A property marketing timeline is the thing most sellers wish they'd had. Not a vague idea of "list it next month," but a week-by-week sequence that maps out photography, copy, digital advertising, open homes, and every decision point in between. Without one, things get rushed, cut, or done in the wrong order. With one, the campaign runs cleanly from start to sale.
Kitti Rivers Real Estate Photography works with agents and sellers across multiple campaigns each week, and the pattern is consistent: the listings that perform best are the ones where marketing prep started early and ran to a plan. Here's how to build that plan for your own property.
Start four to six weeks before you want to go live
Most sellers aim to "go live" on a Friday, which is when buyer attention is highest on the major listing portals. Work backwards from that date and you'll find that serious preparation needs to start at least four weeks out, and six is better for larger or more complex properties.
In this early window, the priorities are styling, repairs, and booking. Finalise your agent and your asking price strategy. Walk each room and identify what needs to be fixed, removed, or replaced before a camera comes anywhere near the property. If you're planning to use professional staging, get a stager booked now. Availability is often tighter than sellers expect, particularly in spring.
It's also the right moment to decide on your photography package. Standard stills, twilight shots, drone imagery, floor plans: each adds time to the shoot schedule and the editing turnaround. Lock in your photographer at this stage, not the week before.
The two weeks before photography
This is where the physical work happens. Decluttering, painting touch-ups, garden tidying, window cleaning. These jobs take longer than expected. A single weekend isn't enough for a full family home.
Think carefully about each room the photographer will shoot. Home staging that makes every room photograph beautifully is an investment in time before the shoot, not something sorted on the morning. The living areas, bedrooms, bathrooms, and kitchen each have their own styling logic, and getting them right before the photographer arrives saves rescheduling costs and guarantees better results.
If your home has dark rooms or tricky north-facing interiors, let your photographer know in advance. They may need to bring additional lighting gear or plan the shoot around the best available natural light. Good communication at this stage saves wasted hours on the day.
Photography day and the edit window
Photography day is not the end of the prep stage. It's the midpoint. After the shoot, a professional edit takes time: colour correction, sky replacement on overcast days, HDR blending, floor plan rendering. Budget at least three to five business days between shoot day and having final images in hand. Drone footage and twilight shots may add another day.
During this window, your agent should be drafting the listing copy. The photography and the copy should be prepared in parallel, not sequentially. Waiting for photos before starting the description costs you three to five days you don't have if you're targeting a specific listing date.
Listing copy matters more than most sellers realise. Property listing descriptions that attract serious buyers are written around specific features, not generic phrases. Brief your agent with a list of the things you love about the property: the ones buyers won't see in photographs but will feel when they walk through the door.
The week before going live
By now you should have final images, a finished description, a confirmed listing headline, and a clear open home schedule. This week is for digital setup.
Upload the listing to the major portals (realestate.com.au and Domain in Australia). Confirm your paid social advertising is set up and ready to launch the moment the listing goes live. If your agent uses email marketing to a database of active buyers, that campaign should be queued and ready to send on launch day.
This is also when to prep the property for its first open home. Small things make a real difference: fresh flowers, clean windows, neutral scents, every light switched on. Run through the property as a buyer would, from the front gate in. Fix anything that jars.
During the campaign: don't go quiet
The first open home is rarely the last. A typical campaign runs three to four weeks, and buyer interest can arrive in waves. The mistake sellers make is treating marketing as something that happens at launch and then stops.
Keep the listing active on social channels. Repurpose photography into short video clips, room-by-room highlights, or neighbourhood shots. Your photographer may have delivered more images than the listing portal uses; those extras belong on Instagram and Facebook where they can do more work. Review engagement on your paid ads after the first few days and adjust the targeting or creative if reach is low.
Track how many enquiries and inspections each week produces. If week two delivers significantly fewer than week one, talk to your agent about adjusting the price, the copy, or the advertising budget. A campaign that stalls is better corrected early than left to drift.
After the sale: document what worked
Once the property sells, spend thirty minutes writing down what worked and what you'd do differently. Which marketing channel drove the most serious enquiries? Did the open home schedule suit buyer traffic patterns in your suburb? Were there rooms that photographed better than expected, or worse?
This isn't just navel-gazing. If you sell again, or if you're an agent managing multiple campaigns, a documented record of what performed turns each campaign into a smarter starting point for the next one. The timeline itself gets sharper every time you run it.
Property marketing that's planned well doesn't feel frantic. It feels like every piece arrived exactly when it was needed, because it did.