The reason this question has come back to mind today is the fact that both DPG and Zoopla are continuing to pump money into marketing their individual brands and whilst I wouldn’t expect anything less, I do wonder how quickly they will get the merger completed so that we can see what brand route they are going to take.

Anyway, Digital Property Group’s new FindaProperty TV ad will be screened this January and they have promised that it will be its biggest and most memorable ever by bringing humour and excitement to the market.

Now obviously Zoopla’s advert already uses humour but DPG are seemingly going to do something a bit more edgy to stand out from the other Portal adverts during January. Sheraz Dar, Marketing Director, says they are using a number of everyday characters who unexpectedly break out into mind-boggling raps to share their property wants – each solved by going to Findaproperty.com.

What is genuinely original and exciting to hear is that they are expecting people will want to interact and engage with the concept, so the TV adverts along with radio and press executions are just the start of the campaign which will be fully integrated across social networks with competitions, dedicated websites and blogs.

So there may now be one good reason to tune in to ITV’s Dancing on Ice this Saturday – or you can sneak a peek here!

Zoopla however are going down a different road with their January advertising campaign.

They are launching their biggest national advertising campaign to date which includes national TV and radio as you would expect. But the exciting thing with the Zoopla campaign is that there are also going to be hundreds of Zoopla-branded London taxis hitting the streets.

In line with Zoopla’s campaign theme around ‘smarter property search’, each of the Zoopla-branded cabs is unique, displaying property data for different areas of London including average asking prices, rents, property values and sold prices, designed to give Londoners the data they need to make better-informed property decisions.

Whilst I certainly don’t envisage people reaching for pen and paper to jot down their local sold prices as taxi’s pass them in the street, it does underline their focus on being the first port of call for sellers and the opportunity for agents to capture leads during the first stages of people considering moving – One of Zoopla’s USP’s.

Which may lead on to the decison making process when it comes to DPG and Zoopla deciding on brand. My view is that they will probably keep Zoopla, Findaproperty and primelocation, with the view that they serve different purposes and capture different people at different points in their journey.

Of course, I could be completely wrong. What do you think?

Already recognised for their award-winning website and technological advances, such as the landlord portal with online statements, Foxtons has now taken its focus on customer service one step further by introducing the ability for landlords and tenants to conduct their rental deals completely over the web. This service eradicates the need for time consuming journeys to high street branches to sign agreements and pay rental deposits.

By logging on through the Foxtons website, landlords and tenants can now take advantage of the facility to manage lettings documents online such as the signing of their Tenancy Agreements, thus speeding up the process of completing a deal. In addition to this, Foxtons has integrated a secure payment portal with its internal systems to provide a seamless, highly secure alternative payment process for its tenants, blending consumer convenience with enterprise efficiency. No longer are tenants required to visit a high street office to make their deposit and moving-in payments as this too can now all be achieved online.

Ed Phillips, Director of Lettings at Foxtons says “We are thrilled to be the pioneering agent to offer this service and knowing how busy people are and the long hours they work we believe that it will make a huge difference being able to complete a lettings deal online.”

I’ve not been able to personally try out this facility, but it certainly seems as though Foxtons are once again leading the way when it comes to understanding tenants and landlords needs when it comes to interacting with their letting agent online.

So not only are they going to be giving fresher results to users, but this means content providers that provide more regular and relevant copy will rise to the top.

What type of searches does it impact?

Google said:

Recent events or hot topics. For recent events or hot topics that begin trending on the web, you want to find the latest information immediately. Now when you search for current events like [occupy oakland protest], or for the latest news about the [nba lockout], you’ll see more high-quality pages that might only be minutes old.

Regularly recurring events. Some events take place on a regularly recurring basis, such as annual conferences like [ICALP] or an event like the [presidential election]. Without specifying with your keywords, it’s implied that you expect to see the most recent event, and not one from 50 years ago. There are also things that recur more frequently, so now when you’re searching for the latest [NFL scores], [dancing with the stars] results or [exxon earnings], you’ll see the latest information.

Frequent updates. There are also searches for information that changes often, but isn’t really a hot topic or a recurring event. For example, if you’re researching the [best slr cameras], or you’re in the market for a new car and want [subaru impreza reviews], you probably want the most up to date information.

Different searches have different freshness needs. This algorithmic improvement is designed to better understand how to differentiate between these kinds of searches and the level of freshness you need, and make sure you get the most up to the minute answers.

So in property, information about the moving process is relatively timeless, in that a blog written 12 months back is likely to be still relevant today, but a comment on the current OFT consultation needs to be fresh and applicable.

What it means is that for property websites relying on search engine visibility, content such as regularly updated blogs are about to become even more important. In contrast, those who fail to update their content regularly or create dynamic websites with original content may well end up losing ground to those companies who value online editorial output.

for times.co.uk, sundaytimes.co.uk and thesun.co.uk.
Under the terms of the deal, Zoopla will exclusively take over powering the property search function for all three websites from Globrix and News International will begin promoting its new online property offering far more extensively via its leading national newspapers – The Times, The Sunday Times and The Sun.

Globrix was once part-owned by News International in the days of Daniel Lee beforehe sold it to DPG who are part of the Daily Mail group. Zoopla have history with News international, having bought the Propertyfinder brand from them in 2009.

As you would expect, Alex Chesterman, Founder and CEO of Zoopla, is very pleased with the partnership and said : “We are delighted to be working with News International. Their brands are amongst the most read in the newspaper market, with the most-visited websites in the UK - the deal clearly adds value for all our members.”

This adds yet another potential source of leads to their growing number of strategic partnerships such as powering Archants Homes24 portal and the more recent Johnston Press deal.

Most agents see Rightmove as a necessary evil when it comes to attracting vendors, but will give greater scrutiny to what is being brought to the table in terms of leads and additional value from the other portals. It’s this battle that Zoopla and DPG are heavily engrossed in and whilst huge visitor numbers are all very good we all know that the millions of page impressions that the portals have is highly disproportionate to the number of active buyers out there. Ultimately, it’s the quality of the visitors and the leads that are created on the back of their visits that really counts.

It is anticipated that the new partnership will launch in early October and the gives agents and developers who advertise with Zoopla even wider distribution and exposure for their listings and businesses.

Whilst it’s not the only age group that are active on Facebook, some recent Zoopla research showed that 65% of UK tenants are under 35, and there is no doubt this is the biggest and most engaged demographic on Facebook. So if this group are your target audience it would stand to reason that you should interact with them there.

Here is a great case study of an agent that have done just that.

College and County, an award winning agent from Oxford, carried out some research into their student tenants online habits, asking them what is their preferred medium to communicate, and more specifically how they would like to communicate with them on property related issues. The resounding feedback was that they were much more active on Facebook than on email or other platforms.

In addition to their standard company fan page, College and County took the bold step to create a Facebook group for every property they let, allowing their tenants to communicate with them on property related matters such as deposit queries, end of tenancies and maintenance. Each time they introduce a new let they set up a group which the tenants become members of and they then lock the group to maintain privacy for the members and issues being discussed.

So far they have around 50 groups and they are finding them a real success. Obviously tenants can still communicate with them in other ways, but the majority are choosing to use the Facebook groups and this has led to an improved response time on property maintenance issues – reduced by 7.5 hours on average.

They have reduced the amount of dialogue they are having to have directly with tenants and the feedback from tenants has been great.

They have directed the happy tenants to review them on Google (why wouldn’t they!) and the positive feedback has led to them being the only agent locally with 5 star reviews.

They have also experimented with Facebook advertising in their bid to have the largest student population on Facebook for their area and have had some great results here too. Their current student target audience between the age of 20-24 yrs is 11,600. One of their adverts targeted to this group had 50,000 page impressions in less that 24hrs, meaning that on average the advert appeared in front of each of their target audience 4 times during that period.

Facebook is third biggest referrer to their main property web site and their next Facebook campaign is to get their student tenants to make a short video about the property that will then be used in the marketing of that property to the next batch of students to come through.

I’m sure you will agree that College and County are doing some really innovative things with their social media activity and more importantly, they are getting some very exciting results.

The principles he identified are the key ways to make people say “yes” to your messaging and management and if you are involved in sales or marketing you have read the book.

On the principle of social proof, Cialdini and a team of colleagues ran an experiment to see which types of signs would most encourage hotel visitors to reuse towels. They tested four types of signs:
#1 Cited environmental reasons to encourage visitors to reuse their towels
#2 Said the hotel would donate a portion of end-of-year laundry savings to an environmental cause
#3 Said the hotel had already given a donation and asked: “Will you please join us?”
#4 Said the majority of guests reused their towels at least once during their stay

Percentage of those who reused towels per request:
Sign #1: 38%
Sign #2: 36%
Sign #3: 46%
Sign #4: 48%

When guests found out that most people who stayed in the same hotel reused their towels, they were more likely to comply with the request.

How can you use this principle in your Estate or Letting Agency marketing?

One great example of from Marsh and Parsons is the way they display their client feedback results.

The majority of estate agents nowadays monitor client feedback and proudly announce to potential clients that 90 something % of their clients would recommend them to their friends.

Marsh and Parsons however, despite having 99% of clients who would recommend them to a friend, advertise that 71% said they would recommend them. Here comes the principle of social proof – they also show very clearly that 28% of clients already have.

Not only does it present a very positive message to potential new clients, it also sends a message to the remaining 71% of existing clients that would recommend them saying “why haven’t you already recommended them? – This is the way that others are behaving”

I have no doubt that they maintain regular contact with all current and past clients and include this type of message and it is a great example of and Estate Agent using the 6 Cialdini principles to influence their clients.

Range of services?

Personal recommendation?

Professional body membership?

Market share?

You may be surprised to hear that in our recent survey of over 1,500 landlords, they told us that the biggest influence on their choice of letting agent is Office Location.

At a time when there is an increasing opinion that Estate and Letting agents don’t need a physical high street location,  a whopping 83.3% of respondents to our latest survey said that office location most influenced which agents they invited to provide a rental appraisal.  They wanted to select from agents with a local office.

Despite our initial surprise, it does seem to make sense. Many landlords are don’t live particularly near to the properties they let, in fact only 44% of landlords told us they live within 15 mile of the property, and so if follows that they want to know the agent they trust to care for their property is on hand locally to care for any viewings an respond to tenant issues. Couple that with numerous cases over the last few years of agents going AWOL with client deposits and it begins to make sense that they want to know where you are and who you are.

The local office gives the landlord the chance to drop into the office and meet the team they are likely to be dealing with during the let and/or the ongoing management. 70% of landlords told us that they had visited their letting agents office before they appointed them which again emphasizes the level of comfort that a physical, local office provides to a landlord.

When you compare that figure to just 48% of home sellers who visit their estate agents office before appointing them (2010 Property Academy Home Moving Trends Survey) who are often disposing of their most valuable asset, it emphasizes just how important this is to landlords.

If you’d like to read more results from our 2011 Landlord survey then you can register to receive the executive summary here.

(I didn’t spend the full 90 mins on the page, but I’m sure I could have forced myself to)

So many businesses, including estate and letting agents, have read somewhere that they must have a Facebook page with stories of raving fans and increased engagement with clients and so have blindly create a page for their business in the hope of getting a piece of the action.

But unless Katy Perry is planning to open an estate agency, I’m not sure how any agent will be able to replicate this kind of response – in fact the proof is in the pudding with very few agents making any ground in this area.

I’ve said many times before that there aren’t many people out there willing to become fans of estate agents and so the vast majority of estate agency Facebook pages have a handful of “likes” which normally reflects the number of staff, friends and family the particular agent has.

Despite efforts to put interesting articles and information onto their pages (Putting aside those who are using it to list their properties – even worse), most agents seem to be struggling to produce a significantly engaged audience.

So how can it be done?

When trying to create an audience you need to try and work out what they are interested in seeing or hearing. The community you want to attract are those living in your local area, so you need to consider what information needs they have that you can fill.

As the general public only move home on average every 6/7 years, there is only a small window in time that your local community are interested in your listings. That’s not to say that Facebook can’t help you with listing sharing if done correctly, but if you choose to make them the focus of your page you are not properly considering the needs of your audience and any interest you do generate will be short lived.

So you have to ask yourself, what information that I can provide that is of most interest to my local community. My view is that there are two main areas of interest:

- The value of their property

- Community news and information

The value of their property

Whilst we only move every 6/7 years we are always interested in the the current value of our biggest asset.

Despite not being an agent for around 8/9 years, many of my fiends still regularly ask me how much I think their homes are worth because they always want to know and they see us as having our fingers on the pulse. So naturally, if there was a page my friends could visit that provided them with a reliable market report for their local area, they would be interested in following it.

How have prices been effected in my local area/street? Have some areas fared better than others? What is the % drop for the region from the 2007 peak? What can I aspire to buying next? How might prices change this year?

Community News

The second area is the local communities and events. The best estate agency managed Facebook pages I’ve seen are community event focused. I say estate agent managed, because they are not actually called “Joe Bloggs & Co Estate Agents” but rather named after the community topic and simply managed by the agent.

They thrive on the fact that they are run by people who understand and care about the local community and can be a genuine source of knowledge. There is definitely a demand for this hyperlocal content as demonstrated by Rightmove’s move to create Rightmove Places.

Hyperlocal content is local news and events from within a well-defined community or area, created by residents of that community. It is growing in popularity, partly because it is what people want and probably more importantly it is increasingly becoming what Google wants as it continues to improve the relevance of the results they present to us.

This type of content covers stories and issues of interest only to people in a very contained area, for example, places to visit, restaurants, where to get your children’s hair cut, community group meetings etc.

The benefit for the agent of creating a Facebook page of this type, is the ability to link the relevant community articles to your agency blog to be read in full – Thus fulfilling a whole load of benefits to your business.

If you can provide the right type of information, you will find that people will revisit your page, they will comment on your posts and share them with their friends.

These is no doubt that Facebook can be a powerful tool for estate and letting agents if the strategy is well thought out and some serious time and effort is put in to it.

So if you’re going to jump on the Facebook page bandwagon, consider your audience, identify what you can give them that they really want and find a way of delivering it that will also benefit your business.

If all else fails you could try and hire Katy Perry as a trainee negotiator… now there’s a thought!

Whilst it’s not just about being seen to be different, it’s important to have different and new ideas that enable you to stand out – separators.

For example, an iPhone app is unlikely to offer any practical value to selling an individual vendors property, but they are still considered to be separators in some areas with the agents that have them using their “web savvy” perception as a way of differentiating themselves and winning the listing business.

Whether you wish to grow market share, drive more traffic to your web site, generate additional valuations, convert more instructions, raise fees, increase turnover or improve profitability, there are always new ideas out there to help you differentiate your business and services.

In a few weeks time we are holding a seminar, which explores profit generating marketing ideas currently being used as separators by leading estate and lettings agencies from around the world.

Such as:

Idea 12 – Love ****days

Traffic to your website and the major portals peaks at certain times of the week, every week. Find out when these times are and what you should be doing to ensure you convert this heightened interest into more enquiries.

Idea 17 – Take a long(ish) walk

Forget branded minis. There’s an even better way to generate exposure for your brand and sell a house or two on foot.

Idea 23 – Money down the back of the sofa

Several top agencies are making an extra £3,000 per property on top of their normal commissions for an additional service, which costs them nothing. Find out what it is and how you can do the same.

We guarantee that you will learn new ideas that you can incorporate into your business.

These ideas are not just theory, they work and they are helping agents to gain market share, grow their revenues and generate more profit.

You can book tickets here for just £99

When talking to estate agents I’m told there has been an increase in the timescale from sale agreed to exchange of contracts and obviously a longer timescale increases the likelihood of sales falling apart.

Over the last few years there have been numerous debates over the problems with HIPs and the UK system in general, but what action can be taken by agents right now, without the need for government legislation, to improve the process for all parties?

One agent that has taken action is London agent Greene and Co, who have introduced their own Goodwill Charter. When you hear the results I think you’ll be surprised that more agents haven’t followed suit.

The Goodwill Charter, devised to encourage fair play, is legally binding and requires both buyer and seller to pay an agreed amount (usually £1k) into a pot to demonstrate their commitment to the deal. It’s not the amount of money that seals the commitment, but rather the fact that both parties have openly acknowledged the importance of seeing the deal through.

It has stopped Greene and Co’s abortive sales by half – yes half – and makes sellers and buyers honour fair play and decency by not allowing them to enter into sales processes they have no intention of honouring. They have also seen a significant reduction in the amount of Gazumping and have no doubt used it as a tool to attract vendors based on an increased certainty of the deal going through.

It’s a fairly simple solution, that increases the number of sales that complete and I think it shows that we can find ways of improving the process without having to rely on the government to act – Hat’s off to Greene and Co.