As we enter into a new year, we enter into a period where all estate agencies should reflect on previous successes and plan for further growth in the coming 12 months. For Estate Agency Owners and Employees, this should be the time when you really set out your ambitions and your focus and drive should be on point. The year is fresh and the opportunities are endless.
If you think back and reflect on 2019, does this make you excited about 2020 or does the thought of dragging your business through another year fill you with dread? Are you confident that your estate agency will still be running in 12 months time?
I’d encourage you to ask yourself a few questions, such as:
If you have positive answers to the above questions then well done, it sounds like you have achieved success in 2018. Does this mean you will continue to do the same things, I assume so. But;
If you are one of the many Estate Agencies who can’t ‘hand on heart’ say that 2018 was a successful year, then you need to react now to ensure that the next 12 months are much more positive.
So, if you are up for the fight and you are not yet throwing in the towel, ask yourself the following questions:
I’d say that 90% of the Estate Agencies that we speak to have no idea;
If you are looking to really push forward in 2020, and bring success to your team and respective families then you MUST focus on your online marketing efforts.
If you are an ambitious Estate Agent and you haven’t yet understood the importance of having a real presence online then you are missing out on so much opportunity.
If you are not so ambitious and you are quite happy to run your agency as a low volume business then we respect this, we are confident that you have a few years left to run your estate agency in this way, possibly getting successes through your existing client base and word of mouth but this will eventually dry up.
But we are talking about ambitious Estate Agencies here, those that want to grow their business, make money and have fun along the way. How can you achieve your big ambitions?
The key here is Online Marketing, the process of marketing your estate agency to the world. As previously mentioned, 99% of your target audience is online. So;
Now, there are some quick wins that can be had for your estate agency, but they are equally expensive and they don’t produce long term success for your estate agency. I’m talking now about paid advertising (pay per click), some estate agents produce very good results from paid advertising whilst others are simply throwing money away.
At present, the salesperson with the most potential in your business is your website, no questions about it… It is where ALL clients who are considering using your services will go, and if they don’t like what they see, they will go elsewhere. Simple.
We cannot stress this enough, your website is a full representation of your business and your professionalism. If you personally wanted to impress a client in a meeting, what would you do?
Your website is no different, it should look smart and provide a level of knowledge and professionalism to anyone that engages with it.
How many opportunities have you missed out on by having a poor web presence? You could be talking hundreds of thousands in revenue. Think about how many people have come to your website and left because they didn’t feel that they would be working with a professional company. We have proven this to be the case and have seen huge increases in client performance simply by revamping a website.
As mentioned previously, you can choose to spend money on paid advertising but will this give you the results that you need? Where would you direct the traffic from the paid advertising campaigns and when they land on your website would they actually convert into leads? Is your website set up correctly to convert as many visitors as possible?
Essentially, estate agents want to attract 2 kinds of clients… Those that are looking to buy or rent a property and those that are looking to sell or rent their property.
So your marketing activity has to be two-fold, and both would be very closely linked. By this I mean, that if you are selling lots of properties then you will naturally attract the attention of sellers.
To attract more clients, you need to market your business and where better to do this than online? It can realistically take 3-6 months to start getting traction online and it takes a carefully thought out digital marketing plan which is executed efficiently to achieve set goals.
The benefit of working with a digital marketing agency on achieving success through online growth is that it will provide long-term successes as opposed to short term success provided by Paid Advertising channels.
Essentially, if you don’t react and improve your web presence then you will lose. 2020 is about embracing technology and putting all focus on attracting clients, past, present and new.
Many estate agents feel that they simply don’t have the resources to invest in their digital presence. We do appreciate that it is a commitment, but we do encourage agents to ask themselves ‘What will happen if you don’t invest now’? And ‘Do you want to be in a better position in 6 months time?’
So let’s do a little bit of maths… Let’s say you invest £10,000 in your website and digital marketing efforts in 2020. And if we say that an average commission from a property sale is £5,000 for an estate agency in Europe (this could be much higher for estate agencies in some locations), this means that in 12 months, you only have to make 2 extra sales and it is paid for.
Any reputable Digital Marketing Company would be very disappointed if they only helped you achieve 2 more sales in 12 months. At Property Webmasters, we would be aiming for much much more than this. We aren’t able to absolutely guarantee the ROI, but we are able to say that your investment would be very safe with us.
On a final note; you must act now if you wish to take your estate agency to the next level in 2020. Each day that you leave it, you fall a day behind your competitors.
By Ben Spowart
By Millie Taylor
By Ben Spowart