Agents should spend LESS on marketing: It will get you more free valuations.

If you think your lettings agency or estate agency needs a larger marketing budget, just before you go and spend £12,000 on a page a month in Kent Life for a year, just before you take an extra page in the newspaper each week, just before spend thousands of pounds on the next thing since sliced bread, maybe you, your team and your lettings / estate company just need to be less ordinary, a little less vanilla instead?

With my clients, when I look at what they spend on marketing, often I ask them to reduce their spending. Reduce …. yes reduce.

Its not what you spend .. its how wisely you spend it.

Why do agents insist on saying things like … Buy my services, I can prove it is different. All the other agents offer this, I offer this. They cost X, I cost Y.

The thing is fellow agents, you might come up with deeply thought out, uber focused and thorough reasons why someone should use you agency instead of the other agencies in your town, but most potential customers don’t have the same tunnelled visioned view of the agency market, the same obsessed knowledge of features and benefits.

It’s not about being different any more. No one gives a $*it you are ARLA registered or not, no one gives two hoots how many branches you have or how late you open.

You have to look at through the eyes of the punter (landlord/potential house seller) …. is this person or agency worthy of my attention, are they interesting? The amount of times I hear from clients when they say, “All my friends are talking about what you write about the local property market in your local property report” .. examples here

Royal Tunbridge Wells http://goo.gl/JmuUb8
Tooting http://goo.gl/CFILub
Kingston Upon Thames http://goo.gl/DIoD36

If you want me to email you other examples of articles and newsletters I have written, email me on christopher@christopherwatkin.co.uk

Any back to the article …. Local people are talking about their agency. It is in the eye of the consumer (or more importantly, future consumer), the person who ‘remarks.’ If people talk about what you are doing and saying,by definition …. remarkable.

Your goal Mr and Mrs Estate Agent then, is not to draw some positioning charts and announce that you have differentiated your agency. No, the opportunity is to actually create something that people choose to talk about, regardless of what the competition is doing…. that my blog reading friends is how to get more business in lettings and estate agency.

Christopher Watkin

I teach, guide, support, mentor, consult, counsel, partner many hundreds of UK Estate and Letting Agents in their quest to grow their estate and lettings agencies business. Old school techniques of touting, landlords wanted leaflets, ring us for a free valuation, we have sold this in your street leaflets don't work anymore. There are too many competitor agents .. meaning cheap fees are epidemic, overvaluing is almost a norm to get the stock and don’t even mention about the online/hybrid threat. So a few years ago, I set about looking around the UK and spotted that certain agents (not many mind you) in certain towns were still seen as the ‘go to person on property’, the person the newspaper editor rang up every week for a comment and I looked at what they did and they were doing some thing quite remarkable…. Only one thing but they were doing it so well .. and reaping the reward in terms of decent listings and decent fees, happy staff, decent sales pipeline and exchange income, managed lettings portfolios in the many hundreds .. but more importantly, they really enjoyed the job… they enjoyed getting up in the morning and people looked up to them Over 400 agents around the UK are on a mission to change the way our Estate and Lettings agency profession is perceived and looked upon, doing it town by town, city by city. I guide these 400 agents, teach them, mentor them and support them to be seen in a different light, to be seen as the ‘go to person for property’, actually be the ‘local property expert’ and prove it. Christopher Watkin 07950 147 572 christopher@christopherwatkin.co.uk

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