Still leafletting .... placing ads in the newspaper? YOU ARE WASTING YOUR TIME AND MONEY! Wake up and smell the social media ....

[Vanessa]

I am starting this thread to promote new ways of marketing in property.

If you are still leafleting, placing ads in your local newspaper etc. you are wasting your time and your money. Almost everything is on-line now, or will be within the next few years, so why use marketing platforms that are contracting and shrinking on a daily basis? Shouldn't you be embracing these new ways of spreading your messages? If you did, might it put you ahead of the competition and give you a flying headstart when the property market turns around?

With the advent of Web 2.0, the consumer realises that they have a choice in what marketing messages they are exposed to.

Leaflets through the door - SPAM - straight in the bin. Research has proven this to be the case time and time again. It takes hours to leaflet even a few streets, when, by going on line I can expose my marketing message to thousands of people interested in what I have to say if I know where they can be found on line. (Somone on Singing Pig was actually charging £25 for their "successful leaftlet copy" - that made me laugh out loud!).

Newspaper ads: DEAD IN THE WATER. People go on-line to find their accommodation. Think about it. Most people under 40 (your prospective tenants) were brought up in the digital age, so it is natural for them to go on-line to look for stuff. They won't be reading your newspaper advert, which has cost you money to place. They will be looking on sites like www.gumtree.com where you can advertise for free!

Some facts for your consideration:

People now communicate more regularly via social networks than they do by email.

Social networking is not just for teenagers. In 2008, 35 - 49 year olds represented the biggest growth segment for the social networking sector. Some people are choosing to ignore Social Media as they think it is "just for kids". It isn't. Don't make the same mistake in your business.People spend more time in social networks when they're online.

Nielsen Research noted that, here in the UK, one in every six minutes online, was being spent in, or on, the social networking websites making them stand out clearly as the places where more and more people are choosing to connect.

Despite the recession, most marketers are increasing their spend on Social Media.

If you know where your target audience hangs out on line, then you can connect with them.

Example: are you looking for motivated or distressed sellers to acquire BMV leads? If so, then hang out on forums that talk about debt, money management, and repossession. Engage in conversations with people and offer than advice on how to keep their house if they possibly can. Then, if they get to the stage where they have to sell their house, they will trust you, as you tried to help them. This is called "contribution currency" and its all about building trust in on-line networks.

Everything starts with a conversation. Social media are the tools you use to start dialogues on-line.

So, if you are thinking of wasting your money on another newspaper ad, how about this:

22 per cent of internet users ditch newspapers:

In many cases, yes, according to a recent study by the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication. It found that 22 percent of Internet users have canceled a print subscription because they could get the same product online.

Not that nostalgia for the printed page has died altogether. The survey found that 61 percent of Internet users who read newspapers offline would miss the print edition if it disappeared. That's up from 56 percent a year earlier.

The findings add some dimension to industry figures released this week showing newspapers losing circulation faster than ever. Average newspaper sales tumbled 7.1 percent in the six months from October to March from the same period a year earlier, according to an Audit Bureau of Circulations analysis of newspapers that had reported in both periods.

Some of that decline, as newspapers are quick to point out, comes from cutting back on what they consider less-profitable circulation - bulk copies delivered to hotels, for instance.

But the Annenberg study suggests a more rapid and permanent shift, according to its authors.

Jeffrey Cole, head of the Annenberg School's Center for a Digital Future, recalled his prediction nearly 10 years ago that print newspapers would soldier on for another 20 or 25 years.

"We always thought it was a generational thing," he said. "It turned out I was an optimist." Cole says the flight of advertisers from daily newspapers - a trend exacerbated by the recession - is likely to usher printed news into the past over the next few years.

Already this year some newspapers have shut down, eliminated publication days or cut delivery to a few days a week.

Cole said one thing is certain for anyone over 30: "When the printed newspaper goes away, breakfast just won't make sense."

The random survey of 2,030 people ages 12 and up was conducted April 9 to June 30, 2008, and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Our very own Sally of Surrey Lets is successfully using Twitter to find tenants. Twitter is FREE! I advertise our holiday lets via Twitter and other social and business networking sites. These are FREE to use and I am reaching a global marketplace. Because people have subscribed to my Twitter stream they have chosen to be exposed to my messages! So I have a receptive audience, who trust me, and are interested in what I tweet! THAT is the future of business. Not SPAM that has no value. SPAM is a one way channel. Social media is a two way channel that allows you to interact with your followers and find out what they need and want.

So are you going to carrying on with dying ways of marketing or are you going to wake up and smell the social media? As it's free to use, why not do both?! At our networking events in Guildford, we cover using social media for property marketing every month, and up-date our followers of new ways of using it. Why not come along and find out more? The next event is on the 17th May. Details are in the Events section.

[nick tadd]

Yes you should see how Sally uses social media, moreover, twitter ... let the Client come to you and not the other way round.

@surreylets follow her and see what happens.

Nick

[James McBrearty]

Hi Vanessa

Excellent article - our biggest client last year came via ecademy.

We have used the traditional flyers & newspaper adverts in the past & found these to be a decreasing source of new business.

Twitter is now part of our business strategy as well - I am currently ranked number 1 in the UK on Mark Lee's tax & accountancy twitter league:

http://www.taxadvicenetwork.co.uk/content.asp?PageID=367

Regards

James

[Vanessa]

This is incredible. America is always three to five years ahead of the U.K. in trends, so imagine how useful this will be if Rightmove etc. adopt it.

The new Zillow iphone app.

View real estate information on every home around you — as you move — using the Zillow iPhone App. It's free! Walk or drive through a neighborhood and see Zestimate® home values, homes for sale, recently sold homes, Make Me Move® homes and more. GPS technology pinpoints your location and then displays real-time real estate information and data as you go. You can also search any neighborhood, regardless of your location. Perfect for buyers, sellers and real estate junkies too:

View the value of any home
Explore homes for sale and Make Me Move homes
"Zillow" from anywhere!

[Vanessa]

Thanks James. That's great feedback (which is a big part of social media! This forum is social media in action!). It's great to hear success stories, and I hope this thread builds up into a wiki of how people have successfully used social media in their marketing strategies. Ecademy is a great resource - free access to half a million business owners in the U.K. - the generosity of the sharing of knowledge on there astounds us daily.

[Vanessa]

Nine out of ten people are yet to use Twitter - exactly what you want!

Twitter users are small fry as far as the internet is concerned. In spite of mega media coverage, 19 out of every 20 people still don't use Twitter. According to the latest figures collected by eMarketer, only around 3% of US internet users are Twitter users as well. Even with all the current hype and endless column inches about Twitter - it has passed most internet users by.

And the growth predictions don't look that good either. The past year has seen Twitter usage grow by an amazing 1,381% according to Nielsen. But even with that staggering growth it means that only one in ten people will be using Twitter by the end of next year. And these figures are based on US analyses - you can expect usage in the rest of the world to be somewhat lower.

So, the question is obviously this - is it worth bothering with Twitter at all? After all, if most of your customers aren't using Twitter why waste your time with it? Fun it may be, interesting surely, but time-wasting - possibly. With so few people actually using Twitter at the moment, many businesses could be wasting their time and money on it - or are they?

In fact, the reverse is likely to be true. It's not the numbers of people that is important - it's the kind of people they are. According to a study of the attitudes of Twitter users they all tend to fall into a similar "type". Most Twitter users are people who want to learn new things in a timely manner. They fit the "early adopter" profile very well indeed.

However, early adopters tend to be thought leaders as well. In other words, if you use Twitter you are going to be reaching a group of people who are significantly predisposed to the uptake of your information. And people who soak up new information that's up-to-date also tend to want to tell others about it too. They are evangelists at heart.

As a result, if your business uses Twitter you are targeting a group of people who can help you spread your messages far and wide. There is no other tool available online at the moment that lets your company so easily target a group of people all of a similar psychological profile who could help you get your messages across to others. If you are not using Twitter, you are missing out on the benefit of a bunch of individuals all likely to help promote you. The fact that only 10% of people will be using Twitter in a year's time is neither here nor there. It's the kind of people they are - and they are people who are most likely to help promote your business. Grab hold of them...!

[Vanessa]

Tips for using Gumtree to advertise your BTL property for rent.

From @the_landlord via Twitter.

I’ve mentioned several times before in various blog posts that I’m a huge fan of Gumtree when it comes to advertising properties for rent. If ANY Landlord is looking to avoid letting agent fees, I would highly recommend trying out Gumtree to get enquiries from prospective tenants. I don’t think Gumtree should be the one and only method of marketing, but it should definitely be one of the primary resouces. Why? Because IT’S FREE, popular, and takes only a few minutes to setup.

I’m not entirely sure how Gumtree performs geographically, but I know from personal experience that it’s an extremely powerful marketing tool for properties with in London and surrounding counties E.g Essex, Hertfordshire. I imagine it does pretty well in other major cities in England as well, but I can’t confirm. But it’s worth a try, regardless of your target area.
Like with all marketing strategies, there are certain principles that I think should be applied to practice. Here are my top tips for using Gumtree (some of these will apply to marketing your property in general):

1) Check out the local competition. First things first, you need to see how other landlords are marketing their property. Before creating a campaign, search the website for similar properties in the same area to your own. Find out what the going rates are and how much competition you have. If you’re overpriced, don’t expect many enquiries.

2) Market your property in the correct region. The Gumtree website is pretty big, and it’s split up by location (major cities and counties). Make sure you create an advert in the correct location E.g. if you’re BTL is in Essex, you should be creating an advert here: http://essex.gumtree.com/. If you go to gumtree.com, you can navigation to your correct location by clicking “change city” at the top of the page.

I once accidently created a campaign in the London section when the property was situated in Essex. I’m not sure how the searching algorithm works on Gumtree, but I noticed I wasn’t getting any enquiries. When I switched it to Essex, I started getting more page views and consequently more enquires.

3) Constantly refresh your ad. This is by far the most important tip, and I can’t stress that enough. Once you create an ad, it’s important you update it as frequently as possible, even if that means every few hours. Gumtree search results are displayed in order of freshness. Basically, it puts all the fresh content at the top of search results. You will want your advert at the top so it gets the most exposure.

If you’re marketing a property in a popular area like London, there are probably hundreds of properties being added to the system daily, so your property will be buried rapidly.

To keep your advert fresh, all you need to do is log into your control panel, press “preview your ad” and then “submit your ad”. It’s as easy as that.

4) Upload pictures, and make them good If you were looking to rent a property, would you bother responding to an advert without pictures? Probably not. I’m pretty surprised when I see properties being marketed without visuals.
Make sure you use good quality pictures, and show the most appealing features of the property. I always put a picture of the front of the house, the kitchen and a bedroom (there’s a max limit of 3 pictures). I personally think they’re the key areas.

Pictures will avoid wasting time. A prospective tenant will know what to expect before viewing the property if they have seen pictures of the kitchen, bedroom and exterior- so they’re already interested. A tenant that hasn’t seen pictures isn’t necessarily interested in the property before seeing it, so the success rate will become intensely lower.

5) Get the description right. Try to give away as much details as possible in your description. Again, this will avoid wasting time. Here are a few key features that I put in my descriptions:

How many bedrooms there are
Size of bedrooms
allocated spaces and/or garage space
who is responsible for bills
condition of property
whether there is a garden
double glazing

6) Provide email AND telephone contact details. Gumtree allows you to be contacted via email and/or telephone. I recommend making it as easy as possible for someone to contact you, so make sure you allow users to have both options. I’ve noticed that a lot of people only allow communication through email. I personally think that will reduce enquiries because the process of emailing is a lot slower than telephone communication- a lot of tenants want accommodation asap!

7) Construct a useful advert title. Have a useful title for your advert. Something as follows is USELESS: “property for rent.”
I tend to put the road name, town/city and cost. So something like this: “2 bedroom house Church Langley, Harlow (£760 pcm) “
The latter example will get a lot more targeted traffic. Additionally, Gumtree has an open search box, so a lot of people will often search for the location they’re looking to rent in. So for example, if I’m looking for a property in “Harlow”, I’d do an open search for “Harlow”, and because Harlow is in the title, my advert would return in the results. So basically, all i’m doing is making the title keyword rich.

[Adrian Standing]

Gumtree is very effective as the site is organised around major towns and cities so you can target your advert to the local community. You can also link it to YouTube to provide virtual tours of your property. As Vanessa says, its great for research before you invest in an area

I also use Spareroom, Easyroommate for room lets and Holiday Lettings, Owners Direct and Holiday Rentals for overseas holiday lets. Looking at my business today, over 95% of customers come through the internet. I have never advertised in the paper or walked the streets with leaflets. I'm experimenting with Twitter and Facebook to see how I can best use these channels in my business.

My partner complained to me the other day ' you are always on that b...... computer twittering'! So in the end, I showed her how to set up her own Twitter account and now she is using it in her business!

Adrian

[REI]

There is only one rule in direct response marketing.

If the advertising cost less than the income generated continue advertising. If leaflets bring in business then continue to use them. Experiment (test, test, test) but DO NOT STOP doing something because you feel it is old or stale. Let the market tell you when the ad stops working.

John Corey
www.ChelseaPrivateEquity.com/blog

[Vanessa]

Internet marketing vs. postcards for lead generation

From Bob Gatchel's Marketing Mastery Blog via Twitter.

Back in the day, companies could gain a monumental increase in business by using post cards for lead generation. It allowed them to reach inside the homes of millions of consumers long before cell phones and the Internet was introduced to the world. While it worked wonders during those days, you won’t find too many people doing it anymore. Instead everyone is turning to the Internet, and for good reason.

The Cost

Among all their differences, the biggest benefit to Internet marketing is the cost. Even if you paid sixty bucks to buy 250 postcards for your company, you’re only reaching 250 homes. If you did everything on the Internet then you could spend a third of that cost and purchase a website, then send people to it everyday. Granted, some people go out of their way to spend more money, but it’s really not necessary if you have the right tools.

Then of course you have to think about the way the world has changed in the last 50 years. When you received something in the mail with a “special” deal, everyone got excited. Nowadays, you find so many of those things from the bigger companies that most people toss them in the garbage. If you use Internet marketing, people will be able to come to you through various channels for free.

Understanding Internet Tools

The first thing everyone needs to know about Internet marketing is once it’s out there, it stays out there until you delete it. If you build a website, no one can take that away from you except you. If you want to send out content on your product to article directories all over the Internet, you can create links that send potential prospects back to your website.

Oddly enough, 3 years from now someone could come across it and end up at the front page of your website. How many people do you know who will save that post card you mailed them? Yep, not long and in order to reach them again you’ll have to send out more. The point is, when you use Internet marketing it lasts much longer then if you go with the other choice.

Getting More Personal

The hottest Internet marketing today is using videos. This allows your potential prospects the opportunity to see you first hand like you were visiting their home. Since it’s very difficult to build trust on the Internet, you can open all kinds of possibilities when you post a video. By now you’ve probably seen a bunch of them on Youtube with links to sites. Can you do that by using postcards with lead generation?

You Decide

When it comes down to it, we could give you several reasons why postcard marketing is out dated. The only places that still use it today are large companies that offer products which are more suited for selling out of stores. You won’t find too many people purchasing brand new furniture on the Internet, like you would with a big sale postcard in the mailbox. Other then that, everything else points to Internet marketing.

[Roberta Ward]

Can someone please post for those of us who are new to Twitter- exactly how to advertise on Twitter your rooms for rent? i have no idea how to do that but would love to have a go.
Thanks guys
Roberta

PS: I find Spareroom better than Gumtree out in Essex.

Vanessa said:

Internet marketing vs. postcards for lead generation

From Bob Gatchel's Marketing Mastery Blog via Twitter.

Back in the day, companies could gain a monumental increase in business by using post cards for lead generation. It allowed them to reach inside the homes of millions of consumers long before cell phones and the Internet was introduced to the world. While it worked wonders during those days, you won’t find too many people doing it anymore. Instead everyone is turning to the Internet, and for good reason.

The Cost

Among all their differences, the biggest benefit to Internet marketing is the cost. Even if you paid sixty bucks to buy 250 postcards for your company, you’re only reaching 250 homes. If you did everything on the Internet then you could spend a third of that cost and purchase a website, then send people to it everyday. Granted, some people go out of their way to spend more money, but it’s really not necessary if you have the right tools.

Then of course you have to think about the way the world has changed in the last 50 years. When you received something in the mail with a “special” deal, everyone got excited. Nowadays, you find so many of those things from the bigger companies that most people toss them in the garbage. If you use Internet marketing, people will be able to come to you through various channels for free.

Understanding Internet Tools

The first thing everyone needs to know about Internet marketing is once it’s out there, it stays out there until you delete it. If you build a website, no one can take that away from you except you. If you want to send out content on your product to article directories all over the Internet, you can create links that send potential prospects back to your website.

Oddly enough, 3 years from now someone could come across it and end up at the front page of your website. How many people do you know who will save that post card you mailed them? Yep, not long and in order to reach them again you’ll have to send out more. The point is, when you use Internet marketing it lasts much longer then if you go with the other choice.

Getting More Personal

The hottest Internet marketing today is using videos. This allows your potential prospects the opportunity to see you first hand like you were visiting their home. Since it’s very difficult to build trust on the Internet, you can open all kinds of possibilities when you post a video. By now you’ve probably seen a bunch of them on Youtube with links to sites. Can you do that by using postcards with lead generation?

You Decide

When it comes down to it, we could give you several reasons why postcard marketing is out dated. The only places that still use it today are large companies that offer products which are more suited for selling out of stores. You won’t find too many people purchasing brand new furniture on the Internet, like you would with a big sale postcard in the mailbox. Other then that, everything else points to Internet marketing.

[Vanessa]

Created a tiny URL (www.tinyurl.com) and link that to your tweet. "Room for rent in large house in Guildford for £500 pcm ........ tiny URL).

The whole beauty of Twitter is that you can direct people to wherever you want them to go! .... Your blog, your holiday let, your room advert, your website, a forum post that you replied to, someone else's content that you found valuable.

The possibilities are endless. I discover a new way of using it every day.

At our next networking event on 17th May, I will be speaking specifically about using social media for property marketing and developing some more strategies that we can all benefit from.

[Angela O'Connor]

REI said:

There is only one rule in direct response marketing.

If the advertising cost less than the income generated continue advertising. If leaflets bring in business then continue to use them. Experiment (test, test, test) but DO NOT STOP doing something because you feel it is old or stale. Let the market tell you when the ad stops working.

John Corey
www.ChelseaPrivateEquity.com/blog

Absolutely agree with you, John. Whatever works. In order to find a deal in a very specific area, leaflets may just do the trick.
If it doesn't matter so much about the location, than it's surely a lot easier to get deals/leads using other methods. Nothing should be disregarded. It's the result that counts.