Estate agents - if you're paying Rightmove the best part of £1000 a month to list your properties....

...then surely it's worth investing just another hundred* to impress your potential fee-payers?

Let us explain. Your potential fee earners,vendors and landlords, all look at your website and almost all** search for you on Google. 

So why wouldn't you want to look like this...

...and this...

...and this...

...on your website?

And this...

...and this...

...and this...

...and this...

...and this...

on Google?

And there's more...

• you will be compliant with CMA regulations (that state that if you invite anyone at all to write a review you must allow all of your customers to write a review at a time of their own choosing).
• you will benefit from HelpHound's moderation - that will ensure, as far as is compliantly possible, that no inaccurate misleading or - dare we say it, fake - reviews appear anywhere
• you will have full-time support - to ensure you make the very best of the opportunity that proper professional review management brings

If you are still harbouring any doubts at all, first read this (it's all about how you will be able to tell exactly how many more calls and clicks-throughs you can expect) and then speak to one of our clients (if you don't know one, we will be happy to introduce you).

Oh! and HelpHound are review managers not a reviews site - this article explains the fundamental difference. 



*Less actually - from £95 downwards (discounts for multiple locations)

**potential clients coming from the portals often by-pass Google search

Rightmove: get reviews to Google and your own site

This today from the Rightmove 'Home Movers' survey:

'Where reviews were read, most (42%) were on Google, followed by agents’ own website (36%), Trustpilot (11%), allAgents (6%) and Feefo (2%).'

And what has HelpHound been saying all along? 

'Concentrate on getting reviews to your own website and to Google'

Thank you for confirming this advice, Rightmove: 78% (42% Google + 36% business's own site) plays 11%, 6% and 2%. 

That is how we generate results like these for our clients:

 This screenshot is taken from the new Google my Business email - sent monthly from this September - to all those businesses that have reviews on Google (and is published here with permission from Curchods). The numbers - plus 18% for calls and plus 27% for visits show the immediate one-off uplift for a single branch resulting from HelpHound implementation

It's common-sense really, but it is surprising just how many businesses have persisted - until now - with ploughing on the stony ground of independent sites.


HelpHound?

Some readers will be off like a shot to Google at this point, but we suggest you pause to consider why well-respected businesses like Curchods use HelpHound.

Without independent review management your business will lack:

• any mechanism to head off inaccurate or misleading reviews
• star ratings, scores or 'Reviews from the web' in Google organic search - see below
• ongoing advice on how to maximise the potential of reviews to drive your business forwards

And all for the price of a smartphone contract? Call us and well tell you everything you need to know to mobilise the power of review management for your business.


Further reading:

Here's the full article on PIE. In it you will note the following:

"A whopping 70% of potential vendors and landlords do not read online reviews."

So you might expect us to react with a justification for reviews. Far from it, because that statistic is simply a reflection of the fact that the overwhelming majority of estate agents are not showing their prospective fee-payers any reviews at all (or are subscribing to one of the 'invisible' reviews sites mentioned in the article, which amounts to the same thing). 

 Consumers are not going to reference reviews as an influencing factor if the businesses in question look like this:

Please feel free to comment on this article - link below - and subscribe - centre right - so you can be sure to receive every article as it is published. If you need more information email fiona.christie@helphound.com.

OnTheMarket - our take

One advantage we may have at HelpHound is that we are not industry insiders, but we do meet a lot of people in the industry. This sometimes gives us a slightly more detached and objective view (we hope). So what do we see when we look at all the comments flying around about OnTheMarket?

For the last three months we have been conducting a straw poll accross every client or prospective client we have met, and the results were enlightening (to us, at least). There were definitely two ends to the spectrum: some used every portal they could lay their hands on and swore by that strategy, others virtually ignored portals and claimed that their clients simply were not interested in the 'how' as long as the 'when' was right. 

There were a large proportion who had no problem with the OnTheMarket 'one other portal' rule as they were only using one (usually, but not always, RightMove or Zoopla). Where were they going post launch? If there was a pattern it was independents for RightMove and corporates for Zoopla.

But the main message was 'don't let all the fuss-and-bother about portals give you the impression that they are the be-all and end-all of estate agency'.

Let's stand back and look at estate agency...

From the consumer's point-of-view:

Sellers/Landlords...

• Sellers want the best price possible, usually (but not always) in the shortest time frame
• Landlords want the highest rent possible with minimum voids

Do they really care how these are achieved? No. Do they know the difference between RightMove and Zoopla (or OnTheMarket)? Not always. Do they want to know? Mostly: not a lot.

So what do they want to know? They want to know that their agent is good at what they do, is professional, is responsive, has great local contacts and knowledge (and all the other good stuff we wrote about here). From the web point-of-view, when their property is listed they want to see it returned in search. Any search.

Find them a buyer/tenant (at the right price) and they're happy, often very happy.*

Buyers/tenants...

Want the right home, with the right facilities, in the right location, at the right (keenest) price. They really don't care where or how they find it (or who sells/rents it to them). They have little or no loyalty to any agent, let alone any portal. 

They can be, however, grateful almost to the point of irrationality to the agent who finds them the right property.*

Our conclusion...

...is that some agents risk making far too much noise about portals when they should be thumping their own drum - promoting their own expertise. Acknowledge that portals have a role to play, but major on the service aspects of your role. 

Use reviews to demonstrate that you are great at what you do, not because you say so (or that carefully selected clients say so) but because your clients say so (and they're all invited to do so).

Why the asterisks above? Because those are the people who are going to sell your service for you: happy buyers and sellers, happy landlords and tenants. They are going to write great reviews for you and we bet they never mention a portal when they do!