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.
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