Beat the Property Portals at Their Own Game

In this video interview with Christopher Watkin, we discuss how you can stop being a slave to the property portal behemoths like Rightmove & Zoopla.

You’ll learn how to reclaim both your website traffic and your data as well as how you can stop sharing the spotlight with other Estate Agents!

Transcript:

Christopher Watkin: [00:00:00] Hi, it’s Chris Watkin here with Chris Kyriacou. What are your thoughts on what’s been happening to the portals. Talk to me.

[00:00:15] Chris Kyriacou: [00:00:15] Wow, that’s deep. Hmm. Well look, the portals are doing, what the portals do. Right. It’s how we react to that, that’s the change. Right. So, you know, I don’t blame them for doing what they do. If someone’s willing to pay me triple what I’m worth, then I’m going to take it. 

[00:00:32] Right? And that’s, that’s what they’re doing.

[00:00:35] You know, and then you’ve got the argument that, well, it’s value for money because I pay them, I don’t know how much the fees are now, like two grand and I’d get 10 grand’s worth of business, that’s a good investment. But, I think the argument, you know, the say no to rightmove, all of that stuff is, well, it’s not fair.

[00:00:53] It’s not in proportion to what you actually get and the advancement of technology that they have. I mean, I’m using right move at the moment in my property search. It’s not good. It’s not, it’s not, I’m going to go on record. It’s not a good site. 

[00:01:09] Right? 

[00:01:09] I try and put in my price, I’ve got a search within a certain price bracket and it hasn’t changed for years.

[00:01:16] I was an estate agent. I retired from an agency in 2014. It feels the same to me. It doesn’t look like it’s changed it. So what’s the fee for exactly. 

[00:01:26] Christopher Watkin: [00:01:26] It’s to put the property in front of the punter, 

[00:01:28] Chris Kyriacou: [00:01:28] Right? Well, 

[00:01:29] Christopher Watkin: [00:01:29] I mean, let’s be honest. It’s dead easy for consumers to use because it’s one place 

[00:01:34] Chris Kyriacou: [00:01:34] it is.

[00:01:35] But you know, I’ve been having a lot of thoughts about that lately and with a lot of my clients now, what I’m trying to get them to do, and what we’re doing quite successfully is to market any new instructions. To our current database first and push them out onto social media channels first and then put them on to Rightmove.

[00:01:51] Christopher Watkin: [00:01:51] Ok, like a pre-portal listing?

[00:01:52] Chris Kyriacou: [00:01:52] Pre portal. Yeah. You get it on there. That helps us build our mailing list. It helps us give data to Facebook of people that are likely to be interested in our business. So what’s happening is we own the traffic. Now we own the data before we give it away.

[00:02:08] On the way here. I was thinking about the whole portal situation a, I was like, you know what it actually is…

[00:02:15] We work. I say we, Estate Agents work for Rightmove. Yes. That’s what you do. And you pay them to work for them. 

[00:02:21] Christopher Watkin: [00:02:21] I think it was, Brian Maxey said we are recepionists for Rightmove.

[00:02:24]Chris Kyriacou: [00:02:24] Yeah. 

[00:02:25] We’re literally order takers for Rightmove. They’ve got a website. They’ve got all these enquiries, pay us and actually, yeah. Can you deal with this enquiry that just came through. 

[00:02:33] Okay.

[00:02:34] And is that the best way round? 

[00:02:36] No, I don’t think so. I don’t think so. And you, you know, you literally. They’re getting so much traffic that it pushes them to the top of the Google rankings and you’re paying them for that privilege rather than, you know, if I gave Google two grand a month, I’ll trounce anybody else on, on my local area on Google, I’d be at the top of that search all the time.

[00:02:56] I’d be all over Facebook. Okay. And the great thing about social media channels is you go to people when they’re passively looking around the internet, they might not be thinking about property in that moment and you can catch them and show them property with your agency at a time where you’re not sharing the microphone with anybody else.

[00:03:17] As soon as you drive someone to Rightmove or Zoopla the chances are, thry’re going to look at that one propertyt and then look at all the other agents properties. You’ve just diluted your chance of them actually booking a viewing with you, right? 

[00:03:28] Why I’m such a fan of Facebook ads and getting people to look at your property on Facebook is, you can catch them when they’re not, they haven’t gone. Oh, it’s time to look at property. 

[00:03:38] Yeah, they’re on Facebook and they look, Oh, that’s a nice property. Let me check that out. They click on it, they go to your website. Which helps you increase your rankings on Google. And now they’re looking at all your properties only, instead of looking at everything else.

[00:03:51] Christopher Watkin: [00:03:51] And, you can put the Facebook pixels on, which means you can follow them up with 

[00:03:55] drip, drip, drip.

[00:03:56] Chris Kyriacou: [00:03:56] Exactly, exactly. And then also cross channel them into Google, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, wherever it may be that you might want to serve some ads. You know, the minute they hit your site, you can do that the minute you put someone to Rightmove, well, you can’t do anything with that. Yeah, nothing at all.

[00:04:14] So I would emplore agents to look, really look at their business model, especially if you’re taking on sole agency properties. I mean, there’s no, no rush. You don’t need to sell it on the first day. It’s a sole agency.

[00:04:27] Right?

[00:04:28] So take your time, get your marketing done right. Get an open day in that first week, maybe from all your current mailing list, push it out on Facebook to help you grow your following on Facebook.

[00:04:40] Yeah, and then if you need to push it out to the portals…

[00:04:46] …and see what happens then.

[00:04:48]Christopher Watkin: [00:04:48] Thank you for your time today

[00:04:48] Chris Kyriacou: [00:04:48] No problem.