Are you chatting to Vendors and Landlords?
Attracting new Vendors and Landlords is going to be challenging in 2023.
The debate about the value of online marketing for estate agents is closed. Further debates remain about the shape of the market with disruptors such as Purple Bricks and Strike offering alternatives to the traditional routes. This article provides an overview of the customer journey and how you can add online sales to entice your target audience to your service.
Most potential Vendors and Landlords will start with a web search for relevant services local to their property. They first seek to understand the agent’s property marketing strategy, pricing structure and value add services. Normally, they will review several options.
As a visitor to your website, the new vendor or landlord is looking to get their questions answered quickly and accurately. If questions arise that cannot be answered online, they will most likely move on to the next site.
In the past, the logical option to answer questions was to pick up the phone. With today’s changing habits that is not always the best option. 80% of millennials find using the phone stressful. Telephonophobia is widespread with phone calls seen as time consuming and inefficient.
Understanding these trends of the growing consumer market should inform how agents engage. Sales and Marketing efforts need to cater for these concerns or risk losing out on a generation of customers. Marketing on the internet is a multi-billion pound industry, cloaked in acronyms and confusion. However, there are only 3 key areas that the majority of sites focus on.
- Searchability - Product or service needs to be easily locatable online. (SEO, PPC)
- Ease of Use – A clear easy to navigate site with simple to understand CTAs (Calls to Action)
- Brand - It needs to be attractive and convey trust.
Most agents are fully aware of the value that a website brings for marketing, but in a competitive local market, being able to sell at this point in the customer journey is invaluable.
This is where good website chat has proven itself. If the prospect has a great experience and gets all their questions answered, they have no reason to look further.
Two potential downfalls of website chat can be around the key requirements of getting questions answered quickly and accurately.
Most managed webchat providers act as a data capture service, taking name and contact details and passing the enquiry on by email. This can be frustrating to the website visitor, whose expectation was to chat with someone. Webchat bots can be equally frustrating, again unable to answer key questions or engage in a dialogue.
UK based chat4business has developed a hybrid webchat service combining the warmth of human receptionists, the cost efficiency of bot technology and the knowledge and experience of your team to close hot prospects whilst they are on your site in buying mode.
Using human agents to handle the revenue generating sales enquiries, but leaving the non-urgent enquiries to the bots, provides the most effective and lowest cost chat service available.
The product is available out of the box with it’s pre-defined estate agent configuration. For those with more complicated requirements, the product is fully customisable. Videos, images, animations can all be added to enhance the experience. The product has even been used to generate sales enquiries on a website under construction!!
If you would like further details on how chat4business can increase your vendor and landlord enquiries, please launch a chat.
Or please contact Marcus Wrinch, Sales Director @ chat4business.
T: +44 (0) 1989 569 560
