The second biggest driver of website traffic for Bradleys behind Google

Bradleys Estate Agents have built a reputation for great customer service in the West Country.

During a conversation with Marketing Director – Kai Logan – we looked at what they’re doing to grow their marketing strategy and maintain their position as a key market leader in their local area.

First question, what are the primary concerns that agents are facing?

To be quite honest, there are a lot of issues and concerns within the industry.

Agents are underselling their own services, and effectively cutting their nose off to spite the face because they’re trying to compare apples with pears when it comes to traditional agents and the service they provide, and those self-service agents. They are different, but the fees are getting closer and closer and that’s a huge concern for our industry.

And along with that, a by-product is the lack of service professionalism that may follow, because you can’t do the same job for half the money and continue to provide as high a quality of service.

Are consumers aware of what estate agents do for their money and how would you combat that?

For a long time, we’ve managed to get away with just saying: “we’re estate agents, this is what we do, and this is what we charge”. What we haven’t ever done is said each step of the journey, breaking it and our role down.

Our roles have changed massively in the last ten – let alone twenty – years, where we’re much more heavily involved now in the whole process than we ever used to be. But as we haven’t communicated that, it’s not fair for the consumer to expect to know.

The other part of it is that as an industry, we’ve been a little behind in terms of technology, and so BriefYourMarket.com plays a big role in customer communication for us.

People have got less time and – as a result – they want to be able to do what they want to do, when they want to do it, and the self-service agents have provided a better platform to do that whereas traditional agents are still playing catch up.

So, whilst our service is superior in lots of different ways to self-service agents, I think what we haven’t actually done as an industry is given them the other pieces of technology.

As a customer touchpoint, is BriefYourMarket.com helping to drive conversions?

Absolutely, I think there’s lots of things we’ve done with BriefYourMarket.com that has helped, but essentially, it’s a really nice tool to keep in touch with your whole database or a section of your database – depending on what you’re trying to communicate.

The fact that you can section it in different ways is part of its appeal, of course, but it’s about communicating with them. Our database has approximately 100,000 contacts, so we can’t phone or email them individually all the time. What we can do is give market updates and show them we’ve got local or regional expertise, and we can drip feed them information at whatever stage they are in their journey.

Whether it’s news, properties, or services, all of those things are really easily communicated to our database through BriefYourMarket.com.

“Without a doubt, contacting our past clients through BriefYourMarket.com is keeping our brand in front of them, so they’re coming back to us naturally.

The amount of additional valuations it is generating that are then converting to instructions, and – in due course – exchanges is really surprising. Even I’m surprised by how effective it is.

We couldn’t be without it, it’s as simple as that.”

Content marketing:

We aim to send a weekly email that goes to our whole database, one of the popular emails we send is a selection of our latest luxury homes across the south west; the majority of which include videos.

What you find is obviously it attracts clients, even if they’re first-time buyers just looking, it’s fun to see for some people and it’s serious for others, whilst also saying: “look, these guys are doing something different”.

Website visits:

Each month, we’ve exceeded last year’s traffic, which is great.

This is in part due to BriefYourMarket.com because we’ve put different things in place, like the automated property alerts.

So, if somebody makes an enquiry on a property, they then get sent other properties that are similar and that’s just going on in the background constantly. 

Online valuations with Digi-Val:

It’s without a doubt one of the best returns on investment we use.

We’re using it in different ways rather than just letting it sit on our website.

An example of this is putting it on all our email marketing campaigns, as just either a little footer or a banner, or whatever it might be, as well as on print campaigns to advertise Digi-Val in that way. 

BoostYourMarket:

The real jewel in the crown with BriefYourMarket.com has been Boost. Whereby obviously we are able to identify active contacts in our system or on our website, it’s the automation that Boost gives us.

So, when somebody is enquiring to Bradleys, they are automatically getting further details from us about other relevant properties and that’s instant. Boost identifies people that are actually keen on mortgage information or conveyancing, and we can pick up the phone and have that conversation with them because we know they’re interested.

It just comes back to putting people that are very active and keen on more information right in front of us, and then we’re able to pick up on those and deal with it.

How are you achieving results with BriefYourMarket.com?

Regardless of whether you’re one office or thirty, it’s trial and error with what does and doesn’t work for your audience. That takes time but it’s all a really important learning curve.

I think the other thing for people to remember is that the goals for us have changed, people don’t look at newspapers to source who’s the expert in any one area, they go online.

They might go to your website but it’s probably unlikely, unless they’re close to making decisions about their property journey, so BriefYourMarket.com fills that void between: “how do I communicate with people out there”.

If you’re creating content, why not communicate it through BriefYourMarket.com. It’s a very short job to do that and will have far better gains, than for example, putting it in a newspaper.

To discuss your strategy for market growth, book your consultation from the link below.