Tom is an estate agent and started his own estate agency in 1996, long enough to see the world of estate agency turn on its head. Back in the 1990’s and 2000’s, Tom had a page in the local newspaper with his grid of properties every week for £150 a week. Tom stopped newspaper advertising four years ago when he realised it wasn’t giving him any free vals and the punters looked at Rightmove for their properties.
Now Tom pays Rightmove £1500 for their Optimiser package, £300 a month for Google Adwords, £250 a month for his SEO-ninja and £200 for facebook adverts to be found on the t’interweb.
 |
| A Famous Tom |
Tom knows a bit about web backlinks and search engine long tail queries while managing the day to day running of an estate agency (and now lettings as well since 2009), keeping the staff motivated all whilst listing, letting and selling property.
Once the prospective house seller or landlord arrives at Tom’s estate agency website – there is nothing to differentiate or discriminate him from his competitor estate agents, because all his drive, focus, time and money are spent on being found, he has nothing left to tell the story of how he stands apart from the other estate and letting agents in his town
Yes, Tom gets more people coming to his website than four years ago, but so do the ten other estate agents who are also spending thousands of pounds a month participating the ‘being found online’ game with their own Google adwords and fancy Rightmove packages … and so they all end up competing on fee, not value.
So, can I ask this question…. Have we as an estate agency industry misguidedly made being found the number one objective of our marketing?
You see being found is hopeless if we can’t make house sellers and landlords feel like they wouldn’t even consider the competition.
My intuition tells me that’s what you should aim for. .. make you the only agent of choice?
Put your energy there like these agents ..
· This agent gets thousands of visits a day - look at the articles on the Chelmsford Property Market, the way Emma highlights the great buy to let deals - deals that are on the market with every agent .. giving advice and opinion - making her look and act like a giver - not a hard nosed take it all estate agent Chelmsford http://chelmsfordpropertyblog.co.uk
· The way this agent in Sidcup has lovely articles about Sidcup, interlaced with graphs and subtle use of ValPal boxes embeded in to his articles .. sublime http://sidcuppropertyblog.co.uk
· The amount of depth this agent in Liverpool goes on looking at great deals for Landlords in Liverpool http://www.liverpoolpropertyblog.com
· The design of this Derby Property Blog - wow ! and the info http://www.professionalproperties.co.uk/derby-property-news/ Interstingly .. he has been doing this blog for 3.5 years .. and from it has grown his lettings agency by 500 managed properties .. no bull either .. let Daren tell you how for 4 years he was treading water .. then 3.35 years after doing the blog - he had grown his agency by 500 managed properties - short Youtube video here https://youtu.be/PvTHi35dcsc
The videos this agent does are mind blowing on the Cardiff Property Market http://cardiffpropertynews.co.uk
The top tips for homeowners and landlords.. the videos, the info is awesome with this agent in Lancaster http://lancasterpropertyblog.co.uk