Once you have launched your estate agency, you need two things; properties to sell or rent out, and customers who are looking for a new property to live in. The most important of the two is the former since, generally, customers looking to move will generally go to the estate agency which has the biggest and best selection of properties. So, how do you attract more market appraisals to your agency? Here are our suggestions, the top 10 ways to attract more appraisals to your estate agency.
It may sound old-fashioned but it still works. Get a team together and make them cold call all day; you can buy leads off people who have bought houses and ask them if they are now thinking of selling, go through your own database of landlords and homeowners, check local adverts, and be creative. The legwork will pay off eventually if you’re looking to attract more sellers to your online estate agency.
Social media is everything these days, it’s how people spread the word about their business or anything they are doing, and it’s how most people actually engage with each other most of the time nowadays; become part of the revolution and join the club. Social media is an easy way to directly reach landlords or potential sellers, and a very cheap way to boost your audience and keep your estate agency constantly in their thoughts.
Again, in today’s digital age, building an estate agency website is an ABSOLUTE MUST. Without a website you are nothing, and, since everybody has one, you need to build a killer estate agency website design in order to stand out from the rest. Include 3-D virtual tours, lots of pictures, information about the surrounding area, and any other bits of information you can think of; make landlords understand that your website will showcase their property better than other online estate agency websites; this way you’ll attract more sellers to your estate agency.
You can also see what your estate agency brand looks like within a AgentPlus solution with a no-obligation website mock-up, get a live preview of your potential new website here!
As above, try to think of anything that will differentiate you from other estate agency websites; 3-D virtual tours of properties, images and information of the surrounding area, informational videos, unrelated material that is just fun and entertaining and will attract more sellers to your site, just out of pure interest. Be creative and think outside the box.
The best way to make your estate agency website stand out above the others is to push it as high as you can up in the Google ratings, which basically means that it’s on page 1 in Google when people search for estate agencies in your area. You can do this in different ways, adopting well-used SEO keywords, and the best you can do is educate yourself on the different techniques used, or even better, hire a professional to do it for you. This is where we come in 🙂
Introducing a referral scheme will attract more sellers and will encourage people who know of someone who is interested in selling their house to direct them to your online estate agency. You can maybe have discounts for your services for existing renters or landlords, or offer percentages of fees when a property is sold, or whatever else you can think of. Use people to bring others to your estate agency website.
Networking… shaking hands, dishing out business cards, ‘selling’ your estate agency and yourself, trying to attract more people to your estate agency website. Attending events will allow you to personally convince new landlords or potential sellers to come to your estate agency. Time-consuming but there’s nothing like the personal touch. Maybe even think about hosting your own event, although that will incur various costs.
Property actions attract many landlords and future sellers so why not go along and hand out a few business cards and leaflets letting everybody know who you are and what your online estate agency is all about. Again, time-consuming, but could well be worth it.
Join up with other businesses, and obviously go for businesses which are prominent in their field. You can search out cleaning services, building firms, flooring companies, and anyone which whom you might establish a mutually-beneficial relationship whereby the end result is more landlords or potential sellers getting to know about your online estate agency. And you can include referral schemes with your new business partner.
Let everybody know about your estate agency through every medium you can think of – newspapers, social media, bloggers’ pages – including coming up with really quality signage to put up outside properties to catch the eye of anyone driving past.
If you need any more information on the above tips, we can help with most of them so feel free to contact us and ask any questions you need.
