Project Description
Estate agent digital marketing – adds £400K to turnover
Case Studies : Digital Marketing – Social Media, Video Marketing & Online Campaigns in glorious harmony
Client: Simon Miller & Company – estate agent digital marketing
estate agent digital marketing
Move With Miller MASTER from Tracy SaucyHorse on Vimeo.
The brief : Digital Marketing Campaigns
Simon Miller & Company is an estate agency chain of 10 branches. Simon competes in an extremely competitive market – estate agent property & property investment. There are 9 estate agents alone in the town where their HQ is based – Maidstone, in Kent – and at least 5 of them are on the same high street. In addition, they run offices out of a further 9 Kent villages. They wanted to be brave in order to stand out in a very crowded market place.
We pitched a number of digital marketing ideas, aimed at dismantling deep seated misconceptions about estate agents as well as helping them to appear different to the rest of the agents with whom they compete. Their audience is geographic specific – Maidstone & The Weald of Kent, with a wider target area for pensions and investments.
Data capture for estate agents
Screen Shot 2016-07-22 at 13.23.53
Since we starting working with Simon Miller & Company, we’ve captured 421 property alert sign-ups on the property alerts landing page. We began tracking visitor behaviour using data capture pop up software. The exit intent technology allows the software to determine the exact millisecond a visitor leaves your page. Once an exit intent has been triggered, the data capture software displays a targeted offer to your visitor. Up to 25% of retargeted visitors will respond to your message and turn into subscribers or customers. Since the data capture pop-up went live on Simon Miller & Company’s website, 55% of the property alerts captured have been from abandoning visitors.
Animated explainer videos for estate agents
Since we started working with Simon Miller & Company we’ve captured 226 property valuation sign-ups on the property valuation landing page. Since we started using animated explainer videos on Simon Miller & Company’s site, we’ve seen a 200% increase in business leads.
The Campaign Brand Builder : Move With Miller – you can watch it here on vimeo
We think it speaks for itself – 14,246 views on YouTube for a local estate agent based in Maidstone.
More importantly, the story behind the making of the video was featured in the local newspapers both in print and online, and Simon was interviewed by a number of publications whose readership matched exactly the company’s prospect avatar.
PR & Brand Builder – series of videos continuing the theme that all estate agents are not the same:
These were featured via a column we secured in the local newspaper – The Kent Messenger – and were released one a month over a 6 month period, alongside an article we contributed. This targeted our Maidstone & The Weald of Kent demographic perfectly.
Community involvement : Maidstone United sign up offer : http://stonesoffer.co.uk/
Blog
Our blog for Simon Miller & Company is updated 3 times a week and has had over 14,000 page views this year. It is optimised on key search terms for SEO, and is an effective source of inbound traffic.
estate agent digital marketing social media
http://www.simonmillerpropertyblog.co.uk/
This recent blog received 69 tweets alone when it was posted on Twitter – a good example of social activity driving traffic to your online assets.
Take a look at the boards we create here http://pinterest.com/welovehouses/
social media pinterest boards
Youtube
YouTube Analytics:
Simon Miller (WeLoveHouses)
Performance
VIEWS: 21,025
ESTIMATED MINUTES WATCHED: 5,067
Radio
We produce and run radio ads on local Kent stations and we also receive regular features in advertising and editorial in the published and online magazines of local newspapers. In addition to running the radio ads we make video versions and then post on our blog as well as embed in email campaigns to further increase their distribution.
Radio commercial blog – Simon Miller & Company
PR
Simon Miller & Company have recently been asked to be the subjects of a TV programme about the business, commissioned by Channel 4 – we were approached over other estate agents, as the producers had picked up our activity on social media and liked the style of our profiles and videos. Simon Miller appears regularly in Homes Under The Hammer on the BBC as a local expert, which further raises the visibility of the business. We edit these appearances as video clips and include these in our newsletters which we send out to our clients and prospects via email shots.
Numbers & Results
Cost of one year’s videos: £4500
Cost of Social Media Marketing & PR for 12 months : £24,000
PR & Exposure: Regularly lauded by local community groups, businesses and organisations for their support of community events and issues. Sponsorship of Maidstone United – huge profile builder in Maidstone and amongst a sector of their target audience. Charity mentions and social exposure. Sponsorship of local community events publicised on social platforms. Regularly called by journalists for quotes, mentioned in the presence of other accepted industry experts on Twitter. Regularly appearing on Homes Under The Hammer as the BBC’s expert for Maidstone, and now appearing in a new Channel 4 documentary about behind the scenes at an estate Agent, because the Production Company liked the edgy, interesting and sometimes controversial style of Simon and his team on the social media streams which are managed by Saucy Horse.
Social Media Success – asked to guest blog on the Rightmove property blog
estate agent digital marketing
Rightmove – Guest blog by Simon Miller & Company
Benefits : Strong selling point to use in their marketing – encourages vendors to give their instruction to this agent as opposed to any other in the area, as they are independently rated by industry experts and very active on social media – a cursory check from any prospective vendor would illustrate how Simon Miller & Company are bossing this area of marketing for this particular sector in their territory.
Organic SEO
Ranking on Google for “Best Estate Agent in Maidstone” – 1st
Ranking for “Estate Agent in Maidstone” – 1st
What value can you put on appearing first for your number one keyword?
Business numbers : The upshot of our marketing activity with Simon Miller & Company over the last 3 years is a continued growth in the client’s business with a £500,000 increase in turnover this year (year on year) and an increase in profitability – from 10% in 2011 / 2012 to 16% in 2012 / 2013. In fact, in 2010/2011 when we started work with Simon Miller & Company, they had just made a loss of £150,000. In 3 years as their marketing partners we’ve been able to contribute to the success that they are making of their business, moving it into the black and an increase in profits of over £400,000.