Inspiration

It’s Not What You Do That Counts

In agency marketing you have to identify who you are before you promote what you do

When S.O. Magazine asked me to write an article for this marketing edition, the brief was to consider aspects of marketing such as floorplans, photographs, virtual tours, window displays, newspaper ads, property portals, etc. My immediate thought was that these elements are concerned with property marketing, whereas I am more interested in how an agency markets itself.

However, I learnt early in my career that success in estate agency has little to do with property marketing and everything to do with how you market your agency. But there is a link between the two that presents an opportunity that is often overlooked.

Let’s face it, many agents do at least some of the above, and indeed, there is probably no need to do any more in order to market a property reasonably effectively. In essence, just doing the basics of simply taking some photos, writing a simple description and listing the property on your website and Rightmove is probably sufficient to expose the property to enough buyers to cause it to sell, if of course the price is right. Indeed, attractive pricing is possibly the most important component of good property marketing, especially in this market.

But why we do things such as floorplans or virtual tours in the first place. Do they really promote the property? Not really. They just describe it a bit. Indeed, the more people know about a property the less they need to actually view it. And sales don’t happen without viewings. You also already know that someone responding to a newspaper ad is very unlikely to buy the specific house about which they initially enquired.

So is there any point in doing these initiatives? Initially, yes. In other words, whilst most of your competitors were not yet doing them, the point was that you did them in order to demonstrate to prospective vendors that you were ahead of the game and were offered something different. And difference is the key to distinction. So effectively, these features were only ever really adopted in order to promote you first and the property second (which is how it should be).

But as your competitors adopt them, you need to find the next innovation before they do if you are to stay ahead of the game, and there are still plenty of opportunities to do that.

In the meantime, do make sure that you use these things intelligently. It’s not enough to state “we do text messaging” unless you express to the client how the immediacy of this service encourages buyers to take swift action. The old story of benefits over features is so often overlooked as, ultimately, it’s not about what you do, but how you harness what you do to your advantage.

Richard Rawlings is the founder of Estate Agency Insight, the marketing and training consultancy that specialises in creating distinction for estate agents.
www.EstateAgencyInsight.co.uk 01242 510 504

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© Richard Rawlings 2010
Richard Rawlings is the founding director of Estate Agency Insight, which specialises in helping estate agencies harness opportunity through innovative method, marketing, publicity, and training. He can be contacted at or on 0845 838 1354.

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