A change is as good as a marketing strategy

How often do you update your property listings? Earlier this year I wrote a post with some ideas for how to refresh the marketing of properties that have been on your books for a while (see previous post here).

Having attended a seminar with Rightmove recently, it appears that I made things overly complicated. Feedback from one of their surveys showed that the majority of customers thought that property photos should be updated every fortnight! This is in stark contrast to the agents' response who for the most part ticked the 6 months to never category.

Of course, actions speak louder than words and to put this to the test, we looked at properties with low click through rates (the number of times someone clicks on the property in search results to see the full tour). Changing the lead picture to another image from the existing photos caused, in some cases, an 8,000% improvement in the click through rate! By the law of attrition, more click throughs should equal more enquiries and to see what a profound effect such a simple change can have on the attention a property receives was a real revelation.

When you think about achieving stand out from other properties, it makes perfect sense. People trawl the portals regularly and will see the same properties over and over again. Using a different photo will provoke the reaction, "ooh, haven't seen that one before". Even if they have seen the full tour, will they remember? Have their circumstances changed? Have they softened that uncompromising stance on having a south facing garden?

I think this idea is just as applicable to other media too. I've often advised agents to vary their property photos in newspaper ads. You get wallpaper syndrome if your ads are filled with 30 images of similar looking 3 bed terraces. Be brave, use internals, show off what will make someone fall in love with a property and most importantly, use a different shot next week.

With some agents apparently using the old PR stunt of claiming to have sold out of properties, vendors who have been on the market for a while are likely to feel pretty miffed that their door is not being beaten down by hordes of applicants. Just rotating your lead image seems to be a simple way of generating a better response and getting some new leads to prevent having to put a "SOLD OUT" sign out of the window.