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Advert in Estate Agency News
AUGUST 2006,Carmarthenshire

THE FOLLOWING TRANSCRIPT IS OF AN ARTICLE FEATURED IN THE ESTATE AGENCY NEWS, AUGUST 2006 – (Photocopy of the feature is shown within the internal photos hyperlink)

THE ADVANTAGES OF NET PRESENCE OVER PRESS……


In my first week as an estate agent, I was told that press advertising doesn’t sell houses, but it does attract listings.

However back in those days before ‘no sale no fee’, vendors used to pay for advertising their property and it always made me feel uncomfortable that we, as supposed marketing experts, were advising our clients to spend their money on something in which we had no faith.

I recently spent a day working in an estate agent’s office and made a point of asking every applicant if they were calling about the advert. Not one had.
Indeed one of my negotiator colleagues told me: “If I get one applicant a month from advertising, it’s a significant event.

During the day, I accompanied another negotiator to a valuation appointment and observed how he skillfully switched the clients’ mindset from interested enquirers to enthusiastic, immediate sellers.

They ended up willing to sign a sole agency agreement, pay a two per cent fee, have a board erected and have appointments with both the financial services and conveyancing terms.

However, I have a criticism – albeit a small one on the face of it.
Once again it has to do with my concerns about estate agent’ press advertising.
He had done such a good job that within 10 minutes the property owners were trusting the negotiator so much they gave him the listing, despite their not having seen any other agents, and in fact told him they would cancel other appointments.

But this didn’t stop the agent reaching into his briefcase, pulling out the local newspaper and in a “mine’s bigger than yours”, “bigger is better” style, showing off the 12 pages of advertising his firm had paid for that week and comparing it the paltry three or four pages of competition.

I’m sure that tactic worked well for many years, and while clients paid for the advertising, while ethically extremely questionable, you could argue “why not?”.
However today, if size does matter, which is also questionable, then surely an internet-connected laptop allowing you to show off your entire register on your website would be a much better presentation aid?

I suggest that many estate agents, having used press advertising as a closing tool for so long, have lost sight of the fact that it’s redundant in its ability to gain listings as it has been to attract buyers.

Instead, through habit and fear of change, millions of pounds are wasted on press ads that only ever get seen on valuation appointments, when a properly-designed and well managed website will do a much more effective job.

I fully expect many estate agents to disagree with me and to highlight how important advertising is for vendors. But I would counter that this will continue to be the case all the time we resort to pulling out the property newspaper on a valuation.

In other words, we continue to fuel a self-fulfilling prophecy. However, this time it’s at our expense and not our vendor clients’.

Three years ago I met an estate agent with 12 offices who had spent £1 million on press advertising the previous year promoting his firm.
None of these ads featured properties at all – they were purely to help publicise the brand.

Despite research which proved that not one single vendor client had even seen this campaign, the estate agent continues to waste huge amounts of money that no one, other than his team it would appear, seems to read.

The fact that news International and the Daily Mail have both invested heavily in property portals should be a clue.

If media owners’ view of classified property press advertising is that it has limited lifespan, then the question is when will estate agents follow their example and use the same medium as buyers and sellers – the internet?