Zoomf Blog - UK Property Blog.

We know that consumers will spend up to 12 hours researching local areas to connect with agents who might help them out and most of that is conducted online. Let’s assume I’ve done 7 hours of my research and now it’s time to short list my estate agents to let one lucky agent sell my home. What information do I have as a result of looking at local agent websites ?

1. I have professional qualifications per agent.
2. I can read some testimonials from past customers.
3. I know they run an office and have lists of available property.

That’s about it. When looking at the agent market online there isn’t much to differentiate one agent from another. At least not before picking up the phone and walking into an office. What’s wrong with this scenario? Loads.

I’ll let you in on a secret of running a successful internet strategy —

“content is king”

Simply put, this means that the more fresh and relevant content you have, the more audience you will attract. The same is true for agents here in the UK. If all agent websites have the same content (and for the most part they do), why not set yourself apart?

Brightsale understand this better than most. Just reading their blog you get a proper feel for how these guys think and what they do. They’ve also added some personality to their brand by giving you insight into their day-to-day and their expertise in a given locale. That’s smart. That’s Web 2.0 and that is how you can get that edge over your competition.

If you’re suffering from writers block and you don’t know where to start, Agent Genius can give you some sparks to becoming a property ’super hero’ and in case you need more inspiration, here’s a link to that great rock song from Living Color.

Most estate agents need two pieces of IT in order to operate their business -

1. Agency software.
2. A website.

In order to have both pieces of the above IT puzzle, most agents turn to some of the leading providers out there. This includes great products like DezRez, Expert Agent, Property Owl, HomeFlow, Big Property Media, WebDadi and Vebra to name but a few. These are the all singing, all dancing applications to help you manage your business. These systems mostly charge on a licensing basis.

Is there another way ? Absolutely. One solution could be combining Highrise and Word Press.

Highrise is essentially a web based CRM system. It can manage all your contacts and tasks related to property management. Highrise’s basic package costs about £20 a month. You can sign-up online and be live in less than 5 minutes.

Word Press is one of the main blogging platforms on the internet. It costs nothing. Blog software can easily be adapted to running a basic website but also comes with the added power of letting you blog.

Once you get hosting sorted out, you’re all done. Additionally, you’ll need some part-time IT help to setup your website ‘design’ plus manage feed generation for portals like Rightmove and the like. You could get IT help from eLance, which is a kind of e-bay for developer/design projects.

Other than that, you’re all set. The internet is rife with software as service models including lots of ‘free’ applications that will save you time, money and resource. And if you really want to know more, Agent Genius has even more commentary on the template versus custom debate.

I’ve always been a fan of Moo. In case you don’t know what they are, they enable you to print things like business cards using pictures and images from photo sharing sites like FlickR or Photo Bucket or the like. I even think you can use Facebook to load pictures into the cards.

Anyway, now they have a product that you can use to help your property marketing efforts. And it’s really cheap!

Full details of this are located here courtesy of our friends at Future of Real Estate Marketing.

Enjoy your Moo’ing.

Over 1 million iPhones were bought over the weekend. This includes over 10 million downloads for applications that run on the iPhone. Is this the proper start of the mobile internet? Probably. Ringtones and SMS will no longer be the only reason to be on the mobile internet.

The property sector has a whole host of ‘mobile marketing’ platforms that were supposed to work for the estate agency sector. This included products like ‘Smart Codes’ on for sale signs that would capture consumer interest when people are out and about, walking the streets. Sound familiar? Probably not because it never took off. And if you are one of the few agents who tried this ‘mobile marketing’ approach, would love to hear your story.

Mobile marketing changes with the launch of such a user rich experience like the iPhone. And with 3G enabled in Europe, I’m sure the property listings sector will keep an eye on when those iPhone sales turn into mass market appeal. So my advice for now? Let’s just wait and see how many iPhones are in use a year from now.

In the meantime, it might be worth 5 minutes of your time to make sure the iPhone can display your website properly. If not, it’s another dreaded call to your IT/web person.