Top 10 Property Marketing Tips
Marketing Tips from award-winning Spanish property portal, Kyero.com. Sell more Spanish property with these Top Ten Tips for estate agents.
If you've been selling property in Spain for a while, this year will, no doubt, have been your most challenging year so far. - Martin Dell, Kyero.com Managing Director
Even if you maintained your sales volume from previous years, even if you actually increased it, you probably did so by working harder and spending more money on advertising and marketing than in previous years.
What's going on - and what can you do about it?
Recent news headlines paint a bleak picture of Spain
Spanish boom ends, ghost towns appear - Bloomberg, The pain in Spain - ITV Tonight programme, Spain property crash fears - BBC News, Conmen on the Costas - Sunday Times, Serious economic risk, Spanish reliance on building - Bloomberg
Whether these news stories, and hundreds of other doom-laden articles, accurately portray the Spanish property market is debatable.
One thing is absolutely certain, though:
When buyers think of investing in Spanish property, they also think of land-grabbing in Valencia, corruption in Marbella and illegal new builds throughout Spain. They fear a wholesale property price crash in Spain.
They think of all this is in addition to their 'normal' fears of making a bad decision about a significant investment in property. They think of all this and are increasingly aware of 'other' holiday home destinations vying for their attention.
No wonder it's getting harder to find buyers
and harder to make sales than before
Today, your property business in Spain needs an action plan which can handle the fact that buyers have changed - significantly. Because they have changed, the way you interact with them also needs to change.
A key aspect of this is how buyers research the Spanish property market. Increasingly, they'll go online to perform background research and compare countries, areas, properties and estate agents ..
.. before ever contacting you
The limited research they used to do using magazine articles or print advertising has now exploded into more detailed and thorough independent research via the Internet. Like it or not, how buyers choose to buy has changed fundamentally.
The good news is that there are buyers out there, and they are willing to invest in Spanish property.
Here's 10 Top Tips to help you reach today's Spanish property buyers:
1. Tell a story with words
What you say about each property is important. Rather than a list of features, describe the property in a way which engages the buyer's imagination. Think "Perfect outside space for a sunset BBQ with friends" rather than "south facing terrace".
You'll probably use more words - but that's OK, there's no space limitation when advertising on the Internet.
How you structure your description is equally important. Think newspaper hierarchy:
- Grab their attention with a headline.
- Maintain their interest with a short, single-sentence teaser description.
- Satisfy their curiosity with a description, full of detail.
Each property on Kyero.com has unlimited descriptive text and is presented to capture, sustain and tantilise the buyer's interest and imagination.
2. Tell a story with pictures
The enquiry you get from an advertising portal. Does it just say "Send me more photos"?
What you photograph for each property is important. Rather than the standard "shot of every room", think about which rooms/angles enhance the story told by your words.
Picture a shot of an outside dining area in dappled shade, complete with a sumptuous lunch, ready to eat.
How do you feel about that image?
Compare this to a similar shot but with an empty table and washing hanging in the background.
Which one evokes the better feeling?
On the internet, you can show off a lot of property photos - but you don't have to show them all, just because you can.
How you display each photograph is equally important. Your visitors won't thank you, or wait around, if your large photos take too long to load over their internet connection. Neither will they appreciate a single, small blurry image of the property.
3. Talk their language
The language you speak is important. Until recently, most 'foreign' buyers of property in Spain have been from the UK. Today, visitors from Germany, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden and Norway (amongst others) are showing increasing interest in Spanish property.
Many of these buyers will speak some English but imagine how much more rapport you'll have when you speak to them in their own language. Short of being fluent in every language or hiring staff who are, you can use this free translation tool to convert standard property descriptions between English, French, German, Dutch, Spanish and Danish.
Once that you've demonstrated a willingness to speak their language, it's likely that they'll also be happy to communicate with you in yours - or a mixture of the two.
4. Inform them
What's nearby is important. Many of the decisions and choices made by a buyer are about the location of the property, rather than about the property itself.
When you make it easy for a buyer to really understand a town or a region, you make it easier for them to say 'yes' to buying a property there.
Showing a map is a good start but, it's not enough. They need to understand where places are in relation to other 'important' features. Take the time to tell them about distances to schools, the coast and nearby airports.
The weather is important. Giving them a weather forecast for the next 10 days is nice if they're visiting soon but, it's not enough. Why not tell them about seasonal averages so they can anticipate if the climate will suit them when they actually intend to use the property?
Each property on Kyero.com is automatically (and accurately) mapped. Average weather patterns, distance to the coast, nearest national and international airports and the number of local schools are all displayed automatically.
5. Help them make comparisons
The relative value of the property is important. Is it a bargain or overpriced? Is this area gaining or losing in value? What's the average budget for a three-bed, two-bath apartment? How much extra would a four-bed town-house in the same area cost?
Don't expect a buyer to ask you, they'll try and answer these and other similar questions at an early stage of their research. They'll visit web sites and post to forums to get a consensus of opinion before contacting you about a particular property.
How do you answer the question before a buyer is ready to ask you? By featuring price comparisons on your web site and sales literature. Scary stuff, but hoping they won't ask and not addressing these questions is no longer an option.
Each property on Kyero.com is automatically linked to historical price trend information. Buyers use it to complete their general research into Spanish property and move on to specific property research - which is when they contact you.
These 5 points hit the majority of the needs of today's buyer. Addressing them on your own web site, your internet advertising and sales material are the main ways to gain access to today's buyers and begin a dialogue with them.
There's more though, in addition to presenting properties differently, chances are your business needs something different too.
6. Streamline
Saving time and money is always important. Until recently, internet advertising was less affordable and there were only a few, quality places to advertise. The choice used to be "what are the one or two web sites I should advertise on?".
Now, there are many more affordable advertising options and the question has become "how can I advertise on all the best ones?".
The problem has shifted from too little money to too little time. How can you advertise on all the major web sites without spending time learning how to use each one, one by one?
Use a single master system to manage all your property details. Use it to automatically distribute updated listings to your chosen advertising web sites.
Kyero.com can act as the master system or be a slave to most of the main property management systems available. It can even do both at the same time and act as the hub of your distribution strategy. You save time and money by managing property details once only and delegating how your information is distributed.
7. Track cost per lead
Decide what works - and what doesn't. Whatever advertising methods you use, it's imperative that you know how much each one costs to generate a sales lead.
Armed with that knowledge and an average lead to sales ratio, you can decide how much to spend on each method.
With a knowledge of relative performance between advertising methods, you can fairly compare apples and oranges and choose to spend more on the ones which work and reduce or cut the ones which don't.
Start by comparing advertising methods which provide reliable statistics - something much easier to achieve online. Get a feel for the performance of each one by running back to back comparisons over a limited period of time.
Compare, pay-per-click, pay-per-lead and flat-rate advertising methods by the only metric that counts: actual cost per lead.
Estate agents using Kyero.com have access to real-time lead generation statistics. They can instantly compare the performance of Kyero.com against any other advertising method.
8. Quantity vs quality
What kind of sales lead do you want? A small, one-person estate agency wants a different type of sales lead compared to the telemarketing department of a multi-national organisation.
Perhaps the larger organisation wants minimal contact details as a starting point for developing on-going rapport? Perhaps they want to direct all leads to their own web site?
Maybe a smaller agency will feature comprehensive property details to actively discourage all but the most hardy buyers? Perhaps they require the buyer to enter their full contact details when they do make an enquiry?
There is no right or wrong, just different qualification levels for different estate agents. Decide how much or how little information your business needs to operate effectively.
Estate agents using Kyero.com choose their own level of 'qualification' - all the way from "only send visitors to my web site" to "require telephone and address details every time".
9. Measure, test and adjust
Make your own luck. Estate agents and developers succeeding today haven't just hit on a magic formula for lead generation. There's more than luck to their success.
They start with something they can measure - say, the number of property viewings each month, the number of visitors to their web site or the number of enquiries received each day.
Then they see what happens to those numbers when they change just one part of the process - a paragraph of advertising copy, the main photo of a development or the background colour of a brochure.
If things improve, this new change becomes the benchmark - an adjustment is made. If things stay the same or get worse, a different change is tested in order to hone this process.
.. relentless .. gradual .. improvement.
Over time, all those little tweaks add up to produce staggering exponential improvements in performance. This is what translates directly to ..
more, better quality leads, and more property sales
If you want to make a difference to your property business in Spain, these 10 Top Tips will get you off to a great start.
You don't need to be working with Kyero.com to make full use of each one of these - but why wouldn't you?
We've taken our own advice and implemented each one of these tips. That's why, each month ..
- to over 1,000 estate agents throughout Spain.
By advertising your properties with Kyero.com, your entire marketing strategy will automatically evolve in line with the needs of buyers. You'll be able to piggy-back on our successes and benefit from the insight and actions of the Internet marketing team at Kyero.com.
- Buyers will find your properties on Kyero.com and they'll contact you directly for more details.
- Your properties will be available in six different languages to further increase their appeal.
- They'll include comprehensive location information so that a buyer feels more confident in contacting you.
- You'll save time and money as Kyero.com becomes part of your property distribution channel.
- You'll be able to instantly track and compare your results.
- You'll be able to choose an appropriate level of lead qualification.
- You'll have all the information you need to monitor and adjust your campaigns.
- You'll be equipped to steadily and consistently improve lead quality and quantity - which means you'll make more property sales.
- Select your discount
Questions? Call us on +34 958 881 429 or email sales@kyero.com
We're available, Monday to Friday, 10:00 to 14:00 and 16:00 to 19:00 CET.
Sincerely,
Martin Dell
Managing Director - Kyero.com
Right now, Kyero.com is literally generating thousands of high-calibre sales leads. The sooner you register, the sooner YOU can convert them to viewings and sales.
Every year, the average estate agent sees their marketing investment in Kyero.com paid back twenty times over. It works for them and it can work for you too.
About Kyero.com
Winner of the 2007 CNBC award for Best International Property Portal, Kyero.com is the leading web site connecting buyers and
sellers of Spanish property. Featuring 100,000 properties from 1,000
estate agents, Kyero.com is privately owned and based in southern
Spain.
Kyero.com is
the first dedicated Spanish property portal to join the Association of
International Property Professionals (AIPP), a consumer
association setting standards and protecting buyers of overseas
property.
Each month Kyero.com collates pricing information from thousands of properties to produce the Spanish House Price Index
- email sales@kyero.com
- tel +34 958 881 429
- fax +34 958 882 443
- write Apdo 604 18690 Almuñecar Granada Spain
