Launch checklist template for Real estate

The launch checklist with the rows a property campaign needs before it starts: the photography delivered and cropped, the portal listing live, the price guide agreed and consistent, the inspection times correct everywhere, and the enquiries reaching an agent who is expecting them.

Everything else is the general checklist, unchanged. One row per check, with an owner by name, a due date relative to the start, an honest blocking flag, a verification method and evidence kept.

Use it for every listing, because every listing is a launch with a fixed date and no spare weeks. The checks are short and the cost of missing one is a week of a campaign that cannot be extended.

Use it again before the pre-auction stage, which is a second launch inside the same campaign.

A property campaign runs to a date that cannot move and lasts a few weeks. That single fact makes a launch checklist worth more here than in categories where a slow start can be made up later.

A week lost to photography that was not ready, a portal listing that was not live, or an inspection time that was wrong is a week of a small number, and it cannot be recovered by extending the flight. That is why several rows on this list block, and why almost all of them are due before the start rather than on the day.

The list is short by design. An agency runs this many times a month, and a checklist that takes an hour will not be run at all.

The creative row is blocking, and it is not satisfied by the shoot having happened.

The check is that the assets are delivered, cropped for every placement the campaign will use, and approved by whoever has to approve them. Cropping is the part that gets skipped: a set framed for a portal listing is horizontal and wide, and the vertical placements will cut the sides off unless somebody has recomposed them.

Verify by opening each cropped asset at the size it will actually run and confirming the framing survives. It takes ten minutes and it is the difference between a campaign that looks considered and one that looks like a slideshow.

Confirm the listing is live on the portals before the paid campaign starts.

Most enquiry journeys in this category pass through a portal, whatever the ad says, and paid traffic sent before the listing exists lands on a search result page or a holding page. That week is gone, and the reporting will show it as poor performance rather than as a sequencing error.

The same applies to the listing page on the office's own site, where one exists, because that is usually where the paid traffic is actually sent.

The price guide check is simple and it prevents the most damaging inconsistency available to a property campaign.

Confirm the guide reads identically in the ads, on the portal, in the brochure, on the office site and in whatever the agent is telling people. Two versions of a guide in market is worse than a guide that is too high: it makes buyers distrust the process, and it produces conversations the agent cannot win.

Where the guide is agreed but not yet published, the campaign waits. Where it changes mid-campaign, that is a second launch and this row is checked again.

Inspection times appear in the ads, on the portal and in the office diary, and they are updated by different people at different moments.

The check is that all three agree, and it is worth doing the day before every inspection rather than only at launch. A time that is right in two places and wrong in the third produces people arriving at a locked house, which is the single worst outcome a property campaign can buy: it costs the vendor a buyer and the office a reputation, and it is entirely preventable.

Keep the screenshots. When something does go wrong, the record of what was published where is the only way to work out which system was edited.

Confirm that enquiries from the campaign reach an agent who knows the campaign is starting, on a channel they actually watch, with the listing identifiable in the message.

Property enquiries are time-sensitive in a way few categories match. A buyer who has emailed three agencies about three homes on a Saturday morning will inspect whichever one replies first. An enquiry that sits in a shared inbox until Monday has cost the campaign more than any targeting decision in it.

Test it: send an enquiry from the ad, and see how long it takes to reach a person.

A short row that prevents a long conversation: confirm the vendor has seen and approved the creative and the copy before it runs.

It costs a message. Without it, the first time a vendor sees their home described is in a feed, and any objection then arrives mid-campaign, when changing the creative costs a day of a period that has none to spare.

A listing campaign contains a second launch inside it, and most offices run it without a checklist.

The pre-auction stage changes the creative, the message and the thing being asked for: a warm audience is being asked to register rather than to discover. It usually needs new assets, a different landing destination, and updated inspection or registration details, and it happens in the busiest week of the campaign.

So the list is run again, shortened: are the new assets ready and cropped, is the registration path tested, do the auction details agree everywhere, and does the agent know what is starting. Four rows, ten minutes, in the week where a mistake costs the most.

Seven checks. Every row has an owner by name and a due date relative to the start. Photography is delivered, cropped for every placement and approved. The portal and site listings are live before the paid campaign starts. The guide reads identically everywhere it appears. Inspection times agree across the ads, the portal and the office diary. Enquiries reach a named agent on a channel they watch, tested with a real enquiry. And the vendor has seen what is running.