Ordinarily, I’m first out of the gates to try and adopt the latest tech, but I’ve been particularly reserved around the idea of using QR Codes in property marketing for some time. I just didn’t get it…
I suspect that a previous experience of another mobile tech curried my views on this one. When Zoopla introduced Augmented Reality into their iPhone App, I took a detour during my lunch hour in search of a For Sale sign. There I was standing in the street with my phone held aloft trying to get the Augmented Reality to kick in and show me a house price for the property I was looking at. It worked, but as I lowered my phone, I was struck by a moment of self-awareness as I realised a passer by was looking at me quizzically. Frankly, I felt like a bit of a lemon.
When I came across an article telling me how QR Codes had ‘taken off’ in Japanese Real Estate a few days later, I compared the idea of using the Augmented Reality App again to standing with my phone held aloft to scan a QR Code on a For Sale board. Never going to happen I thought and this remained my somewhat narrow view for some time…
Fast-forward the best part of a year and Housingdabble mentioning QR Codes in presentations at least ten times and I thought, ‘I should have another look at this’, and so I promoted the QR Code Reader App to page 3 (from page 7) of the Apps on my iPhone in readiness. Then it happened; I was in Currys, helping mother-in-law to find a new laptop when I noticed that they had every PC in the place rigged up to display a “special” QR code to get access to a secret special offer.
I pulled out my phone, navigated through to page 3. Then I closed The Sun App. Then I found the QR Code reader App, launched it, waited, waited some more… Then I tried to scan the code, then I tried to scan it again. Then it worked! After a few seconds (I was on 1 bar of 3G after all) a mobile optimised Currys web page loaded…
Wow, today and today only I could buy a £49.99 set of speakers for £39.99!
Mother-in-law, still somewhat bamboozled by my explanation of why opting for an i5 processor was worth the extra £50 over the Intel Core Duo, then enquired as to what on earth I was up to now. Having explained in as simple terms as I could muster, she gave me that same quizzical look I’d had from the passer by a year previous. Then she asked; “Why don’t they just put the offer on the computer screen?” I couldn’t think of a valid reason to give her. Once again, I had that feeling of looking like a total lemon. She shrugged and then moved on to whether Windows 7 Ultimate was worth the extra £100. Just buy a Mac was my flustered retort.
QR Codes have been around for a long time now (since 1994 in fact) and I remain sceptical about their application in modern property marketing. If you think I’ve assumed the view from an overly simplistic stand point, you may wish to read this post on Near Field Communications (NFC) superseding QR Codes:
Anything that involves holding your phone aloft in a public place (unless you’re photographing or videoing something) has got a big hill to climb in my view. A more subtle swipe like that enabled by NFC is probably the way forward.
In balance though, print is the one medium where I do think QR Codes could come in useful and I’m trialling putting a QR Code on printed property brochures to provide directions to a property with one agent at the moment.
If you wish to try them for yourselves, test them before you make any serious investment in time or money in the tech. If you don’t know where to start, then pop over to Bit.ly; the URL shortening service which automatically creates a QR Code for every shortened link. Ever so easy, ever so free. This will also then give you detailed analysis on if and how the code gets used. Make sure your content is mobile optimised first though.
Let me know how you get on. I would be delighted to be proved thoroughly wrong on this one…
We're hearing that the traditional high street agency model is dying from more and more people. Ian Wilson; MD of Lettings Franchisor, Martin & Co was the latest to make this claim just a week ago. With ever decreasing footfall and ever increasing costs, the argument that landlords and vendors in SW17 don't care if your office is in Tooting Bec or Timbuktu has seen start ups and established players alike experimenting with new models that eschew the High Street.
However, we asked 1,500 Landlords about the things that influenced their choice of agent and the most popular answer by a country mile was Office Location. A whopping 83.3% of respondents to our latest survey said that office location influenced which agents that they invited to provide a rental appraisal. It did not matter if the Landlord themselves were 4 miles or 40 from their property, they wanted an agent with a local office. In the fast paced world of lettings, it makes perfect sense really. With there hardly being time to blink between rental properties being marketed and being let, Landlords want an agent who's 'on the ground' and close at hand to conduct viewings and handle other tasks for which they cannot be present themselves. When you bring Property Management into the equation it's the same. If there's a problem with the property and somebody needs access FAST, it's no good if the keys are safe and sound in an office far away across hill and dale!
Whether or not the Landlords ever actually venture into your office, they still want to know that you're close by. It may be expensive to open a new office, it may be equally expensive to maintain an existing one, but in the same way we all recognise the value of a prime location when advising landlords on their own properties, agents should recognise the value of their office location in helping to attract new business.
The range of services that an agent offers was also of paramount importance along with membership of a professional body.
In terms of marketing, an agent's own website is high on a landlord's agenda when researching potential agents whilst surprisingly, the importance of local newspaper advertising splits opinions almost 50/50. A healthy number of Landlords are also seeking the views of others to help them select an agent with 64.9% being influenced by recommendations.
This is the first of many insights from our Landlords Survey through which we expect to be able to challenge or indeed confirm many long-held beliefs about what Landlords want from agents. Next Tuesday, we will be revealing the results to the rest of the survey for the first time to the very best in the business at Lettings Live. Peter Knight will deliver a detailed analysis of the results including some truly shocking insights into how Landlords go about selecting an agent before a panel of experts chaired by former ARLA President Lucy Morton of WA Ellis and including Tim Hyatt from Knight Frank, Andrew Greenwood from Scott Fraser and Glyn Trott from Pinnacle debate the findings and offer their views on how agents should react to the results and use this knowledge to their advantage.
With so many agents facing a chronic shortage of rental property, this is one day of insights that it would be sheer folly to miss. Seminar-only tickets are still available here.
All the portals are rolling out fresh TV campaigns at the moment, but do you remember that Rightmove one with all the agents on safari?
Tons of them wandering around the savannah, seemingly busy searching, but ultimately aimless. A great analogy for many agent's approach to marketing to landlords. Perhaps there were some landlords lurking in the long grass in the ad; they are an elusive bunch after all...
Yet the elusive landlord is the number one target on the list of most agency marketers. I must see it 101 times a day on Twitter:
"LANDLORDS - WE URGENTLY REQUIRE MORE PROPERTIES!"
We can debate the virtues of a marketing message that roughly translates as "WE'RE DESPERATE" another time, but it often strikes me as to how little understanding there is of what landlords are actually looking for in appointing an agent.
When I'm first asked to look at marketing for rental properties, the conversation usually goes something like this:
"Dan, we need to get more rental properties, can you do us a leaflet?"
"Certainly, what's the proposition?"
"You know... We're professional and trustworthy"
"Ok... and who are we sending this to?"
"Dunno, door drop everyone I guess"
One of the original rules I was taught in marketing is seek first to understand, then to be understood. If you don't know who your customer is and what their needs are, it's very difficult to market to them in a compelling manner.
We're seeking to provide a better understanding of landlords and their needs with our latest survey. The questions deal specifically with the choices a landlord makes in selecting an agent to let their property and what is important to them from a service perspective. We've had a great start and have already had responses from just over a thousand landlords! Our work on the Home Moving Trends Survey for sales has proved instrumental in helping agents to create compelling marketing communications that deliver valuations, we expect to be able to do the same for lettings with this latest survey.
If you'd like to help, simply send this link to your current landlords: http://prop.ac/llsurvey
The survey is entirely anonymous and the data will not be used for any purpose other than the research. We'll then be revealing the results and discussing ways to exploit the findings in your marketing and other areas on June 7th at Lettings Live. If you'd like to know more about that, you will find full details here: http://estateagencyevents.com/lettings_live/
What better way to understand how to attract your future customers than to ask your current ones about why they chose you?
I don't know about you, but I wasn't really expecting 60 minutes of telly preceded by a bizarre examination of 'extremes of discrimination' and followed by some soft porn for kids to somehow provide a platform for revolution within the industry.
The world and his wife has nonetheless had a pop at Portas and I'm not too inclined to join that throng. Amongst the various pundits and industry experts who have had their 5 cents, the thing that has stood out for me is the number of self-sale portals and internet agents that have jumped on the back of it to decry the practice of paying estate agents thousands to sell houses. Their fervent disapproval of their traditional high street rivals left me pondering the question; why devote such effort into talking about the competition?
Marketing in a standalone capacity; £500 up front for an ad on Rightmove and access to a bit of self-service software may seem expensive, but when compared to a £2,000+ commission, it seems relatively cheap. Remember the old trick of showing a buyer an overpriced, unsuitable property in advance of showing them something that you really expect them to buy? The contrast between the two will sub-consciously increase their acceptance of the 'suitable' property. Why does this work? Because it is human nature to judge value by the relationship of one thing to another. With a relatively new business model which is alien to most consumers, the internet agents rely on comparing themselves to established agents to heighten the perceived value of their service. Portas has merely given them a tenuous reason to exploit this prinicple of persuasion. Perversely the same principle works in reverse for cheap fees when compared to the potential gains of using a reassuringly expensive agent to get a higher selling price.
Clever businesses take steps to ensure that they can't be compared to the competition. Starbucks were able to charge £3 for a coffee by making the experience difficult to compare to that of the local café. It would be quite pointless for the proprietors of Dallas Chicken to lament about the prices and portion sizes at The Fat Duck in Bray to help sell their own fare. The two are just not comparable in anything but the most rudimentary sense.
I see many leading agents seek to compare their services to that of their cheaper rivals on a regular basis. Indeed a great agent I have been working with recently goes so far as to have comparison tables showing the features of their service compared to that of their rivals along with their fees. There is a danger with this approach though...
Could your efforts to compare yourself with your competition actually give that competition unnecessary exposure? In our Home Moving Trends Survey, we discovered that the majority of people invite 3 agents to give them a valuation: 39% in fact. However, 30% have just 2 round. In 20% of cases, it's just a one horse race! You're there to demonstrate your expertise, to build trust and to establish a relationship. So how much of your valuable time with a prospective vendor should you spend talking about competitors the vendor hasn't invited round?
Maybe they hadn't heard of Bodgit & Floggit before? Maybe they like the idea paying 1%? Maybe it was a dead certain that you were going to win that instruction until you mentioned those cheap guys and now they're going to get them round too.
Internally, you may of course benchmark yourself against your competition continuously, but from a sales and marketing perspective, why spend the limited opportunities that you have to communicate with prospective customers obsessing about competitors they hadn't even heard of?
If you're a market leading agent with a healthy average fee, perhaps focus instead on ways to make yourself incomparable to the competition.
Did you know that you can now use Facebook to 'Like' a property that you find on Rightmove? Press the Like button on any property details page and your endorsement of that property will be visible to all of your Facebook friends. Why would someone want to do that you may ask? It may be fine for hundreds of people to Like a handbag, but not a house! If they like it that much, why aren't they buying or renting the place?
You may think this is a daft idea and dismiss Facebook as a playground where your brand is just as likely to be trashed as championed, but over 30 billion pieces of content are Liked and shared on Facebook each month now. It is also the 2nd biggest source of traffic to all websites after Google. Rightmove's introduction of the Like feature just make it a) easier to share a property on Facebook and b) more likely for that interaction to be positive by virtue of using the Like button rather than a share button.
Rightmove have chosen not to implement the full functionality available to them with a Facebook Like. You do not see who has Liked a property on Rightmove itself, just how many people have and you do not automatically subscribe to the Rightmove Facebook page (which is excellent in it's own right) when you Like a property. Some may view this as an opportunity missed, but I think that showing complete respect for the privacy of those who choose to Like a property is a sensible move at a time when others are being accused of exploiting this loophole in Facebook's privacy controls.
What is the value of a Facebook Like to an agent?
The automated Like text that is posted when you Like a property includes the name of the selling agent. If you assume (rather safely) that many people's Facebook friends live in the same area as them, a Like for a property on Facebook can create a small bit of brand exposure to other potential customers in your area. Apply the same logic to this as you would to someone seeing lots of your boards close to where they live and you can see the value.
It's also potentially very useful from a PR perspective. In the same way as getting those palatial places into Country Life and The Sunday Times has helped agents to gain exposure, Facebook can help to do the same. Case in point is this 22 bedroom property through Hamptons, which has attracted 651 Likes to date:
If you work on the basis of an average of 150 friends per Facebook user, that means this property has probably been shown on Facebook nearly 100,000 times (Country Life's readership is estimated at 215,000). When you consider that there is no direct cost associated with this level of exposure on Facebook wheras even a small ad in Country Life is upwards of £400, you can start to understand the potential value here too.
Rightmove are helping some agents to link their properties to their Facebook pages too, but I still question the logic of blindly posting every property on every given Social Network. Less is more in any medium (he says as he writes word 541) and Facebook is no exception. Flood someone's news feed with irrelevant content and you're quickly going to join the block list with Farmville. Show them interesting and occasional updates and you will start getting some Likes of your own.
It may be a bit of a difficult leap from things like handbags to houses, but such is the nature of the beast with social media, the moment you publish your content, you lose control of how and where it is shared, but you may be surprised, hopefully pleasantly, about where it ends up like the seller of that Hamptons listing.
Several times in the past few weeks I've been told by agents that e-mail leads from the portals are usually of a poor quality compared to other enquiries.
When delving into the detail as to why they believe this to be the case, it becomes clear that this conclusion is somewhat influenced by their own actions. "They're low quality, so we prioritise other enquiries". In other words, they don't get back to them in a timely fashion. Regardless of industry, most consumers expect a response to an e-mail enquiry the same day as they make it.
This disconnect between consumer expectation and the agent's processes is probably costing them business. An excellent agent from The Home Sale Network told me just yesterday how a vendor for an instruction that they have just completed on had sent an e-mail enquiry to many agents in their area. The first 3 to respond were invited to provide a valuation. The rest were dismissed.
I am hopefully preaching to the converted on the above point for the most part, but this time of year does present a challenge even for the most diligent of agents when it comes to responding to enquiries.
There's a good chance that many of your potential clients for early 2011 will take their first pensive steps in researching the property market in the next couple of weeks. The influx of family members and presents taking up sofa and cupboard space over the festive season in a property that isn't quite right for their needs any more will bring things sharply into focus and at some point in the days after Boxing Day whilst the Beeb churn out re-runs of Dad's Army they will come to the conclusion that they should think about moving home.
Some who have moved in recent years will know where to look, others will be influenced by the television advertising as they channel hop for an alternative to Clive Dunn and all of a sudden, the enquiries from the portals will start flooding in.
On the 4th January 2010, Rightmove broke it's own traffic records with 25 million page views in just a day. So has been the pattern for the past few years: On the 5th January 2009, they delivered 44,500 leads to agents in a single day; another record at that time. I reviewed one agent's telephone and e-mail lead reports for the period between 27th December and 5th January. Their normal same day response on e-mails slipped to 6 days during this time. Their normal 90% of calls answered was just 10%. Not even an answerphone message for the days when the office was closed.
They will be doing things differently this year to ensure that those who are enquiring about property, maybe for the first time in a very long time, get a good first impression of their company and of their service. How will you be ensuring the same?
"How can I use Facebook to get more instructions?"
"What should I do to make our site work on mobiles?"
"Where can I use QR codes?"
These are just some of the questions that I heard asked at the National Association of Realtors Conference in New Orleans. They are the same sort of questions that I've been asked recently by agents in the UK. The search for answers to the technological conundrums that we face in business are similar here to the other side of the Atlantic, as is the thirst amongst property professionals to stay ahead of the curve in all things geeky and shiny.
Keeping up with the advances in technology is not easy. Every day (actually probably several times a day) a new bit of tech emerges that has a potential impact on how we conduct our businesses, particularly, but not limited to the marketing arena. Innovations in mobile technology, social media, geo-location, cloud computing, paperless workflow, real-time search, open source CMS' and the semantic web (to name drop but a few) are changing our world rapidly. It's exciting, it's challenging, but it also has the potential to be damaging. I've seen agents invest in mobile sites whilst leaving their core website languishing in framed browsing antiquity. I've seen Twitter profiles set up by agents with absolutely nothing to say on them. Just because you can do it, doesn't mean you should.
In a personal capacity, new tech excites me and I have often fallen victim to the impulse buy of something shiny and new (usually with an Apple logo on it), but in a professional capacity, my response to these innovations needs to be more reasoned, more accountable. How do you measure if a piece of technology has been a success for your business if you introduced it without any problem or opportunity that it was supposed to address? You wouldn't hire additional staff with no job for them to actually do, you're not a civil servant after all.
Bill Lublin, a leading figure in the American real estate technology field probably summed it up at NARdiGras about as well as I could ever hope to when he said "Technology is not about the newest toy. It's about your business, and we all do business differently. You need to be able to adapt technology to your business, not adapt your business to the technology."
The reality is there are many bits of new tech that could help your business to improve, some that could perhaps revolutionise it, but you will never be able to keep up with it all and you will certainly never be able to budget for it all. You work out your journey before booking the flight. You should work out your business objectives before investing in the tech to help solve them. Admittedly, a very common objective in estate agency will be to get one up on the competition or prevent them from getting one up on you. If you understand this objective and the opportunity and threat that come with it first, it will help you to decide whether to go for the bespoke iPhone app at £20k or the off-the-shelf one at £600 or indeed whether to skip the app altogether and go for a mobile site, or do both, or do nothing and so on...
I'm looking forward to seeing Bill speak again when he joins us here in the UK for this year's Future Estate Agency Seminar on December 3rd. I'm sure that he and the other speakers on the day will have plenty of ideas for embracing the latest technological advances in estate agency. Your challenge is to be very clear on what you want to achieve for your business, so that you can then better judge which of those ideas is worth pursuing.
Literally millions of people have been searching for property this year according to Rightmove, Zoopla and TDPG, yet only a small percentage of these millions have gone so far as to put their property on the market, fewer still have actually sold. And whilst the Office of National Statistic pontificate over the virtues of the various HPI's and others push out a 'consumer confidence' surveys to all and sundry, nobody is asking those who are selling or who have sold in 2010 about their thoughts and experiences.
These, after all, represent the hot leads for estate agents, the ones who are paying the bills; the vendors. Wouldn't it be nice to have some clarity on why and how people are choosing to sell their property?
This is exactly what we strive to do with The Home Moving Trends Survey. Now in it's 4th year, this in depth analysis of the decisions made by those selling their homes has helped us and many participating agents to make sense of where agents should be focusing their efforts from a marketing and customer service perspective.
We
are asking agents to encourage as many of their vendors as possible to
take part to ensure we have a broad and diverse sample of results.
Here is a selection of the results from last year's survey:
The
results in previous years have confirmed or denied many commonly held
beliefs. 25% of vendors only received a valuation from 1 estate agent last year. 29% said fees were not an issue in selecting an agent to sell through.
The survey is only open to
those who are currently selling or have sold a property in 2010 and agents who
generate a sufficient number of responses will receive a free
summary of the results and findings once the survey has concluded.
You can get a sample email and other help on communicating about the survey to vendors here:
We look forward to 2011 with many questions about how to be successful in estate agency. Your help in promoting this survey will enable us to provide you with some answers.
Many estate agents have jumped on the iPhone app bandwagon in recent months. And as much as it seems to be this year's ultimate marketing accessory, mobile app usage isn't nearly as widespread as you might think. According to Comscore, only 31% of UK mobile customers use apps and within that statistic lies an increasingly fragmented marketplace. Blackberrys and Apple iPhones are the main players in UK smart phone usage, but the number of handsets using other platforms such as Google Android and Nokia Ovi is actually outpacing growth from the big Apple.
What this means is that it is looking increasingly unlikely that any one mobile platform will corner the marketplace and as a consequence, your beautiful new iPhone app will remain inaccessible to the vast majority of mobile users.
A mobile developer that I've done some work with happily admits that they're enjoying the gold rush around app development, but doesn't see it as a long term aspect of their business. Just like the conventional web that we are all used to, his expectation is that the mobile web will become the more prevalent place for businesses to maintain a mobile presence. This will be cheaper to maintain than app development as it avoids the duplication of effort in creating apps for different platforms.
So, it's no surprise to see Rightmove seeking to extend their dominance in computer based property search to mobile with the launch of a new mobile version of the site. Having enjoyed great success with their iPhone and subsequent iPad apps, the big R will now be accessible to home hunters on the myriad of other phones and devices able to access the mobile web. What's more, this will be achieved by simply visiting the traditional URL at which point, the site will automatically detect the mobile browser and display the mobile interface, so it requires no extra effort for the end user; no app downloads, no special URL's.
I've had a play with the test site and it works much the same way as the iPhone app, although there are some sensible new features like Get Directions to the property and Send to a friend which help to make this an even more useful tool for the mobile home hunter. Floorplans are also available in the property listings. One of the other benefits of the mobile site over the app is the fact that it stays where you were if you leave the mobile browser, whereas the iPhone app resets to the home page by virtue of the multi-tasking restrictions Apple place on apps (although the latest iPhone OS has made this less of an issue).
Mobile websites may not be quite as in vogue as iPhone apps, but it seems a shrewd move to avoid the mobile version of the Betamax vs VHS clash of technologies by not tying mobile use of Rightmove to apps. In the same way buyers go to Rightmove because it's got the vast majority of available property, Rightmove have gone to the mobile web because it's compatible with the vast majority of phones.
The new mobile version of Rightmove is officially released next week.
Facebook has brought location based social networking to the mainstream with the launch of Facebook Places.
Recording your location as part of your social networking activity has become quite popular and some retailers have embraced the concept of the "check-in" using the likes of Foursquare to reward customer loyalty and offer incentives to those who visit their stores. 10% off clothing or a cappuccino when you check in each time: It's not something everyone is getting and helps to make customers feel special and keep them coming back.
How could this be used in property marketing? Concerns around privacy are bound to limit what can be done with Places when it comes to properties themselves. This was made particularly apparent by the report on Mashable where the writer demonstrated how to check-in on Facebook Places at her home address and then blurred the map in the article to protect her privacy. However, that is not to say that it is of no use to estate agents, it just requires a bit more creativity to make it appealing and useful.
REWARDS
In property, the idea of offering somebody 10% off the rent if they
check in on a viewing is rather unlikely to take-off, but part of the appeal of Foursquare has been the game-based aspect of checking in at various different places. Points and badges are awarded for various activities and the most intrepid travelers are recognised for their adventures. How could this be used in property? Well, the search for a suitable property can be a draining
experience. So how about
rewarding those who are looking hardest? A badge and perhaps an incentive could be offered to anyone who checks into view the most properties each week. On the basis that those with the most check-ins would also be those struggling most to find somewhere suitable, this is a simple way of keeping them positive about you and about their hunt for a home.
The scope for offers is much greater when it comes to promoting new homes and
offering an incentive for reserving on the day when someone checks in at
the development would be a simple way to make visitors feel they're getting
something special. New homes is also not burdened with the issues of privacy that may exist with 2nd hand vendors.
INSIGHT
Another feature of location based social networking is tips. People leave little gems of insight about places they visit. Rather than relying on others to do this, you could provide tips for your listings, particularly useful if you are arranging a lot of unaccompanied viewings.
As the capabilities of mobile devices become ever more extensive, using a location based check in as a way of directing people to a rich media experience of the property they're viewing also becomes a possibility. Checking in to a property could automatically link to a pre-recorded audio tour for the property, like those offered by Property On Video.
SHARING
Beyond the loyalty aspect, the value to a company of customers checking in at their stores is the exposure of their actions to their friends. Again, in the second hand property market, this is of limited use, but when it comes to new homes, it's a different story. If a visitor to a development checks in and tells their friends that they are looking (or indeed buying) a property there, this has much greater potential to influence other prospective customers, especially when you consider that many people's Facebook friends will be of similar age, similar life circumstances, similar property needs... "And wouldn't it be great if they also lived just around the corner!"
In the same way that many cringe at the thought of telling all and sundry about their breakfast on Facebook or Twitter, using Places to tell everyone that you're at work, at the gym or in Starbucks will not appeal to all. What's more, many people will be apprehensive of Facebook Places for fear that it helps Big Brother to watch you even more. That said, I do think it has marketing potential in property and maybe some will soften their views towards Big Brother if they realise what a good deal he's able to offer for the privilege of knowing where you are.
