If you have been a
letting agent for over 5 years, I bet you had a good run in the 2000’s, you
were beating them off with sticks (landlords and properties that is), then
everyone jumped on the bandwagon of lettings. In fact I was talking to a lady
only yesterday who said there were 4 letting agents in her town ten years ago,
now there are over 40! I just want to clear up a whole bunch of myths about all
of the different ways there are to market your lettings business and generate
leads.
To put the record straight, if your lettings agency is 8 to
15 years old and has 200+, 300+, 400+ rental properties on your books but you
aren’t growing your NET property book (aka number of managed properties) by at
least 10% a year, if not nearer 15% to 20% a year, you are a business that is
riding on the wave of previous successes. Sorry to be so blunt, but you know it’s
true. You are treading water .. yes you are earning well from it, but you are
treading water all the same.
So back to the cause, growing your lettings agency, the
truth is there’s not hundreds of ways to grow a lettings agency, there are only three. So
I’m going to talk about each of the three.
I was on our Facebook group for ‘landlord farming’, we call
it Landlord Farming Club where we discuss things, share ideas, share wins,
share and solve problems. Anyway, the other day the question came up about,
“There’s just so many different ways I can grow my business, which should I
pick?”
The truth is, there’s not hundreds of different ways. If you
can look at it carefully there are really three ways to grow your lettings
business.
There’s:
- Free
- Spending Money ie Google Ad words/Linkedin/Rightmove/Zoopla / Facebook/ Newspaper Ads
- Joint Venture
The truth is, to grow your lettings business you don’t need lots
and lots of different strategies running. You, Mr/s Letting Agent, need a
startegy that works.
Show me a letting agent who has got a successful lettings
agency (which is growing at those 15%, 20%, 25% a year) and I guarantee you,
there’s a concise and defined lead generation machine which generates 80% of
their traffic, 80% of their leads which comes from focusing on these three
techniques.
I have some letting agents who follow what we do, and
implement the landlord farming technique themselves, without my guidance and
support. Great I say to that, and I know some of you who have done that have
been successful, but some of you haven’t. Some of you have even had the guts to
email me and ask where you have been going wrong. If you fall in to that camp, you are doing it
wrong because I can guarantee you right now, you are not doing the landlord
farming techniques enough times and improving enough times to get really, really
good.
To recap, landlord farming works because you talk about the
two things that really interest a landlord ... the local property market and
where the next buy to let deal is in their town. This makes you your town’s
Property Guru.
Landlord farming is not talking about the national economy,
the national property market, it’s about talking about YOUR local property
market. In the ‘Landlord Farming Club’ group on Facebook, we constantly talk
about the first rule of ‘Landlord Farming Club’ ... What is the first rule of
Landlord Farming Club? Well, you have to be in the club to know that ;-)
Rule one aside, which is something that takes minutes, yet
so powerful, if you want more landlords to use your lettings agency, I
guarantee and promise you it works, if you do it correctly. So let us return to
our topic about our three different ways to generate landlords.
1. Free
There’s free. If you watch my videos and read my blog on www.landlordfarming.com , in fact if you are reading this now, it’s
free. It is a type of marketing called ‘authority marketing’. One of the core
strategies that we (myself, my Wife and our dog Joey) run in our business is
writing useful content for letting agents that they will find interesting and
engaging, we then share it with Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter or Estate Agency
Networking websites), because by being promoted through a whole bunch of the
high traffic sites across the web, they in turn drive people back to my website.
So this is free.
You would do the same, but talk about the local property
market on a daily basis (or you ask me to write it for you) and that in turn
world drive people back to your website.
2. Spending Money ie. Google/Linkedin/Rightmove/Zoopla
/ Facebook / Newspaper Ads
So in essence, it’s paid for ads. What I love about paid is
that it’s so quick. But it has to be right sort of ad, otherwise you are
wasting your time right? Sure you’ve got to spend some money. Free is free but
you’ve got to invest some time so that’s not really free if your time is valuable
(and it is).
Paid is brilliant because literally you can write an ad
today, have it approved tonight and tomorrow morning be generating leads
instantly. It’s so measurable, it’s brilliant.
Paul Tobias-Gibbins of M+ P Estates in Essex. He is a
'landlord farmer’ and has been doing so since the Summer (so he only 7 months
into it)...he said this the other day
about his Rightmove Featured Agent advert .. “ got 595 people clicking on my Rightmove
Featured Agent advert in 7 days” .. yep 595 people .. most of you
would be happy to get that half that in a year. See what he wrote below ...
(and if you dont believe me, ring him up and ask him yourself)
“Hi Christopher.
Just a quick email to update you on my progress with
featured agents. In a 7 day period I had 595 views to my blog
through featured agent on Rightmove. In addition the (newspaper) editorials are
working really well and I have had a significant number of potential clients
either call me or drop into the office for a chat regarding their property
requirements. Last week we sold 4 properties to new landlords. Also as an
estate agent I have seen a significant increase in valuations from this time
last year. In fact it is roughly a 20% increase.
More importantly we have seen an increase in rental
valuations up 15% on this time last year with a 95% conversion rate to
instruction. Clients really like the
no-hard sell, free information and assistance in helping them with their
property requirements.
It would seem that knowledge is Power.
Regards
Paul
PS thank you for your assistance with the articles and
blog.”
3. Joint Venture
Joint venturing or partnering up with other people who have
the same kind of clients as you and having you promote to their list. One of my
clients has a local solicitor pay for her newsletter to be designed, printed
and hand delivered to every house in the town ...and it costs her nothing. That
makes sense?
What should you do?
You don’t have to do all three at once. The art is to
start with number one, introduce number two when money allows, then drop number
two and swap to number three, thus
saving you time and money.
How should you do it?
Just start it, become a landlord farmer .. I tell you what
to do here in these couple of three minute videos https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8EVjavxiDxinvvxrgaf8WjDHDztJe76F
... or you if you a new agent, with plenty of time but not
much money, come on one of my courses, and I will teach you the techniques. The
next course is booked up (late March), but there are a couple of spaces left on
the late April course) (here is a video from five lettng agents who came on the
January course https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDkVJR4KTdM
)
... or if you an established agent, with not enough time,
you can ask me to to do it for you.
The choice is yours Mr/s Letting Agent .. but remember this,
what if another letting agent in your town becomes the 'local property guru',
sets up the blogs and steals a march on you .... then you will copying
them. Do you want to be the agent that is is copying another .. think about.