Estate Agents: Property Marketing and Pricing

We've been analysing the local property market to feed back to a local, independent estate agent. 

Starting with Rightmove, we noticed that their website favours areas with more properties (understandably but unfair); it highlights 'popular' towns and postcodes. Properties and estate agents in 'other areas' are listed in 'other areas', which is where village and rural properties will be found. For example, Welwyn village, Oaklands, Tewin Wood, Digswell, etc. are some of the most desirable areas, but these are in postcode AL6, which is not in the 'popular' list - perhaps they should extend the page information to include 'desireable'. Residents and past residents in this postcode include Lewis Hamilton, Kim Wilde, Marty Wilde, Alan Brazil, Keith Burkinshaw, Frank Warren, H.G. Wells and Vincent van Gogh's sister Anna, to name but a few.

Searching on Rightmove for Flats/Apartments in Hertfordshire, there are 25 properties at £500,000 (at the time of writing).

We have selected some 'exclusive' properties for a comparison, as shown below:

Four of these properties are in the same price range. Some offer more than others in terms of internal space and layout and their annual charges vary accordingly; some may be shared freehold or leasehold. External facilites, such as the size of shared grounds, amenities (e.g. tennis courts), landscaping and ponds maintenance, parking, etc. also vary; annual fees may include insurance, gas, water, sewage, cleaning, building repairs and maintenance, etc..

The fifth property will appeal to someone who can afford over well over £1m for an opulent set of rooms with an unusual layout. If it's right for someone, there is very little competition.

The key to successfully Marketing a Property is to cast as wide a net as possible. Opportunities for listing them on the four major property search engines plus social media (YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and more) are supplemented by paid advertising in local newspapers and, of course, a good agent keep in contact with people who have contacted them regarding buying a property. The problem that many agents have with social media is that they pay little attention to it, claiming that very few enquiries arise from that area, which is a chicken-and-egg scenario.

Pricing for a unique property also poses difficulties as there are no 'markers' other than historical sales. It's almost a moot point because, as with everything, it's value is determined by potential buyers making offers. The government of the day has some influence, too. 

If you're looking for a different kind of home, check out some of those shown above. Feel free to comment with your opinions on the ones you'd like to live in. 

Manage your Website or use a Professional?

To run a small enterprise, your first task is to learn to juggle. Also, flexibility helps. Flexible thinking because you don't have to be an acrobat, but you do need to keep an open mind.

These days, it's so easy to generate a small website yourself but many forget to visit their own site each month to check that it's still suitable. News posts are often forgotten after the first couple which causes two major issues:

1. Visitors may think "This website is neglected - is the company/charity still a going concern?" Or they may just assume so and pass it by. Not only visitors but search engines, which takes us to...

2. Search engines regularly look for updates and if there continues to be none, they move on, possibly demoting the importance of the website.*

The monthly check should take only a few minutes...
Do not put it off. A monthly news post will take a little longer but is essential to keep the site fresh, particularly as it then provides a landing page for linking to, particularly from your social media posts. You do post regularly to social media, don't you?

We created a website for a client who holds regular events, at least monthly. The person responsible for uploading these often runs out of time, therefore none of the events had been posted for this year. As they realised that this lack of information was detrimental to numbers attending, we were approached to do the updates, which are now completed for the foreseeable future.

Another client, a start-up enterprise, has been slow to add content to their new website and has added only an occasional post to their social media. When advised to post more regularly, there was reticence, as they did not want to bother their Facebook followers unless there was something significant to say. This shows that the person responsible is not a big user of Facebook. Those followers will be sent hundreds of posts every day, mostly not even from anyone they follow, so the chances of seeing one post every few weeks are negligible.

Note that we are all for website owners updating their own content and social media. We are not so impressed by those who neglect it or who won't admit that they need help.

*assuming the website has quality content, of course

Try being different...

Marketing professionals and employment agencies are very good recyclers - of words. No matter who the client is, the professionals use the same words to sell the product or service. It becomes a bit samey.

Employment Agencies.

For example, we receive 'junk' mail that advertises job vacancies. Yesterday, 9 of the 11 received were looking for candidates who were 'passionate' about the roles to be filled. As an employer, we are not looking for passion in that way because it seems, frankly, quite weird. We prefer to employ someone who gets on with their designated projects whilst being happy to engage in office banter, who is happy to suggest ideas and whose passions are found outside of work, whether it's music, sports or whatever. Maybe it's because we're a small company of creatives where work is an enjoyable challenge - rather than a corporation whose a 'passion' is to grow rapidly, make tons of money and sell to the highest bidder. No, that's not us. 

Marketing terms.

A few years ago, Google was instrumental in promoting certain keywords and larger-budget companies took advantage of this, incorporating the keywords into key pages on their websites. Smaller companies cannot compete in this way but they can exploit their other qualities, using genuine keywords to describe what they do. 

Do you prefer a company that says "We have a large, dedicated team with a passion to provide our clients with an excellent service by utilising leading-edge technology " or "We talk to our clients to agree the best way forward to work together"? It's the same service but one describes it without the over-used buzz-words.

You may counter that, without the buzz-words, you're losing out on search results - but how many people use these terms to search? It's better to focus on real search terms - ask your clients what words they would enter into a search bar and make sure these are covered in the first couple of paragraphs of your key pages. 

AI: using this to write your unique message is never going to work because there is nothing unique about the AI process - it recycles words and phrases that it finds on the world wide web. By all means, try it to get you started but never publish AI text direct to your website - it's very easily obvious.

Recycling may be a great concept for many things but when it comes to describing your products or services, originality and uniqueness is refreshing.