Daniel Jeffs
Property
Marketing
Matters
Property marketing doesn't need to cost the world, but it makes the world of difference. It can be the difference between a property receiving an offer within it's first week at or above the asking price, or taking years to get an offer that is vastly under the original asking price.
Just because your property is on Rightmove, or any property search site does not mean that it is being marketed. The majority of properties online do not have a marketing strategy, these properties either never sell, or take so long to sell that you're wasting your time, money and damaging your company brand.
During my time working for a sole agency we'd be instructed on a property that has been on with numerous other local agents but would not sell. After implementing our marketing strategy the property would be receiving offers in a matter of weeks.
Are you actually marketing your properties?
So what is a property marketing strategy? Property marketing is far more than just loading photographs to Rightmove and waiting for viewings to be arranged. simply using a strategy to market your properties. All properties will have a similar strategy, but each will be slightly different. To begin with, every property will require a few essential things.
Professional Photographs
Detailed labelled floor plan
Clear informative brochure and an
Engaging property video.
There are additional extras, like virtual tours, 360 videos, live streams but these aren't required for every property. Most of these services can be used as part of a social media strategy to maximise exposure.
This sounds like it is going to be expensive, not necessarily, the video doesn't have to be a 5 minute high budget video, a simple 60 second well edited video set to inspiring music can convey a properties feel and inspire viewers to arrange a viewing.
So what is the strategy?
The strategy has 3 stages, prepare, implement and analyse.
Prepare. This stage is preparing your property marketing media.
First impressions matter, do you want to stand out from the crowd, or blend in with everyone else. You want to stand out from the crowd, so firstly you need a set of photographs. These will be first thing a prospective buyer will see when searching. A professional photographer will be able to take a range of photographs, from the standard "estate agent" photo, to more lifestyle shots, to twilight and elevated photography. They will also know editing techniques to replace the sky if photographed on a cloudy day or remove unwanted objects.
If a picture says a 1000 words, then how many does a video say? even if it's just a 60 second short property highlight video, a video will engage your audience and can be accompanied with a voiceover or motion graphics for added information. The options are endless when it comes to videos, depending on your budget.
Next you will need a floor plan, floor plans are crucial in showing the layout of a property, they can help a buyer visual the space and how they may use it. Floor plans must be informative and include room measurements, I see a lot of agents load floor plans with nothing but names, putting the measurements in the description text, so buyers have to go between floor plan and description.
Now put all this together into a property brochure, a brochure for print can be different from a brochure you load online. Printed brochures are costly, and frankly obsolete. With the pandemic of the last few years, the world of estate agency has become even more digital, make sure you don't fall behind. If you want to produce printed brochures they won't be more than a few pages A4/
A5 size, however a digital brochure can be as many pages as you like, all it is is a .pdf file.
Implement.
Time to implement your media, you'll load all the photos, video, floor plan and brochures to your property portals. Match the property to your buyers on your database, if you don't have a database of prospective buyers, get one, immediately.
Social Media is a massive untapped resource a lot of agents do not utilise. Essentially it's a completely free marketing platform available to you, allowing you to market not only your properties but also your company, giving you the opportunity to engage with your audience and grow your brand. It is a great way to give people an insight into your brand and help develop a relationship of trust, only 25% of people trust their estate agent to tell the truth, if someone trusts you, they will not only instruct you, but also recommend you.
The big 4 are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Youtube. You could say that Youtube isn't necessarily a social media site, but it is the best place to host your videos are they can be easily embedded to property portals and have great analyse tools built in.
You can load photos, videos, stories and information to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, using hashtags to promote these posts to a direct audience. All of these sites run on specific algorithms, there are ways you can make this work in your favour. Sites like Facebook offer PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising to target a more direct audience.
Analyse
Analysis can be made at any stage of the marketing process. During the implementation stage, if you aren't happy with the properties performance you may need analyse it. During my time working in a sole agency I constantly analysed every properties performance, determining a rather simple but accurate formula.
Low CTR (Click Through Rate) = Improve marketing content, new photos, video etc.
High CTR (Click Through Rate) but Low/No viewings = Property is probably overvalued, this is why it is important to value a property correctly, over valued properties might get you instructions, but if it doesn't sell it will only waste your time and money in the long run, that's why 50% of instructions sell with a 2nd agent.
High CTR (Click Through Rate) and High viewings is the ideal and will usually result in multiple offers, which is the ideal scenario as it will results in the highest price for the property. the best way to achieve this outcome is with the correct property market strategy.
Once a sale has been agreed, you can use google analytics and other analytical tools to see what content worked best and use this to improve the marketing of future properties.
To see a range of the services I can offer to help you maximise your time and money and develope a marketing strategy for your agency don't hesitate to contact me. A full marketing package including photography, floor plan, video and social media content starts from as little as £200.