Estate agent marketing

I am about to start a local estate agency. Most probably in the south Barnsley/north Sheffield area. I will be covering most of Barnsley and Sheffield.

I will be focusing on driving down the cost for vendors (hopefully £400 everything in) as well as providing a better service by opening evening and weekends.

I am looking for advice on marketing.

What catches peoples eye?

Where do people look for a potential agent?

Any advice is more than welcome.

 

I will be focusing on driving down the cost for vendors (hopefully £400 everything in) as well as providing a better service by opening evening and weekends.

Stop... How you gonna do this? By squeezing your profits?

Charge less and do more than competitors is doomed to end badly.

Seems to me that estate agents have endless money to spend on banner ads, newspaper ads etc.

What are you going to do different to them?

I would suggest the following

Get a domain and some hosting

Put up a page with ONE question = something like "What irritates you most about estate agents" and a webform to collect answers

Drive traffic to it via facebook ads (should be easy to identify your target on there).

Do the opposite of what people say and you got a USP in a box :-)

PM if you need help doing any of this.

Thanks Sharpend. That's the sort of advertising I was thinking of. Mainly online, I have already been doing market research on the property section of this forum and elsewhere.

As for "how you gonna do this?" I am just researching if its going to be possible. I invest in property in the Sheffield and Barnsley area and estate agents always annoy me with their service and price. So instead of moaning I thought I would look into doing something about it. My biggest annoyance is their prices and opening hours.

If you are stuck on the 400 quid thing and it sounds like you are - you maybe need something else

Or you will be stuck at "we compete on service" which doesn't really say anything.

WHAT about service annoys you or your prospects - no returned calls? Bored/indifferent or pushy/salesy staff? What ? Then you got something to hang your USP on.

Also - look at the budget airlines - they charge less sure but they actually give you less than mainstream competitors and are totally upfront about it. (bring your own food and drink etc)

Sounds like you have an idea and some motivation - estate agents have always seemed like say IT tech guys with "You need to use somebody so you might as well use us" type marketing.

Obviously you need to avoid this at all costs

 

I will be focusing on driving down the cost for vendors (hopefully £400 everything in) as well as providing a better service by opening evening and weekends.

sharpend is right. How will you offer a better service?

£400 smacks of "he will want to put my house on the market cheaply because he needs lots of sales to make money"

How many would you need to sell at 400 quid to turn a profit.

And what can you pass back to the client for them to do it themselves.

We have slowly been conditioned to print off our own car insurance docs etc ourselves. Boarding cards in the case of budget airlines.

Possible "stealth" savings?

sharpend is right. How will you offer a better service?

 

£400 smacks of "he will want to put my house on the market cheaply because he needs lots of sales to make money"

The better service will come from:

1) Opening evenings and weekends.

2) Small family run business. Whenever you deal with someone it will be an owner of the company. Not an employee who just wants to get home.

3) Every call answered or returned within an hour

4) Weekly marketing report

5) Sales pushed through to completion.

6) We only do sales, so our time would be spent selling your property not dealings with lettings or trying to sell mortgages etc.

7) Every viewing followed up for completion.

Also there would be a limit to the amount of houses we take on.

As for price nothing is set in stone. I think estate agency can be done cheaper whilst still offering a better service. £400 is just an aim, so would £400 actually put you off, would you want to pay more?

I wouldn't put a house on cheaply. If I valued a house at 100k but the client wanted to put it on at 120k. It would be listed for 120k, the client is king.

Please keep any comments coming it all helps, although this thread was meant to be about marketing.

---------- Post added 22-08-2014 at 10:11 ----------

How many would you need to sell at 400 quid to turn a profit.

 

And what can you pass back to the client for them to do it themselves.

 

We have slowly been conditioned to print off our own car insurance docs etc ourselves. Boarding cards in the case of budget airlines.

 

Possible "stealth" savings?

At the 400 mark the only thing the client would do is the viewings.

The ever growing online agents get vendors to do viewings and charge on average around £600.

Most viewings I have been to in recent years with local agents, vendors have shown me round and they charge way more.

Like I have said above that was just a figure for me to aim to. Would you be more comfortable paying more?

Like I have said above that was just a figure for me to aim to. Would you be more comfortable paying more?

Yes if I was getting real value. Look at how car insurance works - the basic third party insurance and then upsells for window cover, legal, breakdown etc etc Pretty sure we have all taken them at some time.

1) Opening evenings and weekends.

2) Small family run business. Whenever you deal with someone it will be an owner of the company. Not an employee who just wants to get home.

3) Every call answered or returned within an hour

Be careful with this combo - you could be in danger of building yourself a very bad job rather than a business. Plus I would want AND PAY FOR the best person for the job rather than grandad just "minding the phone" who can't really help me.

4) Weekly marketing report <<< give it a fancy name or something

5) Sales pushed through to completion.<< dunno what this means

6) We only do sales, so our time would be spent selling your property not dealings with lettings or trying to sell mortgages etc. << so no frills approach?

7) Every viewing followed up for completion. << pestering people?

You wanted advice on marketing - this is MUCH MORE important. It's the strategy and thinking behind what you are doing. You can get "customer service training" down the chamber of commerce or whatever but without any substance you are just blowing smoke rings.

I have been a bit awkward because that is what you want rather than someone just telling you which buttons to push or whatever. You seem open to it I hope you don't mind.

Anyways - I got work to do now so won't reply for a bit.

To succeed you need to be clear who your vendors are likely to be and who the buying audience will be and (for the Vendors) how will you find them buyers.

To succeed you need to be clear who your vendors are likely to be and who the buying audience will be and (for the Vendors) how will you find them buyers.

Although many local estate agents wont admit this. The vast majority of sales come from online portals such as rightmove.

However, you have to use an agent to get on rightmove.

If a property is on for a good price it will be sold before it even hits the local papers.

Although many local estate agents wont admit this. The vast majority of sales come from online portals such as rightmove.

 

However, you have to use an agent to get on rightmove.

 

If a property is on for a good price it will be sold before it even hits the local papers.

Have you considered that one day in the near future Rightmove could just flick a switch and vendors would simply list with them directly. All they'd need is a call centre and they could do the negotiations too. Chasing up and pushing a sale through isn't rocket science either. Think how easy it would be for them to do that for a very competitive price to the vendor.

Personally, I would at least wait to see which way this industry is going to shift, I think online will completely take over. easyProperty of easy jet fame are rolling out soon too. This is a very volatile industry right now.

I have created a commercial estate agency website before with all the links and feeds to various aggregators.

Get into all the local directory websites including Google local, freeindex etc. Good luck.