Advertising for estate agents

An estate agent's marketing has a widely misunderstood target. Buyers find properties on portals regardless of which agent lists them. The competition is for sellers.

The instruction is the product

Everything should drive to one event: a valuation appointment in a seller's home.

The channels that produce them: local visibility over years, boards outside sold properties, direct mail to specific streets, recommendation, and search for valuation terms.

Publish your actual performance

Agents compete on claims about service. A seller can verify none of them. Published figures, particularly fall-through rate, are checkable and therefore believed.

Street-level marketing

Property marketing is unusually geographic. A seller in a particular street cares about who sold the other houses in that street.

Practical: a card to every house in a road where you have just agreed a sale, stating what was achieved and how quickly; boards left up for the permitted period; and a page per district with your actual sales.

The valuation appointment

This is where the instruction is won or lost, and it is a marketing event as much as a sales one.

What matters: arriving on time, having researched the property and the street beforehand, bringing evidence rather than assertions, and giving a realistic valuation rather than the highest one.

Over-valuing to win instructions produces unsold stock, price reductions and the fall-through rate that damages the figures you should be publishing.

Lettings and management

Lettings and property management provide recurring revenue that stabilises an agency through slow sales markets. They are marketed to landlords, who are a distinct and reachable audience.

Landlord acquisition responds to: clear fee structures, compliance handling, and evidence of void periods and rent arrears performance.

The regulatory frame

Property advertising carries specific obligations, typically covering material information, energy performance disclosure, fee transparency and accuracy of descriptions. Requirements have tightened in several markets and enforcement has increased.