ROI – Return on Investment is easy to measure in this new 21st Century age of Letting Agency marketing. Open rates on emails, Click Thru Rates on Rightmove banners, Number of Downloads of the full brochure, Facebook likes, People ringing a particular telephone number for a Free Val .. the list goes on … but do those measurements DIRECTLY get you more listings? My gut reaction tells me not as well as they should
My intuition tells me the important things in life .. things like love, friendship, friendships, going out one’s way to help another human being and business relationships can’t be measured with a number, which is why many agents find it difficult to implement marketing techniques that can’t be measured.
Let me tell you a story about a letting agent called Daren from Derby. Daren was my first client 3.5 years ago and he had been treading water for years in terms of taking his business forward. He had tried every technique under the sun to attract new landlords (banners, adverts, cheap fee deals, leaflets, Facebook campaigns – the lot) .. all carefully crafted and measured – but none it really worked. He had only grown his letting agency by 50 properties between 2009 and 2014
I suggested that to get more landlords, he had to give value to Derby landlords first instead of trying to sell them something. By being generous and courageous, the landlords of Derby valued him so much.
He started to write a weekly article about the Derby property market, giving everything away with wanting nothing in return. No clicks, no cookies, no emails .. nothing .. give – give – give .. After two years, he had grown by nearly 200 managed properties. In this very indepth video (40 mins) - he tells you exactly what he did it, step by minutiae step https://youtu.be/kTD5Ni_-3Mo
..and this is Daren telling you after 3.5 years, how he has now increased his managed portfolio by 500 managed properties https://youtu.be/PvTHi35dcsc
The technique we describe is called ‘landlord farming’ It’s not easy to apply into a hard headed, numbers-driven letting agent strategy, and exactly why it’s worth doing.
Just because you can quantity and measure something … it doesn’t mean it matters