INDUSTRY INTERVIEW: Alex Evans from Estate Apps.
What brought you to the Property Industry?
I’ve always been an advocate for new technology, both in my field and outside. As someone with a background in website design and development, I know how fast things can change. Something that might be the height of design one year can quickly become outdated.
I noticed that the property industry in general was a little slow on the uptake and implementation of new technology and I wanted to change that. Year on year on year, there’s new opportunities for small businesses with the right product and right pricing model and I want to provide estate and letting agents the opportunity to make the most of it.
Is an innovative product hard to sell to estate agents?
Yes and no.
As I mentioned earlier, agents in general aren’t making a focus of new technology in favour of older media. This seems to be, at least in part, due to the fact that both agents and property owners, in general, are part of an older generation (for example, less than 28% of our twitter audience are under 35).
While almost every agency has a website, they can be quite old and clunky. They haven’t been made aware of the benefits of responsive design, or even taken SEO into account. This can often be the result of an agent thinking “I spent hundreds (if not thousands) of pounds on this years ago, why should I have to spend anything again?”. Even worse, some are tied into long-term contracts that beggar belief.
Once the benefits of our products are made clear, it’s not a hard sell at all. We offer the latest in app development and responsive website design (in addition to a whole host of related products) and we’re incredibly competitively priced. We’ve also addressed the issue of going out-of-date by building our subscription models around guaranteeing updates every 18-24 months.
What is the biggest challenge you face?
Complacency.
Many agents are happy with what they have now. Be that an older website, no mobile strategy or a heavy reliance on portals. Some agents are very much of the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” school of thought. And that’s fine. I’m not going to tell an agent how to run their business.
What we will do though, is continue to advocate new technology and the positive effect it can have on any business. We’ll continue to help agencies make the most of every digital avenue available to them and we’ll continue to help agencies put more focus on their own marketing efforts, as opposed to relying on third party promotion.
How key is social media to your business?
We’re pretty active on social media and twitter in particular. It’s fantastic for getting a feel for the industry and keeping up to date with current goings on. Our brand awareness is something we’ve seen swell since we’ve made a point of engaging with others on social media, to the point where we’ve even been approached by other companies for collaborative marketing efforts.
The more we persevere with social media, the more we see our presence grow. We’re not naive enough to think that our 2000 twitter followers will suddenly make us millionaires, but we know that as our reach grows, we’ll be in the mind of more and more agencies. Hopefully when the time comes, our strong presence will have done half the work for us and our followers will see the image of quality carried through to our work.
What are your thoughts on Estate Agent Networking?
Estate Agency Networking is becoming a valuable resource for us at Estate Apps. The industry insight from other professionals is valuable as a gauge of where the industry is going and where we need to be. It also provides us a fantastic outlet for our own content allowing us to establish ourselves as an authority in our area. It’s a great way to draw the industry together while creating a friendly environment to network in.
We’re also way too competitive with the top 500 suppliers page. It’s a great gauge of who’s performing well on social media and it’s fantastic for bragging rights (being a football fan, its what I live for!)!
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