Are you a Relevant or Forgotten Estate Agent?

Most estate agents marketing budget is now spent on digital advertising, blog content and email. When your customer is exposed to advertising such as email, the experience is static and can be irrelevant.

This will directly impact the attention and engagement of your vendors, buyers, tenants and landlords. If you are perceived as irrelevant, you will end up spending an increasing amount of money and resources trying to generate traction to achieve a short term goal, which will mean your profit will suffer longer term. Don't worry, there are some solutions, and below we go through various concepts to avoid this happening. 

Website - Converting vs conversation

Modern, digital marketing within your estate agency can generate more information about your audience which will deliver a more personalised experience.

However, most estate agents websites can look the same as their local competitors, visually and with the same wording used. They can presume that the audience is ready to instruct. However, the fact is, is that the vast majority of website visitors are actually in the early stages of the purchase decision journey. These people are usually collecting information, building their knowledge and understanding on the local property market and the journey that they will go on.

When most website conversion rates are small in terms of visitors returning, it shows exactly why personalising your website is a great opportunity with huge potential. The basics to consider when doing this is to ensure that information is easy to find and that it will help the customer and also get them to know, like and trust you more in the process. Ensure your blog contains well thought-out content and that it is not hidden within an ‘about us’ page. Display information on what you stand for, your core values and your team personalities instead of the usual professional photography blurb every estate agent has on their website. Make sure you have lead capture forms to allow your visitors to download a guide or ebook, they get some valuable content and in return you get some valuable data, even more valuable when run through a true marketing eco-system such as Lifesycle. 

The email channel - automated irrelevance

Emails sent out can be typically generic which means on average, more than 60% of email subscribers, in lists on a standalone email marketing platform, are either dead or they are subscribers that have not opened or clicked an email in the last 6 months. But mostly this is because they receive irrelevant content, not based on their interests and needs but instead sales content presuming they’re ready to make a purchase now. 

• Have you considered personalising your email content based on what people have read via your social media or on your blog?
• Have you considered working on your customer journey experience to provide advice your customers will need to sell or rent their property?
• Does your newsletter have interesting content for someone to consume once a month, content for them, rather than content for you?

Most email marketing platforms only have the ability to support basic data, containing lists of just a contact name, email and mobile number etc rather than being able to create a personal profile of their wants, needs and likes. By using a platform such as Lifesycle, combining basic customer data, along with a deeper understanding of their interests and then creating a ‘Dynamic Audience’, personalised email marketing can be achieved alongside retargeted ads on social media. 

People are different – but consistent

People are different, but consistent in their behaviour. People's past behaviour is the strongest predictor of future behaviour. That is why it makes sense to learn from their profile to customise your content to match the individual visitor pattern of what they would like to see next. 

To create relevant content or messages - you need information about the individual consuming your content. By using Lifesycle and adding tags to your content you will be able to understand their interests. ’Tag’ based personalisation enables you to apply different strategies to different audiences. 

Understand and accept that most of your audience is not ready

At any given time the vast majority of your audience is not ready to instruct you to sell or let their home so instead, work on a strategy of engaging in 'interest' type conversations with them, instead of trying to convert them to paying customers in the very first instance?

To create relevant content, you need information and a system to capture and learn what of your content the individual is reading or watching. By doing this you give yourself a great opportunity to deliver a relevant message but also guide your audience back to you when the time is right.