Written from the trenches of Auckland real estate by Amit Sharma — Bayleys agent, 10+ years marketing experience.
Print is not dead, but its role has shrunk. The buyers who once flicked through the Property Press on a Saturday morning now scroll Instagram, TikTok and Facebook every night of the week. If your listing is not appearing in those feeds, you are invisible to a large chunk of the buyer pool — particularly anyone under 45.
The shift is not just about where buyers look. It is about how they decide. Static photos in a magazine give a property one chance to impress. A short reel — 15 to 30 seconds of well-shot footage with good music — gives that same property dozens of micro-impressions, each one nudging a buyer toward the open home.
Across my own social channels (over 200,000 followers built over a decade) I see the same pattern again and again: listings backed by short-form video receive 3 to 5 times more enquiry than listings relying on photos alone. That is not theory — that is the data from my own campaigns.
What to spend on, in order: 1) Professional photography (non-negotiable). 2) A 30-second reel for Instagram and TikTok. 3) Paid Facebook and Instagram targeting to local buyer segments. 4) A longer YouTube walkthrough for serious buyers. Print, if any, comes last — and only for premium properties where the audience still reads it.
The vendors who win in 2026 are the ones who treat marketing like a product, not an expense. Get this right and the campaign sells itself before the first open home.