Each morning, I love
to have a quick look at the posts on Linkedin as i am connected with mostly
letting agents, all I tend to get is stuff from letting agents ... 95% of the
stuff they post is utter cr*p .. let me explain.
I couldn’t give a
damn that you had a busy March and you smashed your targets (don’t worry Sunny
Jim.. your Area Manager will put them up next month – that will wipe the smug
grin off your Corporate face). I neither care you have listed a property in a
certain development. How many of you wrote dull, dull articles on OTM? I was mildly impressed
with your article on Legionella though. It’s when you post an article which is
basically an advert .. if you a landlord in (leave space for name), we at
(leave space for name of letting agency) can help, we offer ..... then a list
of bullet points of the services you offer. Oh, the best are the articles
about, ‘What to look for in choosing an letting/estate agent’.
You might think you
have grasped social media .. but you haven’t. Think about it, all you are doing
is hard sell marketing ...and
sales marketing is all about outbound, structured, measured and designed to pay
for itself. (i.e. you pay for an advert and it returns so many landlords) ..
which sounds awfully good ...but it’s doesn’t work like that anymore Mr(s)
letting Agent.
You have been this powerful thing called the tinterweb, and of
course, as you are in the sell sell sell game .. the tinterweb is fuelled by sales
marketing thinking. What's a click worth? What is your Click Thru rate? How
much will you bid to have your Google adword on top of the webpage? How many
clicks have you had from your Rightmove Featured Agent ad?
.. but some of you aren’t into all this voodoo magic of
Click Thru rates and social media .. your marketing is all about brand
awareness (adverts in the newspaper etc., etc.) or Rightmove banner ads saying
you have been in business since 1870 or you have 67 years combined experience
in the (insert name of town) property market. You are hoping these ads will, by
association and word of mouth, create the new landlords and vendors.
Sorry guys ... that’s all snake oil and voodoo magic and
utter ballcocks.
You see marketing today is merely a process to tell people
something they want to listen to, to enable you to tell THEM, then make and
finally keep a promise to THEM.... it’s
as simple as that. If your adverts talk about you, your firm or the services
you offer .. the only person who is interested in that is you ... and your Mum
(and she only tells you she interested because you are her little one!).
While it seems attractive to build a lettings and estate
agency with these direct, lets get the business, look at our fees, look at
services, look at the number of properties we have sold types of techniques,
just about all the world leading brands that are important aren’t built this
way. Apple don’t tout their iPhone’s
with lists of bullet points and how much better it is than a Samsung S6. When was
the last time you saw a Starbucks advert with a price on it?
If you're trying to build that kind of lettings or estate
agency brand, it is important that you discard marketing with direct tactics,
especially on the web. Don’t judge yourself on the clicks, CTR or visitors to
your website.
Stop talking about yourself, your firm or your services and
talk about something that will be interesting to the local landlords of your
town ... (it’s none of the above) ... just talk about the local property market.
If you write Blogs like these, you will get loads more
landlords using your lettings agency .. for example http://www.lettingssimon.blogspot.co.uk in Derby or http://canterburyproperty.blogspot.co.uk/ in Canterbury
.. If you don’t come from either of these towns, they won’t mean
anything to you ...but to the landlords of the town, they love these blogs. In
fact of my clients from Kent said he was stopped in the street the other day
after someone recognised him
This the science behind them
1st
Your need to earn the ATTENTION of
the landlord / potential house seller.. Once you have attention, you can move
on to the next phase (Why? ..Well if they don’t know you exist, how the hell
can they buy from you).
2nd
Next, you need to earn the INTEREST
of the landlord / potential house seller. (Why? Because nobody has ever bought
anything in this capitalist world if they weren’t interested in the product or
service they wanted to BUY .. people buy with their hearts and mind ..people
love to buy things ...and therefore, you need to be interesting) ... once you
have their interest .. you can move to the next stage.
3rd..nearly
there! ...you need to earn their TRUST.
With trust, you’ll have landlords/potential house sellers for life. Without
trust, you may as well pack up and go home. Building trust takes time and a lot
of hard work, yet is entirely achievable if you work on three of your most
important core competencies: service, consistency and transparency.
4th
.. and Finally - just sit back and wait for the landlords / free valuations
/ market appraisals to come to you.
It takes time and patience .. and yes it may look simple,
but you have to write these meaty articles each week and then there is the
challenge of getting people to the blog in the first place. If you do it right,
you will become your town’s PROPERTY GURU.
I can help with this as some larger agents ask me to ghost
write for them, whilst some newer agents come on my courses in writing the
articles and how to get the articles out to the landlords in your town. But
don’t need to do either .. all you have to do is follow what I say on blog and
do it in your own time ..it doesn’t need to cost that much to do .. just time
and patience.
And does it work?
James Caley posted on the Landlord Farmers Group on Facebook
(a self help group for all the people who do landlord farming) on Friday ...
“Hello Farmers. Just wanted to share my recent experience. I've got 12
landlords either just about to sign up with me or already have signed up and I
put this down to 'The Man' Christopher Watkin and his advice. 6 of these are as
a direct result of the farming (marketing) techniques and the other 6 are from
various networking groups he recommended I get along to regularly. I've been
farming since the start of October and its really starting to come together
now. Some of the new landlords I've been talking to for months about investment
properties and a few of them are just completing and instead of the selling
agent getting the instruction I have due to the help and advice I've offered. I called/emailed Chris
a few times during this process when nothing was happening and he advised me to
hold my nerve. It's really worth it guys so if you've just started keep at it!”
..and here are 40 more testimonials from other letting
agents http://goo.gl/QVfVyE
Remember, there can only be one Property Guru of your town
.. What will you do if another agent gets there first?