On Tuesday, I wrote about the value of estate agent USPs. This kicked off some debate on the PropertyOwl site (note my new 'recommended' banner on the right!) that perhaps marketing methods were a USP in their own right.
Personally I'm not convinced, as there's no real barrier to entry for competition. But perhaps what I'm really talking about is niches - having a tightly defined target market.
It brings me back to a post I wrote last week which queried whether or not estate agents still need to match applicants to properties, or if the portals mave made house hunters self-selecting.
If your portfolio is quite varied in terms of type, size, location and value of property, the chances of an applicant registering with you and being interested in only a single property are quite high. Which makes that person relatively expensive.
If your portfolio is generally more similar, the chance of an applicant finding more than one interesting property goes up - as does the chance that you'll have new properties of interest to them in future. Therefore the value of that person to your business rises.
Of course, in a restricted market with so few valuations, the temptation is to take every opportunity to win a listing - and probably quite rightly so. But with a little targeted marketing, you can massage your property pipeline in the right direction.
Ditto for vendors wishing to select an agent. Why endure the hype when you can make your mind up for yourself. See which agents are marketing property of the same calibre as your own, judge for yourself how good a job they are making of it.
A quote (Seth Godin) I remember, and believe to be accurate is "The internet has made outstanding more noticeable and therefore mediocre more difficult to maintain".
In estate agency so few are truly outstanding, that being outstanding should be the ultimate USP. There is a barrier to entry...lethargy.
Wasn't sure who posted this until I saw you copied it to the PropertyOwl site too :)
The thing about applicants doing their own matching is that they can only do it on the properties being marketed on the portals they're looking at.
They don't get to hear about anything until it hits the market and they don't get to build a relationship with the agents.
I think probably a combination of both approaches would still work best for most house-hunters.
I do agree with Seth on that quote though! But being outstanding still isn't a USP ;)
Thanks for making the effort to post,
Martin
P.S. Your comment appeared twice, so I have removed one copy.