Tepilo and the curious case of 5,619 missing valuation appointments

A few months ago, I questioned whether Tepilo; the self-sale portal being fronted by Channel 4 Property presenter; Sarah Beeny could have any impact on the UK property market. Having already seen a fair bit of anecdotal evidence that they were doing okay, I was still surprised to learn that Tepilo has listed 5,619 properties to date (they launched last summer) with apparently 50 to 100 new listings per week now coming on to the site. A small percentage of the total marketplace, but that's still a lot of unneeded valuation packs by anyone's standards. I remain unsure about how self sale can be profitable regardless of the number of listings, but for the purposes of this article, I would like to park all that. My interest today in them is more in their success in gaining instructions than their delivery of sales. If you must sate your appetite for FSBO bashing, look no further than Peter Rollings from Marsh and Parsons who made the case against the self sale route very eloquently in a recent blog post.

What Tepilo does very well is to advise and inform, they provide a lot of help and advice on the site and their PR machine is churning out all manner of interesting articles on their behalf regularly. If you are a potential vendor with questions about moving, then you will feel much more informed and confident after a bit of reading on Tepilo. I know of very few estate agency websites that are kept as up to date or so comprehensive when it comes to providing consumer advice. An agent will traditionally depend on the valuation appointment as the opportunity to advise and demonstrate their expertise, but I think there is a strong argument to say that saving your gems of insight until you are face to face with vendors is no longer particularly sensible. A decision on whether or not you are worthwhile calling, never mind inviting round is being made off the back of what people can see about you online. Yes, having lots of listings on Rightmove will serve that purpose nicely in the same way board count always has, but if your website is dated, devoid of insight and focussed on talking about you rather than your customers, then you may find that others are influencing customers more effectively than you.

It's not just what's on the website either. The press plays an important role in influencing consumer behaviour and Tepilo's aforementioned PR machine is doing a pretty good job on this front too. The Telegraph, in particular, has mentioned them repeatedly (and objectively) in recent months. Each mention has no doubt resulted in a fair few more listings for them and less for agents. Beeny's involvement has probably opened doors that others would find firmly shut, but this is also a well considered aspect of their marketing. Their usage of Twitter to engage with their target audience and influencers of their target audience and build relationships in advance of custom is also commendable.

This leads me to one of the interesting dynamics of using social media in property marketing. Many people have told me that they think Twitter is a waste of time for selling property and I would simply counter that with; don't blame the medium without first examining the message. You will actually find it very easy to connect with prominent property journalists on Twitter, but they, like the rest of us, aren't going to pay attention to you unless you have something interesting and you pitch it in the right way. That doesn't necessarily have to be something you're listing either. Go back to that core objective of getting instructions and consider how providing insight and advice can serve that purpose just as effectively as showing off your most newsworthy listing. We can't all get published in The Sunday Times, but every week there are PR's (for agents as well as Tepilo's) tweeting, blogging and doing some of the good old fashioned PR stuff with this objective in mind.

If you can't bring yourself to look at Tepilo, then an example of an estate agency getting it right on this front would have to be Chesterton Humberts' House Historian; Melanie Backe-Hansen who was recently commended in Primelocation's blog awards. An engaging and interesting read that is absolutely on brand and relevant to their target audience.

Social media and blogging (they are not the same thing btw) have given rise to legions of citizen journalists and the amount of 'insight' being churned out is frightening, but it is not too late to join the party. Fortunately, those producing a load of obvious sales propaganda or bad advice are easily filtered out. You can label Tepilo's PR as propaganda too if you like, but whilst you were busy getting all indignant about it, they probably robbed you of some more listing opportunities by their focus on helping prospective customers. In the age of fickle consumerism and media fragmentation, influence is a valuable, but very free flowing commodity and the best rates on it are available to those who can tell a good story and provide great advice, not just ply their wares through any given channel.