Well, last week I went to a conference attended by 85
estate and letting agents in Cornwall. I received a lovely email from one chap
on the South Coast that said, ‘It was nice to see a new face at the
conference and also a breath of fresh air to see someone stop talking about
twitter and get down to the basics of keeping things simple. I totally agreed
with the concept which is one we have been talking about for a while but we
never seem to take the next step. ‘
You see, I think
twitter and facebook are a total waste of time when it comes to lettings. How
many 50 to 60 year old middle aged middle class Tory voting landlords have
these types of social media accounts? There
was a guy (selling social media) at the conference that even suggested we use
Pinterest and create mood boards for all our properties. Umm – each to their
own . Everyone (well when I say everyone I mean everyone trying to sell you
social media) thinks you should have to have these things, I don’t. Don’t get me wrong, social media has it place.
You are reading my blog (which is social media if I am being honest), but it’s
all about thinking about your audience. Your audience aren’t the groovie 18 to
25 year koolkids that use Ask.fm or Pinterest, they are 50 to 60 year old
middle class Times readers. To them, Pinterest is something that the spell
checker should have picked up. Twitter is what the birds do at 4am in the
morning.
Yes, you will have
to use a bit of Twitter and Linkedin but it isn’t at the core what I teach. By
challenging the perceived wisdom and conventions of being a letting agent is
precisely what makes your way of doing things new, hence unconventional.
All I say is talk
about your local property market. It has to be written in a certain way,
otherwise it won’t work. It’s all about comparing and contrasting streets vs
streets, or areas vs areas, or housing estate vs housing estates or even town
vs town. If you just say the value of property is x in the town and the yield
is y, well that’s as limp as a wet rag. You have to compare your town against
the next town, or that housing estate against the other housing estate but do it
with some vim.
The method I teach has four elements to the
article, otherwise it won’t work. Trust me, I had an agent who forgot to put in
the third (and most important element) of the article. It went ballistic on
facebook within hours, with people slagging his agency off. I have had hundreds
of articles published using my techniques and this has only happened once in my
time. He rang me for advice, and I managed to pull it around but it shows that
if there is a fine line between interesting and controversial
You know what to
do, if you read my blog, I show you how to do it. I tell you exactly what you
need to do. Just get inside the landlords head and make them want to come and
talk you. If you need a hand, pick up the phone to me. Many lettings agents
come on my courses to be taught how to do it. I can even mentor you afterwards,
to ensure you keep on the straight and narrow. If you haven’t got the time, I can
even write the articles and sort most of your blogging and social media out for
you.
Does it work? One of my new clients emailed me last week, ‘In the
meantime, thought you might like to know – we are getting new landlords
.... 5 enquiries over last 3 days totalling 17 properties! First
new LL coming in to meet with me on Monday morning – looking to buy 2
investment properties @ £120k each – can I help her find where is the best
place to buy!’ .
Another client, who uses my methods to find the email addresses of most
of the landlords in their town, then send them a local newsletter (which I
helped him with) about the local property market, sent me this email a few days
ago ...
Hi Chris. Just thought
I'd share some feedback on the use of mailchimp for sending out my report which
may or may not be of use for your clients! I used a plain text email only which
seemed to work in terms of recipients thinking it was genuine/personal. From 863
emails sent, I have about over 100 back from people thanking me etc, (all of
which I replied to again of course!) ...
He then sent me a screenshot from MailChimp (an inexpensive bulk email / eshot system) ..Of the 863 people he sent the emails to (emails gained using my methods of getting email addresses of the local landlords and their advisors), 423 people opened the email (a 49.6% open rate). The email then had a link to his newsletter about the local property market ....of the 423 people who opened the email, 424 clicked on the link to his local property report (why more people clicking on the email than opened it .. they would have forwarded the email to friends and so that would explain why more people opened it).
Wait for it though, it gets even better, of the 423 people, over a 100 hit the word reply (see above) to say THANK YOU ... yep, a cold email got that response.
So, use my methods to capture the email addresses of
landlords and their professionals, and then write a cracking newsletter, in the very specific style in the four part method I have talked about in other blog articles and you will get the business. Not straight away, but you will after a few months.
That, my blog reading friends, is what it is
all about.