Some of our more sophisticated clients are now launching properties onto the internet with a little more sophistication than the old “put it live, everywhere, now” process. We cover the numerous benefits of doing a more measured and controlled online launch process, for your agency elsewhere. However, if you’re going to do a staged launch of a property, you’ll probably need to explain what you are doing to the vendor at the same time. Indeed, better still, you’re going to want to turn this to a positive advantage, so that the vendor understands why it’s better for them, too.
A few of our clients have asked how to handle this explanation. So we wrote a few suggested script ideas to help, right up front, before you even win the instruction.
A few ideas for how to pitch the benefits:
Mrs Smith, when you choose to sell your house with Bloggs and Sons agents, we’re a bit more sophisticated in our marketing launch than other agents. There are a few things about the marketing launch process which we’d like to explain to you, in order to appreciate why we’re doing them…
Firstly, we don’t just spam your property out everywhere at once, as we’ve found that isn’t the best way to launch a property under control.
Instead, we do a bit differently in that we have a more controlled and phased roll out:
- First we pre-market your property for a couple of days, we can start this whilst we’re finalising the brochure, and photos etc. Essentially we call the hottest applicants in our database and give them, an exclusive insight into this coming to the market. That makes them feel special, and that they’re getting thought about ahead of the curve, and it creates a bit of urgency too. Assuming you instruct us on a Monday, we might do this on the Tuesday and Wednesday.
- This generates a bit of pre-launch buzz, and can often result in a few people booking up viewings, which we may in fact choose to hold off for a week or so. We can then tell the next wave of enquiries coming in over the following days, that the property already has a few viewings booked.
- Next we’ll launch on our Website, say on Thursday. This then fires out all the email alerts to our registered database. Househunters are actively told that to get the first word on new properties launching, they need to be signed up to our newsletter. This is one of the reasons Bloggs and Sons, have a larger email marketing list than our competitors, as applicants have learned that to get the first word on properties, they need to be registered directly with us. And this in turn gives us a bigger data base to pre-market your property to in the first place.
- There’s a lovely additional benefit, that we can handle the email and phone enquiries this generates more professionally with focus, before the properties hit the portals. If you blat everything out all at once, you risk not being able to service the launch properly and thoughtfully.
- Next, perhaps on Friday morning say, we’ll release to one of the major portals. This will fire off their email alerts (that’s the big driver of active househunter enquiries), so being ready for the wave of enquiries this sends through is critical. We launch the other portals the day after, again, all part of that phased launch, and proper high service handling of the enquiries that result.
- After that, we settle down into marketing as usual. There are always new people coming to the market, after the initial launch, and those that are not on email alerts, but who check in on our website or the portals, from time to time.
- (OPTIONALLY): You may, if you feel confident, and if you have a technically aware vendor, go on to explain the SEO benefit this gives your own site, and how this in turn helps them as you have more traffic than other agents. Though the chances are, unless you feel confident, and they are pretty aware, it’ll be too technical for the average vendor, so maybe best avoided. You can also tell them how you put more photos on your own website, which in turn attracts more traffic, and higher registrations. It’s not always good to put all photos out there, as you need to leave a little mystery, to encourage viewings from people who may otherwise have let prejudice put them off a property which they might adore when they visit.
Summary:
Overall, you’re trying to create an impression of thoughtful marketing. “Gosh, Bloggs and Sons had really sorted out how they do the launch, none of the other agents were even on their level”. You want to leave them with the impression (even if the detail is lost on them), that you are in control, that you’re more sophisticated than the others, that you have a bigger database as a result, and that you’ll achieve them a quicker sale, at a better price, as a result of your sophistication.
So, if you play it well, you can use your sophistication as an edge over the competition to help you win instructions directly, as well as the indirect SEO and traffic benefits to your site from using the system too.
If you’ve enjoyed this idea, then you are quite likely the kind of agent who will like The Boomerang, and you may like our article about the typical role of an online marketeer at an agency business, or the ideas in our resources library more generally.
Good luck.