they can’t reach the buyer but
because it generally takes too much money to just stay visible waiting for
a buyer to come along. Even at $20 a week for an ad, would lead to an
expenditure of $1,000 a year just to keep the ad running. Any thought of
just breaking even on a property that has doubled or even tripled because
of cemetery property values is quickly eaten up by classified renewals.
So
what should a seller do? Hire a professional organization with the
visibility and tools that in the long run will give him the best chance of
selling without going broke. It should be one that can do more than just
list the property and leave the buyer seller matching to chance.
It
needs to be aligned with the Internet if it is going to reach the buyer in
the nearly split second timing of decision making for a cemetery plot
purchase. That means it needs high Internet visibility. Beyond that it
also needs personal contact with buyers, like a real estate agent has for
a home seller.
Since
no one can predict when the need to buy will arise. Remember it occurs 80%
of the time when a person actually dies. Maintaining visibility becomes
crucial and therefore costly, unless length of time to be listed doesn’t
matter. Therefore, there should be a way to maintain listing privileges
without the costs to do so always going up. A $1.00 a week
doesn’t sound like much until you realize you are selling cemetery plots
and not a dining room table and that it may take you two years to find a
buyer for the plots, that’s over a $100.00 and you still
might not be done yet.
Most
important of all to a seller, should be that the organization needs to be
experienced at cemetery property sales not cemetery plots, automobiles,
boats, furniture, computers, books and all the other things most Internet
classified sites are listing.
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A seller with cemetery plots may think,
“Wow this is cheap and look at all the people that go to classified
sites. I can’t lose and look at all the money I am saving.”
If
that is the attitude the seller still doesn’t get it. If uncle Joe died
today, I can guarantee his family is not going to go to the classifieds to
find his grave. They will go where their funeral director tells them to go
or even their friends but not to the same place they got that used
refrigerator last month.
They
also aren’t going somewhere on the Internet where they have to bid for
uncle Joes grave. Anyone thinking they are going to sell their cemetery
plots through an auction to a family who needs a burial site is not paying
any attention to how the cemetery property market works.
They
aren’t going to go somewhere on the Internet where they have to go
through a bunch of autos, homes, boats, furniture, trinkets, you name it,
because classified sites bread and butter is not listing cemetery plots
for sale but rather those things that get bought and sold everyday and
lots of people are looking to sell or buy everyday.
They
aren’t going to search forever or find that site on page five of Google
or even page three. If it isn’t on page one or two forget it. They
won’t find it. It isn’t going to be found by some obscure key word
either. If Uncle Joe dies in Florida or Michigan, that buyer is going to
type in “Cemetery Plots Michigan” or “Cemetery Plots Florida” and
click. If a site shows up they will click it and hope to find the right
city and cemetery and they better find it quick or the seller loses again
because that buyer will simply give up and call the Cemetery or have his
funeral director do it.
[Click
for Part 4]
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