Estate & Letting Agents are all the Same – aren’t they?
Look at your website – now go and look at your five biggest competitors agents websites… go on.
Do they have ….
Name of the agent at the top … then a navigation bar with various links which are probably Home / Buy / Sell / Rent / Thinking of Selling / About Us / Search for Properties / Contact Us
Have you noticed they are very similar in structure?
.. if you changed the colour and font – be honest – what is materially different from all five websites?
All agents have a website, All agents go on the portals, All agents do brochures, All agents have for sale/to let boards .. are all agents the same?
The General Public see all us agents as synonymous, interchangeable, one and the same to each other.. and if we are perceived to be the same by our client base – then they only thing they can judge us on is a fee ..… no wonder people are attracted to the cheap as chips listing agents (oops Estate Agents) Purplebricks and Yopa …
The world has changed in the last 15 years .. but our marketing hasn’t.
Your marketing department of your estate and lettings agency is slowly killing you – they are producing the same old cr*p they did 15 years ago – its like they are stuck in 1990’s…
- Landlords Wanted,
- We Have Just Sold one in your Street,
- Look at the Number of Sold Boards
- We have been selling houses since 2BC
- Swindon’s No.1 Agent
.. this stuff doesn’t work anywhere near as well as it did 15 years ago.
The world has changed – that’s not your fault.
You don’t need to change – you are ace! .. all you need to do is just modify the way you do your marketing ..and this is how you do it
Look at your marketing and get a picture of your potential landlord or potential property seller in your mind. Now think of this vendor/landlord sitting there looking almost like a visitor from Jupiter (stay with me on this). This Jupiter landlord/homeowner has got no eyes and no ears. He’s got just one of those spiral T.V. antennae sticking out of where his ears would normally be.
This antenna is tuned to a very particular and very specific frequency. It’s so selective that if the message you broadcast is not on that frequency, the message will fall on deaf ears
To put that in marketing terms, if the marketing you do for your estate and lettings agency is not on the right wavelength; (the other person’s wavelength) the message will not be understood or acted upon.
It will go the way of 99.9% of marketing . .. IOEAOTO i.e., in one eye and the out the other
Luckily, you already know the wavelength or frequency that your landlord or homeowner is tuned into – in fact, its fairly predictable.
And that frequency has a name – in fact, it’s a radio station called “W.T.F.I.I.I” FM
“W.T.F.I.I.I” FM is the most important radio station to this Jupiterean Landlord or Homeowner
- What
- The
- F***
- Is
- In
- It
- For Me
This means that your landlord or homeowner is reading each piece of marketing with a W.T.F.I.I.I.F.M filter between his eyes and his brain.
In simple terms then, anything that’s on the right W.T.F.I.I.I.F.M frequency gets accepted it gets through the filter. Anything that is not on W.T.F.I.I.I.F.M gets rejected
You know that in your life – you ignore 99% of adverts, be they on the TV, internet banners, back of bus adverts … so why should it be different in the world of estate and lettings agency?
Now what we’ve covered so far seems simple enough doesn’t it? And it makes sense. It’s amazing how we get it wrong as estate and letting agents
If you don’t want to sell something that’s judged merely on fee, then don’t.
Forward thinking 21st century estate and letting agents look on Marketing create to value, by combining stories, design and care. Your estate or lettings agency service should be produced in a way that makes engaging with the landlord or vendor better.
… and the answer … just talk about what is happening the local property market, to house prices, to rents, to yields, on how Brexit will (or won’t) affect property prices, on how school catchment areas affect houses…. Instead of becoming an agent with some made up title called the ‘local property expert’ – because anyone can give themselves a title, no, let people think in their minds that you are the area’s local property authority.
… and why does that work (talking about the local property market instead of ourselves, our agency or our services?) Think about the time you went to a party and somebody just talked about themselves all night. What did you think of that person? … Exactly .. but that’s what you are doing when you talk about yourselves, your estate/lettings services, what you have sold etc etc.. its all about you and quite frankly, nobody cares. It doesn’t even remotely hit the WTFIIIFM frequency.
… but I know what does hit the WTFIIIFM frequency… I know and more importantly, you know already – the answer is staring you in the face
Homeowners and landlords are obsessed about their home, the value of their home, how much their home has gone up in value. On top, landlords are also interested in how much rent their property is getting, how much return or yield their property is getting (note how the word their is underlined – its all about them – not you – them .. this is pure WTFIIIFM
..and how do you do that – easy produce these types of material material (below the signature) .. every homeowner lives in the house they own – they are just around the corner from your office – pop one these through their door .. and letting agents – all of you are sitting on databases of landlords that don’t do business with you – send or email them this each month ..proving you know what you talk about, talking about something local homeowners and local landlords are fascinated about .. how much is my house worth
Think about it .. because this stuff works (look at all the agents raving about on the videos – see link below if you dont believe me!)
NB – no agents were harmed in the writing of these articles and newsletters as they were ghostwritten by my group of Property Journalists (more examples here). However, there is nothing stopping you writing your articles like this .. is there?
kind regards
Christopher Watkin
Ghostwriter of Newsletters
Some chap that helps new and existing Estate and Letting Agents get more instructions, more listings and bigger market share - but you wouldn't be interested in that - would you? Oh you are? Well - have a look see below - you might find things of interest?
email christopher@christopherwatkin.co.uk
400+ blog posts on getting more people (house sellers or landlords) for your estate agency or lettings agency http://how-to-grow-your-lettings-agency.blogspot.co.uk
my thoughts on how to succeed in UK estate/letting agency on videos (15+ videos) https://goo.gl/Zzw4LN
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