How To Get More People To Use Your Lettings and Estate Agency Blog

Are you trapped in a crappy job in estate agency? To be really trapped is to have no options, no alternatives, no possible endings other than the one you fear. Let’s be honest with each other, when we think we are trapped, we are actually arent happy with the short term consequences of making a decision, a choice. Make the choice, possess the outcome and you can start afresh .. a new job, your own agency instead of working for the man, that promotion .. but that’s the painful bit isn’t, quite frightening if I am being honest, to make that decision, that choice, to change … that’s probably why it might be easier to pretend that we are actually trapped.

10 years ago – Tesco’s could do no wrong, the darling of the stock market, huge profits, they were invincible ..  but now, still huge – Tesco’s are not the force they once were. Tesco’s Senior executives were pushed out of the business which also suffered a culture change which was "not for the better". .. and that made me think, the of the possible similarities between what happened at Tesco’s and what appears to be happening now at Countrywide For years, anyone who had dealings with Countrywide would come away with respect for the apparent clinical efficiency of its business model. One company, many brands. The senior management team had so much depth of experience .. both a mile wide and a mile deep. Countrywide played hard but

At the end of the day, being a  cynic  is a second-rate and crummy tactic in life .. so what is true in life – must be true in Estate Agency? (.. and lettings) Many Estate Agents are  cynical . They are pessimists because they have seen it before and they believe they have already done it as well as it can be done. They are stuck in their ways with the way the operate and act. One example of cynicism I see all the time, from both young and old Estate Agents, is to deride the online threat, poking fun at the Purplebricks of this world … calling them

The reason it's so difficult to have a considered conversation about Estate Agency  in the 21 st  Century is that estate agents feel threatened .. but I am not talking about being threatened by online agents, nor am I talking about overvaluing nor a lack of free valuations and instructions – no it runs deeper than that – no .. I am talking about something a lot deeper than that .. estate agents feel threatened because it feels like the whole world is criticising of our convictions, our beliefs .. our faith in estate agency as a whole.

Estate and Letting Agents up and down the Country are burying their head in the. Ignoring the fact there are too many competitor agents   .. meaning cheap fees are epidemic, overvaluing is almost a norm to get the stock and don’t even mention about the online/hybrid threat When your bank balance goes overdrawn, how many of you would consciously avoid looking at your bank statement? How many of many of you don’t tackle an issue in your life because the trouble and strife it will cause .. meaning you let it be .. you don’t prod the hornets nest.. you ignore it ..you let sleeping dogs lie Let me be frank with you .. I am guilty of

Growing market share for listings and increasing one’s managed portfolio is the goal of every estate and lettings agency and conventional wisdom tells us that in order to grow we need to get more attention.  It is with irony, when we start to think about how to increase brand awareness we often move our focus internally. We work on differentiating from our competitor estate and letting agents. We express pronounce clearly and distinctly whatever we, as agents, believe our edge to be. As agents, we tend get just a little louder, all the while forgetting that if we want landlords and house sellers to notice us we need to get better at noticing them first. The most important thing of increasing brand awareness for your estate/letting agency is to improve your landlord and house seller awareness. What two things could you do today that will help you do that?

If you can’t tell me in twelve words or less, why I should use your agency, you don't have a clear enough reason to use you. Can you? Just saying ..

As estate (and letting) agents, we often skip the significant step of considering our marketing goals against our potential house seller and potential landlords objectives.  As a consequence, we fall in love with our own marketing message and

There is a huge temptation to offer 0% fees to attract new house sellers and landlords as a new start up agent .. in fact, many established agents do it as well, so every agent, new or old could learn something from this? The idea of 0% (free) is attractive, especially to

Countrywide have announced that 25% of their branches will soon offer an online estate agency package as well as their normal High Street offering. .. but should the rest of the UK estate agents follow suit? We can either join the ‘purplemenaces’ and commoditise our beautiful profession by trying to beat them ... trying to beat them by playing  their  game and offering our own alternative

Estate and Letting Agency is not what it was ten years ago or five years ago or even three years ago.  Pressures from an online agents, hybrid agency, over valuing, too much competition, uncertain economy, the demands of clients, the phenomenal pace of technology and the never ending search for more profits are creating the need for radical changes in how agents are run.  Estate and Letting Agents that want to do more than merely survive in the years ahead should think seriously about how they operate.

Ever written a Blog Post or Video that was steaming hot .. but you got nothing from it? The individual pieces of articles you write, you film, the BTL deals etc are not valuable.  It is the collection of those articles, videos, BTL deals you are creating in terms of content is what creates and keeps your audience over time.  The value isn't in just the one blog post, but the true real value is the blog as a whole, with your content with your articles etc etc that makes your audience  (landlords and homeowners) want to come back. Think about the larger strategy of how the article, the videos, the BTL deals work together that will make your content more valuable to your audience over time. 

... and why existing agencies find it so hard to grow. The cost of attracting landlords and homeowners to use your agency was too high, the difficulty of attracting homeowners and landlords to even ask you out for a free valuation – let alone choose your agency, you run

You may be No.1  agent in your town, but that doesn't mean that people will care. Or pay attention. Or take action. Just because you are No.1 agent, doesn't mean they're going to listen. It takes more than being No.1 agent to earn attention and action. Why does this matter? ... because if you are No.5, No.10 or No.20 .. you have a just an equally chance as the No.1 agent to make make people pay attention, take care or even use your agency. .. you just need to know what makes vendors and landlords care or pay attention

Those of you in your 40’s and 50’s will remember Sunday evenings, taping the Top 40 with your finger on the pause button, so you didn’t get the DJ talking over the songs. We listen to those songs and went down to Woolies to buy the Singles and when we were old enough the albums on tape (for the Walkman) Do people buy records and tapes anymore? Nope .. its all downloaded nowadays Back then, the Record Companies was built around a model that sold singles, tapes and albums. In the 60s, my parents we listened to LP albums at home on their stereos. In the 80’s, I listened to music on my Walkman and later in that decade, on portable CD player.