Estate Agents: A very interesting survey

Some of you will already have seen the Property Academy's 2014 Home Moving Trends Survey (for those who have not, it's here). In this article we highlight those findings that are relevant from the review management standpoint.

The top two (reputation, marketing/brand) combined rank as over a third of the chosen influencers. Reviews support both your marketing and your brand and should be incorporated into both. Note that social media's ranking is negligible (that's an area that agents are spending considerable resources on, we'll have to wait and see what next year's results say). Worrying for NFoPP and RICS is the ranking of professional bodies. Online recommendations and reviews will only rank when agents begin to take these seriously. Currently only HelpHound clients have reviews (as opposed to testimonials) on their sites.

 

Hosting reviews on your site will drive up your chances of being the one (24%), or one of two (29%) or three (35%) agents the potential client invites to appraise/value.

These are great numbers. Between 'I visited their website' and 'I called them' 79% of sellers are exposed to our clients' reviews: 42% by directly visiting their website and 37% by googling them for their phone number (where they would have seen their Google reviews. And importantly: seen those reviews in generic searches ([estate agent] + [area]).

This makes a very strong case for including reviews in printed literature to aid conversion.

 

There is no doubt that great reviews help maintain fee levels.

A great comfort for any agent who is wary of inviting reviews!

Maybe divert just some of your resources from video to reviews?

How would anyone answer this question without understanding exactly what the respective competitive offerings were? Reviews help agents differentiate themselves and their offerings.

'High Street' estate agency v. 'Online' is missing the point

Your customers only care about the difference between 'good' and 'not so good'. It's called differentiation, and the profession as a whole is not very good at it.

What makes your agency better than the competition?

• Local knowledge?
• Range of services?
• Negotiating skills?
• Experience?
• Brand?

The most popular answer by sellers surveyed by the Property Academy* was:

• Reputation

Interestingly 'Online recommendations and reviews' come right down the list at 2% - that is because so few agents have engaged with reviews yet. 

So: How do you demonstrate your reputation (and differentiate yourselves from the competition)? Be that on your website (to encourage more enquiries) or face-to-face (to aid conversion). The answer, of course, is the YOU don't (because you cannot), your CLIENTS do it for you.

And to be sure your client reviews have complete credibility and you don't fall victim to unwarranted negatives you use Dialogue:

For even more commentary on the Property Academy's survey, go here.

*Over 4500 people were surveyed - a significantly representative sample from across the UK.