Most agents are still pitching photos, a floor plan and a price. Vendors say they will pay for more, if someone explains what it does. And the first reader of a listing is now, more often than not, a machine that only recommends what it can read.
Alexandra (Alex) Warren has spent more than two decades in property marketing, from News Corp at 22 to running Diakrit in Australia, and she brought the research to Track 03 of The Edit.
The conversation is built around Diakrit’s consumer research with Stone Real Estate, which surveyed buyers and vendors who had bought or sold in the previous six months – recent enough that they were recalling the experience rather than reconstructing it.
Three myths the research set out to bust
The first is that vendors will not pay for marketing. Alex’s view is that property marketing in Australia has barely evolved since the portals took over from print – it is still photos and a floor plan, with a little more of each.
“Vendors are absolutely willing to pay more if they can see a direct correlation between a return on investment. And I don’t think agents are grasping that, particularly if they’re only using photos and floor plans.”
The second is that virtual tours were a COVID-era tool. Alex hears from contacts in the portal space that campaigns with a tour perform differently, but too few agencies use them for anyone to prove it. So Diakrit asked buyers directly.
The third is that holding information back works. “Buyers expect the information,” she says, “and if anything, they’re frustrated by the lack of it.”
What poor marketing looks like to a buyer
One in four buyers in the research named poor marketing as their biggest pain point.
Asked what that actually looks like, Alex runs through the list: no price guide, thin or inaccurate detail, copy that over-embellishes, photos that sell a room bigger than it is, and not enough content to make a decision without giving up a Saturday.
Her point for agents is that the buyer standing in the open home is judging more than the property.
“Buyers are your pipeline of vendors,” she says – and the experience an agent gives them now decides who they call when it is their turn to sell.
The conversation that wins the listing
The number Alex keeps coming back to is 58 per cent – the share of vendors who said marketing strategy played a role in deciding who they chose to sell their property.
Not the number of properties sold or years of experience, which she says ranked surprisingly low as reasons a vendor called an agent in.
Her version of a marketing strategy is a funnel, explained in the lounge room: Photos create awareness. A virtual tour or video moves a buyer to inspect, and then to make an offer, because they have walked through the home several times before they arrive.
“If you can explain that to a vendor – and the other two agents that are following you, trust me, are not even talking about marketing – I know which agent I’d be seriously considering.”
On the objection that the other agent is cheaper, Alex is blunt: price only becomes the conversation when the agent has failed to explain the difference and the return. She calls it the apples-and-apples conversation, and the job is to turn it into apples and oranges.
Then there is one line that gives the episode its edge. “Your most recent listing is the quality of your next listing.” If the last campaign was six photos and a floor plan, that is the audition the next vendor sees.
When the first reader is a machine
Samantha’s favourite topic gets its own stretch. Buyers are already asking Gemini, Claude and ChatGPT for a shortlist in plain language, and the days of bed, bath, car and a price range are ending.
“AI will interpret, read and recommend based on what it’s got.”
If the listing does not carry what the buyer asked for, it does not make the shortlist.
Alex’s AI-ready checklist is concrete: more than 15 photos, a 2D floor plan (a 3D one for the humans), a virtual tour, a video walkthrough, and copy that is structured and factual rather than embellished.
She estimates only around one in ten listings carries video today, and buyers still rate it as new and interesting. Her analogy is the spec sheet that comes with a new car – it lists everything, and that is how a home now needs to be described.
Using the content before the listing goes live
The lead-capture example is a Sydney agent who sends a partial virtual tour to his hot buyers on the Tuesday before a Thursday launch. It is not online yet, they get it first, and they ring to ask when the open is.
“How you use that piece of content to move buyers through the pipeline is your ammo. It’s your marketing strategy. It’s no one else’s.”
On AI-generated imagery, Alex’s advice to principals is to set guardrails now. Europe is already regulating it, Australia will follow, and generative tools still hallucinate on visual content. Use it only with someone checking the output before it reaches a portal.
One thing to change this week
“Change the narrative from it being an expense to an investment.”
Alex’s suggestion is to run your own listing presentation past ChatGPT or Gemini and let it coach you on where the pitch tips from cost to investment. Vendors, she says, are not looking for the cheapest campaign. They are looking for confidence and trust, and marketing is a large part of how an agent earns both.
“Everyone can give photos and floor plans,” she says.
“Not everyone right now can give virtual tours.”
What you’ll take away
- The three myths Diakrit set out to test, and what recent buyers and vendors actually said
- What poor marketing means to the one in four buyers who named it as their biggest frustration
- How to explain a marketing schedule as a funnel, so the number at the bottom is not the only difference
- What to say when a vendor tells you the other agent is cheaper
- Why your current listing is auditioning for your next appraisal
- The AI-ready checklist – photos, floor plan, virtual tour, video and copy that reads like a spec sheet
- How one agent uses a virtual tour to warm his database before a listing goes live
- Where to draw the line on AI-generated property imagery
The practical challenge for every agent is to take the last marketing schedule you presented and ask what it explains. If it lists products and a price, it is an expense. If it explains how each piece moves a buyer from noticing the property to making an offer, it is an investment – and the only version a vendor can say yes to with confidence.
The Diakrit Consumer Research 2026 report is free to download: Beyond the Basics – what buyers and vendors value, notice and act on.
Elite Agent’s write-up of the findings is here.
This is The Edit
The Edit is Elite Agent’s real estate mixtape – a series of practical, honest and occasionally uncomfortable conversations with the voices and hard-earned wisdom worth paying attention to.
Each track begins with one hard question facing agents and principals now. Samantha McLean and her co-hosts stay with it long enough to get past the easy answer.