The Elephant In The Room.

The Elephant In The Room.

Let's talk about it.

"If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always got."  - Henry Ford.

Estate agency marketing to be specific and, importantly, the people charged with implementing what usually tuns out to be default-dead strategies.

It resembles turning a battleship around, all hands to the deck and then the ponderously slow execution.

Many estate agencies proudly proclaiming their next step of the marketing journey.

This morning, the wide-eyed excitement at PurpleBricks as they announced their hiring of new spin doctors to "handle PR, deliver a raft of projects and drive fame and awareness of the brand."

The usual guff from the newly appointed Taylor Herring PR Agency - "PurpleBricks is the fastest growing estate agency brand in the market and we will be supporting the brand's growth with consumer comms campaigns designed to drive advocacy and bottom-line results."

Couldn't they articulate it slightly better - perhaps without the pomposity?

The Holy Grail for P.R is column inches.

Not so much a story, as a Fairy Tale. Everything remotely negative airbrushed.

Another, from a more respected estate agency.

"Following print magazine, online and podcast advertising, radio is one of the top channels which grabs our customers attention. So we decided to launch .., with an advert being broadcast on radio stations including..."

It's not something I'd be happy to admit - that the creative juices and inspiration had dried up so much that advertising was the only option left for our agency.

Advertising is dying a slow death. Spam filters, fast-forward on the remote, ad blockers.

It's time to BE what people are interested in, instead of interrupting what they are interested in.

And so it goes on.

New website launches, amounting to not much more than a few colour changes.

Still the same over-complicated navigation and unclear message, but hey, new colors.

The Elephant In The Room?

Unless you can build an audience that your agency owns, you have to rely on paid media. You have to rely on algorithms to determine how many views an ad gets.  You have to hope that the one person who is looking to sell their home has the radio/TV on at the precise moment your ad features.

How to build that audience?

Certainly not through paid ads on a podcast! Not through polished and perfected press releases that have the life expectancy of a Mayfly (24 hours).

How about, instead, launching your agency's own podcast that becomes a business asset, instead of a marketing liability? A digital magazine that allows your agency to share long form content? A blog, that most trusted of communication tools, where evergreen content can be re-purposed in years to come? A short book, or eBook?

Things that are worth something - things that will still be around next month, next year.

Is it too much to ask?

In the race to waste as much of the marketing budget as possible, what if you are secondary, or tertiary?

Someone is still making money; just not your agency.

The Elephant in the Room doesn't want you talking about it - the mediocre marketing people that happily take a paycheck every month, safe in the knowledge that they have "done their job." The media owners and marketing agencies that suck the lifeblood out of a client with their empty promises.

Consider the vast sums of money that PurpleBricks have spent on TV advertising, social media, marketing agencies, PR agencies and an incompetent, in-house marketing team.

What have they got to show for it?

A reputation in tatters and a share price in free-fall.

Imagine where they would be today had they built a marketing platform they owned. A podcast, a blog, a digital magazine, eBooks, print books, a video channel.  Assuming, of course, they have strategic thinkers on the board and not short-term opportunists.

Estate agency always does what it has always done.

Leaflet drops, uninvited door-knocks, Facebook ads, TV ads, cold-calls, email marketing, slightly rubbish websites and more.

Surely its time to change direction before the Elephant in the Room starts making uncomfortable noises?

Thanks, as always, for reading this far.

www.andsothestorybegan.co.uk

www.persuasivewords.co.uk

www.remarkably-different.com

Chris.

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