Introduction
There are multiple techniques you can use to attract new landlords, sellers and buyers to your agency. The trick is to find the right combination of methods for you and keep them in the right proportion.
This way, you can collect the most leads in a sustainable way and grow your letting agency.
Communicate your expertise clearly
You want to make sure that you understand the most common concerns, fears and motivations that landlords have. What do landlords worry about?
These are likely going to be issues like non-paying tenants, tax and regulations changes, or funding repairs and maintenance of the property.
Are you informed and current on these topics? If you are, make sure that you communicate your specific expertise in all the channels you are using to market and advertise.
Whether it’s on your leaflets, website or social media. Try to keep your references to these topics clear and brief.
There is no need to get into a great deal of detail about your views on intricate matters of specific tax issues on your social media or leaflets.
What is really needed is to make it clear to the landlords that will see your flyers, website or social media posts that you are aware of their biggest concerns.
Make sure you mention that you are aware of these issues and focus on them. If you hold any relevant accreditations, include them in your marketing materials also.
Keep yourself informed by following relevant sources of information like landlordzone.
Networking
Real world networking can create connections that are hard to replicate in other forms.
You will find that there are still many local business events happening around the UK that you could attend and where you can speak to landlords and investors.
You can also go to property auctions that are often attended by landlords. If a landlord is attending a property auction, it is more likely that they have multiple properties in their portfolio.
The more properties they have, the more likely they are to need your services.
If you are particularly proactive in this domain you can also create and host your own landlord advice event.
If this is your forte you can hire a venue, invite a few experts to speak. If you are personable and a good host you can develop some connections that are going to be considerably more personal than what you can do via other methods.
Social media for letting agencies
Almost all businesses nowadays have at least some social media presence.
When you are thinking about using social media as a letting agency, you want to first think about why you’re doing so.
As a letting agency, you likely shouldn’t be aiming for organic growth and mass engagement. You are not a fitness or a makeup influencer.
Social media can play a different role for a local letting agency. It can act as a place where you discuss your current projects and general topics of interest we’ve mentioned earlier.
Social media can act as a tool to show that you are an active and a trustworthy company. When a landlord or a seller finds your website or looks at your leaflet they might first look for you on social media.
If they can see that you are actively posting (maybe once a week) relevant content, you are helping them make the decision to contact you.
But which social media platforms should you be on? Select one or two that you find the easiest to use. You don’t want to spread yourself too thin and try to keep up with posting on too many platforms.
The most useful platforms for a letting agency are going to be Facebook, Instagram and LionkedIN.
Facebook has great tools for businesses. The Facebook advertising tools can be very effective across platforms.
Facebook also allows for new ways for clients to contact you or quickly find relevant information about your letting agency.
When it comes to content people on Facebook respond well to a combination of one or more pictures with a medium length blog style post.
This could be a few images of a property you are managing and a 200-word post about some of the challenges you’ve helped the landlord or seller handle.
Instagram is going to work great for you if you like making shorter videos or sharing pictures.
There is no need to write long and thoughtful posts on instagram. If you have a few good pictures from a new property you’ve managed to help sell or are currently managing, post them.
LinkedIN offers fantastic targeting options in terms of advertising to letting agencies. You can find demographics to target that are quite unique to this platform.
Longer blog-style posting also works very well on LinkedIN.
LinkedIN is all about targeting the right people with your ads and content. Have a look at the types of companies and individuals you can pinpoint on LinkedIN. Consider whether doing so would be worth your time.
Make videos
The current internet culture is very visual. The majority of online content nowadays is consumed in video format.
Whether it is just you talking to a camera in your office or showing some of the properties you manage, videos are going to help you reach people.
Keep in mind that you don’t have to over-deliver in terms of production value. Don’t get into video production, editing, lighting and get lost in it.
You can use your mobile phone in decent natural light to make basic videos discussing topics you are confident in.
If you want to ramp up the production value of your videos, make sure to hire an external videographer. There are many competent people that can do this job well.
You can hire them on a per-video basis with no large commitments. A good videographer will be able to deliver a product for £800 that you wouldn’t be able to produce yourself no matter how hard you’ll try.
Use these videos on your social media and equally importantly on your website.
Having video elements in your blogs and individual pages will help with how search engines see your website. They will also greatly improve the way landlords, potential sellers and buyers interact with your site.
Use leaflet distribution
Leaflet distribution is an advertising method that has been with us in its current form for many decades. Based on how it is performing at the moment, it will remain with us for many decades to come.
You will struggle to find an estate agent in London that doesn’t use flyer delivery in some form. Many of the reasons for why estate agents love leaflets apply to agencies as well.
Leaflets can be used in a very targetted way to deliver to homes around a recent sale or close to a home that has been successfully let out.
Flyers can also be used in the context of a larger campaign to target hundreds of thousands of homes in London within a couple of weeks.
Campaigns of almost any size between these two examples are also possible and are regularly taking place all over London.
We work with estate agents and letting agencies on a daily basis and use leaflets to find and advertise to landlords, buyers and sellers consistently.
The physical nature of the leaflet provides an advantage flyer delivery that online advertising struggles to match.
The fact that you can have a physical piece of custom advertising delivered in to every single household in a selected area is not something you should be underestimating.
You can read up more on leaflet distribution for estate agents on this page.
Online marketing portals
The largest marketing portals for buyers, sellers and estate agents in the UK currently are Rightmove, Zoopla and Primelocation.
As everyone in this space spends a considerable amount of their time on one of these portals, you need to have a good understanding of how they work and what is going on on them.
You can use them to advertise, learn about your competition or simply to gather information about the market.
Even if you’ve made the decision to stay away from online marketing portals as they tend to be very saturated you can use them to develop and update your understanding of the market in areas you care about.
Focus on your website
Most companies in today’s world focus their energy online on social media. In many ways spending a lot of energy on social media makes sense. But it shouldn’t be done at the expense of your website.
Your website is still a crucial element of your online presence. It can deliver information in a way that no other medium can.
For landlords that are seriously considering using your services, your website will be the best tool to find more information at their own pace.
This is not to be underestimated.
The way you structure your website can help you present your letting or estate agency in a way you can control.
For example, you can present a well thought-through video describing your services on the home page of your site.
You can then silo other information in sections that logically deliver exactly the information a landlord would be interested in.
The visitors to your website are in control of which parts of your site they read and how much time they spend on it. The way this information is structured and connected is completely in your control though.
You can present more information and details about what you do on your website than in pretty much any other medium.
Do not underestimate the great benefit that a well-designed website can have for your letting agency business.
Work on your SEO
If you are putting energy and effort into designing and structuring your website you will also want to spend at least a little bit of time on SEO.
SEO means Search Engine Optimisation. The way your website is built and the type of information that it contains helps Google and other search engines decide whether they should serve it up to people first.
You can have a look at which search engines you should be looking at and considering here.
In short, the type of content you are putting up on your website will determine whether the position you come up on when landlords search for relevant topics.
One of the best ways to build a good SEO profile and allow landlords to discover you naturally via search engines is posting high quality articles via your blog.
Select the topics that are most likely going to be of interest to landlords and write informative articles on these. Regularly post these articles on your site.
It is a simple process. However you have to make sure that the quality of your articles is high. Try to do your best to really answer the questions that people have.
Write clearly and don’t overuse keyword you think people might be searching for.
When you have a number of blogs posted try to find reasonable ways to link between them.
If in one article you are talking about solutions to leaks and burst water pipes, you can naturally link to another article you’ve posted focused on protecting electrical systems from damage.
This kind of linking between relevant article on your site is also something Google and other search engines look for.
