As an estate agent, you need a strategy to ensure that every chance of winning an instruction is maximised. When each appraisal costs £211 on average to even get booked into the diary, there can be no room for error.
What tips and tricks are there to appeal to a vendor and make the chance of instruction more likely?
1. Consider the Mere – Exposure effect.
Mere- exposure effect is a psychological occurrence when we prefer things that are familiar. We may not do it consciously, but we do. It could be why brands still go for exposure and brand building activities over pure, cash generating ROI activities. Familiarity wins out in the long term. The brain does all sorts of things without our conscious awareness. Take the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon, sometimes known as frequency theory. This is the concept that when you focus on something, it appears everywhere. You’ll have had it when you get pregnant, and suddenly everyone else is pregnant too! Perhaps you picked up a sports car – and there it was, on every road. Obviously, you don’t have super powers and are not directing the course of everyone else’s lives. Your brain simply filters out irrelevant information. When it becomes relevant, you are attuned to it.
You can use the unconscious to help your agency. So many agents get a valuation request, send a quick email to confirm, and roll up on the door. Imagine if you could replicate that feeling of the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon and Mere Exposure by being consistently there from the moment they book. It’s a pre appointment presentation. A reminder email. All branded in the same unique colours, fonts and tone. On the day when you present, that same familiar, comforting feeling will be there.
2. Beat Confirmation Bias
People seek out information in order to prove, rather than disprove their currently held view. Given an opposing opinion, you are unlikely to overcome that initial gut reaction. In an agency, that’s why first impressions count so much.
Even sub consciously, if they have chosen not to use your agency, based on their first interaction with the agent, or something as silly as their choice of shoes – they will be finding reasons to justify this decision.
Again, creating an overwhelmingly good pre appointment impression is critical to help set them on the right path. Use facts and data to bring logic back into the decision. Yes, they may find your shoes a bit strange – but you’ve sold the highest percentage in their area. It becomes a logical not an emotional decision.
3. Be aware of the Paradox of choice
Ever remember being in a sweet shop, with thousands of goodies, and standing frozen, unable to choose? It’s Barry Schwarz’s paradox of choice. This theory suggests that providing a limited range of choices is actually a good thing, making decision-making easy. You’ve probably covered this in your sales approach, but what about your marketing?
It’s why at Acaboom we use gentle nudges. An arrow to guide them through a marketing proposal. Subtle ‘instruct us now’ calls to action not on every page, but on the right pages likely to convert. Slides can be hidden for clients, so they aren’t overwhelmed. Compare that to a brochure packed with everything they’ve told you they aren’t interested in. Instead of focusing on data, reasons to instruct, and a contract, they are swamped with information on everything from photography to conveyancing and the awards you won 3 years ago. Keeping it compact and relevant is key.
4. Keep colour psychology and small details in mind.
It is critical that you pay attention to the smallest details, the colours of the buttons you use and the little elements.
An eye-tracking study by Nielsen Norman Group found that people follow an F-shaped pattern when reading web pages, and Neil Patel has an array of incredible studies on the effects of focusing on the smallest changes, such as Fitness World, who saw a 213.16% increase in conversion by changing the CTA copy from “Get Membership” to “Find Your Gym & Get Membership.
5. Use moving images to appeal to all VARK preferences
The acronym “VARK” is used to describe four types of learning from a 1992 study. These different learning styles—visual, auditory, reading/writing and kinesthetic are still used today to define how audiences can accept and process information. What is most interesting is that while great percentages are visual learners, somewhere between 50 and 70 percent of the population have affinities to several different styles of learning. These people are called “multimodal learners”.
Videos and moving images work because they combine the major ways of learning in one place. According to Wistia, people spend 2.6x longer on webpages that have videos than those that don’t, Twitter has said that tweets with a GIF see 55% more engagement than those without and according to Brightcove, social video generates 1200% more shares than text and images combined. That’s just the tip of the stats around videos and as we move to platforms like TikTok and Instgram Reels, we are increasingly becoming a ‘movement first’ generation, or serving them.
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