For your estate agents marketing campaigns to be truly effective, you need to find an angle that will appeal to your audience – and because ‘money talks’, offering discounted fees can be a great way to draw attention and put you at the top of their agency list.
Of course in an ideal world you wouldn’t need to offer a discount, but estate agency is a heavily saturated industry with lots of competition, and sellers are always looking for ways to reduce the cost of a sale.
Over the years discounted fees have become a common feature in estate agents marketing campaigns, helping you to win more business and increase your instructions.
Our template estate agent leaflet designs can be fully customised to your personal brand, giving you the flexibility to create a campaign that best promotes your services and your discounted fee offer.
Unfortunately, for most agents the days of 2% fees are long gone, so offering a discount is necessary in order to encourage valuations and instructions. While a reduction to 1% might seem crazy, it’s steadily becoming the norm, and over the last couple of years, some deals have dropped to as low as 0.75%.
This type of estate agent marketing campaign can be used in a few different ways:
New office openings – you need to look busy, fast, with plenty of properties to promote through your shop window, local press ads and on websites – plus of course get those boards up in the streets.
Market takeover – discounted fees may equate to ‘buying’ a larger market share, but it’s an effective way of doing so, subsequently increasing brand visibility and confidence in your estate agency. You can take a modest approach (1%), more aggressive (0.75%), or go the whole hog (0% with T&Cs) – this is often combined with new office openings as above.
Increase market movement – when the housing market is moving slowly, a discounted fee offer can help you to win business from competitors by injecting some extra interest in your services.
Depending on the type of discounted fee you’re offering, you can actually find a great balance between offering genuine value to new clients, and getting good value from the deal yourself.
At first glance, offers like our design numbers 2796 and 2813 that offer a discounted fee but on specific terms - in this case, if the house is sold in a specified number of days – look attractive to sellers, but may not actually require you to carry through on the offer.
Of course transparency, honesty, great service and delivering on your discount promises are all essential for this type of marketing campaign and to ensure you continue to build on your good reputation. Therefore, it’s important to assess the discount you’re thinking of offering and any terms that will go alongside that offer before going to print!
For more help and advice about estate agents marketing campaigns, or to order your discounted fee leaflets or any other print collateral, just give us a ring on 01234 333820 and our experts will be happy to help.