Like that house! Facebook’s growing power in property market revealed
Zoopla claims its research shows the social media platform is fast becoming an essential tool for both house hunters and estate agents.
A report into the UK housing market has revealed that two thirds of estate agents plan to use social media this year to promote their listings, and that the percentage of house hunters using Facebook to find their next home has doubled to 12% compared to the same time last year.
The data is contained within Zoopla’s annual data-fest which interviews 6,000 house hunters and 650 agents to feel the pulse of the housing market and reveal its emerging trends.
It also reveals that just over 53% of agents intend to spend more on marketing their listings through social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Zoopla is keen to point out that property portals remain the key marketing tool for 59% of agents, a surprisingly low figure given that 77% of house hunters use portals to conduct their property search. Zoopla also says that agents told it that 65% of their leads come from their portal listings.
A fifth of consumers have a property app installed on their smartphones, whether active in the market or not. Consumers are using apps on average 4.8 times per week.
“The industry is adapting to changes in consumer behaviour and looking to capitalise on the amount of time that prospective buyers and vendors spend in the digital environment,” says Andy Marshall, Chief Commercial Officer at Zoopla (left).
“This is nowhere more apparent than in the research stages of buying, selling or renting a new home; agents know this, which is why more of them are embracing digital marketing than ever before.”
Read more about social media and estate agency marketing.
Read the State of the Nation report for 2020.
Zoopla etc are the exit lounge for property and rental property. Social media is the import lounge for gaining vendors and landlords.
Back in the day your newspaper advertising was both the product, houses, lets, and your brand – that huge masthead brand name of your agency that hung above all of your advertised stock.
On the property portals your brand is removed and your product is diced into tiny digital squares used to re-enforce the brand of the portal. Question – does ASOS post its products on a portal with other competitors, or does it use targeted social media to sell its products.
The beauty of social media, is that in the same household you can send a different message to different people, so unlike a newspaper advert – universal in its reach – but a blunt instrument – a bespoke piece of social media can really engage the correct target audience.
This is why new estate agents (this term includes letting agents) who are of course using social media are killing the market, overturning established legacy businesses in medium sized towns. Customers – vendors and landlords – are being influenced by these companies.
That is why I in my consultancy spend a large amount of time talking about having a bespoke social media solution, and maybe cutting portal spend and using social media to get the brand out there, so when you sit with the landlord or vendor, your brand is already inside their head.
And just posting on your Facebook, twitter or Instagram account may be doing very little to grow your digital footprint, you need to pay for a digital marketeer, to ensure that ‘copy’ which also needs to be produced gets in front of the correct people at the correct time.
For those who think social media is for children, here is a fact, half the globe is now populated by Generation-Z. This is your up and coming client, they look at Tik Tok, they speak on mobiles only 38% of the time using social media for all their other communication.
If your business is founded on the telephone (Alexander Bell’s invention in the 19th century) you are going to be increasingly out of the loop. If you want some sound advice on this topic contact me.
Maybe social media will see an end to the comfort blanket of Rightmove, and the vast funds it once saw being placed into social media marketing, growing agents brands not Rightmove.
Jumping onto a sinking ship that is FB.