The Negotiator The essential site for residential agents
What else does this agent have to sell – this time, within my budget? And if the agent’s videos are this good, I had better line them up to sell my home, too… Welcome to the world of social media videos, which are rapidly becoming the mainstay for canny estate agents looking to hook new buyers – and sellers. Short, professionally produced video clips of high-end properties on platforms like Instagram and TikTok catch the eye, and lure people in – and if you’re not using them, you probably should be.
Doing it in an authentic way and not trying to ‘sell’ people all the time is the way to go. Social media is quite hard to quantify – you won’t always know if it’s worth your time. Jack Holman, Co-founder, Agent Extra.
“Video walkthroughs of new instructions are really catching on and the quality is really rising,” says Jack Holman, co-founder of digital marketing agency, Agent Extra. “If you can get lots of potential buyers and you are marketing properties at a slightly higher price range than what a first-time buyer might be interested in, then you are also likely to uncover vendor leads by doing that.”
Property ‘suited to video’
Pernilla Tweddle, Marketing Director of marketers Property Stream, agrees. “Property is a sector that goes very well with video content. Things like property tours, virtual tours are obviously great for use on social media, as opposed to just placing them on your property listing, on your website and on the main portals, which is where they would traditionally be used.
“There has been a huge increase in video usage across all channels. People like to see property, they like to view photos and even more so they like to see videos. That is hitting the buyers. What agents have to do is be a little bit clever with their video and property posts to hit the vendors.” TikTok has been one of the main drivers in the adoption of video content by agents, she says.
TikTok has very quickly evolved to become almost an all-age platform. It’s not just capturing the young audiences … it is quite quickly capturing audiences of all ages. Pernilla Tweddle, Property Stream.
“TikTok has very quickly evolved to become almost an all-age platform. It’s not just capturing the young audiences. No doubt it will be primarily young people but it is quite quickly capturing audiences of all ages. I’ve been quite surprised to see agents jumping on that, which is quite interesting. TikTok is the platform that has spurted that need for video. Because that’s become so popular, video is now being used across the main platforms.”
Nelly Berova, Managing Director of digital marketing agency Art Division, has seen a big rise in the number of people in their 30s and 40s using TikTok, which used to be seen as the home of Gen-Zers.
“On Facebook, to post something on your page and for it to be seen [organically] by lots of people is almost impossible, whereas on TikTok it is actually easier for your free content to become viral and to reach more people without you having to pay,” she explains. “This is why a lot of people have migrated to TikTok from Facebook, because they can find it easier to reach more people.”
If you don’t have a follow-up system driving people from Facebook to your website, it is like trying to fill a bucket with a hole – everything is going to escape the other end. Nelly Berova, Managing Director, Art Division.
Despite the rise in the age of TikTok users, it is still a sub-40 demographic, but Berova says you can’t expect to hit all age groups with just one marketing tool. “You are only ever going to reach a percentage of your prospects on any given channel,” she emphasises. “The main difference is that on TikTok you have to start producing video content, and that’s harder for a lot of agents because you have to put yourself in front of the camera, have something to say, and film it in an engaging way. This is why I am seeing the slightly bigger agents doing that, because they have the ability to buy the equipment or have a full-time, in-house marketing person that does those videos for them.
Facebook gets more leads than Instagram, but we still run ads on both because it’s very good brand awareness.
“That’s the biggest hurdle – anyone can benefit from having TikTok channel if they can invest the time and effort and money to create that kind of content.”
Social media content
Video content might be the most glamorous tool in an agent’s marketing armoury, but to get the best results, you need a fully-fledged social media campaign to cover every base. Jack Holman points out that some of the best content doesn’t cost a penny. “With the free stuff it’s about posting content which are gentle reminders about who you are and what you do to people who follow you,” he says. “If you’ve got 2,000 homeowners following your social media account and you post regular content which reminds you that you are an estate agent, you are a nice person and you’re trustworthy, hopefully when the time comes to choose an estate agent to come and do a valuation you are one of the people that pop into your head.
“Doing it in an authentic way and not trying to ‘sell’ people all the time is the way to go. Social media is quite hard to quantify – you won’t always know if it’s worth your time, you won’t know because a phone call came because someone followed you on social media. Some people don’t see the benefit of investing in it, but I invest time and resource on it for my own business.”
Free tools
Holman points out that one of the best free tools on the internet, while not strictly social media, is Google my Business, which is the organic listing that pops up when people search for something online. You, as the business owner, have to provide all the information and content. The key is getting into the top three that appear in the initial search box, before you click on the ‘More businesses’ button.
Take a tour around the properties that have been marketed and sold successfully.
“Being in that top three spot is key,” he stresses. “There are various different weightings Google puts on various things, but the biggest one is reviews. How long you’ve been in business is another; the other one is keeping your profile updated regularly. It’s a little bit like a social media profile.
“The other thing you can do on there which you can’t do on social media is you can see how many phone calls you’ve had, how many people have clicked on your link. You can see tangible results, whereas on social media you can’t.”
Tracking campaigns
Tracking the success of social media campaigns got much more difficult a couple of years ago, when Apple created a tracking opt-out option that has seen a huge take-up by users. “Facebook used to track stuff on income and job title; you could target particular roads in your area – you can’t do any of that any more,” says Holman. “You have to draw a big nine-mile wide circle in your area, you can’t go smaller than that and you can’t target people in the way you used to. Three years ago you could get sometimes over 100 leads in a month spending £5 a day; today it’s more like 15 or 20.”
Nelly Berova says that when planning a social media campaign, you first need to ask who you are trying to attract. “This is genuinely where most agents fail, because instead of asking ‘Who am I looking to attract to my business?’, they start with ‘What channel should I be using and what should I be posting?’, but you can’t answer that question unless you have answered the first one. If I am looking to attract people approaching retirement because they are looking to downsize, posting things on TikTok might not be as efficient or impactful as it might be on Facebook.
“Our starting point is always the ‘who’ – who are we looking to attract. What is it that matters to this person, where does it hurt the most? Is it a vendor? If a vendor, who is the vendor – is it a family selling because they want something bigger, landlords selling because they have had enough of the lettings market? Depending on the ‘who’ we dig further into their pain point and then we produce content that appeals to them.”
Making posts interesting
Pernilla Tweddle says it’s important to make social media posts interesting and engaging. “Take a tour around the properties that have been marketed and sold successfully,” she explains. “Create little reels or videos around how successfully they have sold. Maybe include things like text or audio; have some talk about how quickly something sold – sold in three weeks, had four buyers, sold at 97% if asking price – that kind of content is great to include. You are demonstrating success, just as with your ‘Sold in your street’ cards.”
However, she emphasises that your campaign should go much further than just advertising properties.
“You need to nurture potential vendors with relevant and engaging and personalised content that they are far more likely to engage with. They are in a position that they are going to sell, they are going to think about instructing an agent, they want to get to know that agent a little bit. More personalised content about your team, your office, videos interviewing customers – that is probably what they are going to find of more interest.
“It’s having a balanced content mix that is going to be the key to any social media marketing success. By ‘balanced’ I mean mixing up your properties with your sales messages, mixing it with local messages about things that are happing with you and the team and the local area, and also including things like property knowledge and data that you know as an estate agent. Being able to present yourself as the go-to agent, the voice of reason if you like, a thought leader in your market, is critical.”
Tweddle believes agents should not be shy about what is happening in the market, because ultimately that is what their customers are interested in. “Not spinning those stories, but posting a really decent realistic and honest piece around what’s happening in the market,” she says.
“The best way to do that is to get up-to-date market information from people like Dataloft which you can share on social media. You can also write blogs, which are a great way to get the message out and should be a key part of your content marketing strategy. Talk about what’s happening in the market, give the pros and cons, and ultimately your customers will value you for that.”
Paying for content
However, Nelly Berova stresses that ‘organic’ use of social media doesn’t work in isolation. “If you look at estate agents posting organically on those channels, they have very low levels of engagement, very few likes, very few comments, very few shares. It isn’t an industry that will get a lot of traction and go viral.
“Facebook doesn’t show organic content to more than five per cent of followers. So, if your page has 100 followers, only five will actually be shown your post. You need to have quite a lot of followers for your posts to be seen by a decent number to have any impact, so you have to put your hand in your pocket and pay for it – and that’s what Facebook wants you to do.”
Because Meta owns both Facebook and Instagram, advertising on both is as easy as clicking on a button – the two platforms are tightly integrated. “You don’t have to choose between the platforms,” explains Jack Holman. “When you are doing social media posts or running ads, the default is that they will run on Facebook and Instagram at the same time.
“What you find is – and you can see this from the stats – most leads come from Facebook and mobile. People use Instagram more for watching videos and looking at pictures, where Facebook is treated more like a website, and people are more inclined to submit leads and go on to do things like filling in online valuation forms than they are on Instagram.
“Facebook without question gets more leads than Instagram, but we still run ads on both because it’s very good brand awareness.”
Google Ads should not be overlooked in the marketing mix, he adds. “The behaviour of someone going to Google, thinking about something they want to choose, typing it in, going to the website, sending an enquiry – that series of actions leads to a much more motivated and receptive phone call with that person as opposed to getting instant online valuation leads and trying to call them up from a Facebook advert. “You can run ad-word campaigns on Google for £10 that will get you decent results.”
All of these campaign ideas will be pointless, however, if when someone lands on your website they don’t know where to go or what to do, as Nelly Berova explains.
“When you drive traffic to your website you need to maximise your conversions. Not everyone is ready to book a valuation – some might just want to have a chat, some might want to consume something.
“Social media is just the cherry on the cake. It’s not the core. If your website is rubbish, if it’s call to actions are rubbish, if you don’t have a follow-up system driving people from Facebook to your website, it is going to be like trying to fill a bucket with a hole – everything is going to escape the other end.”
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