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Brendan Wong and Stacey Moseley
Despite the rapid changes the real estate industry has experienced in the last decade, it continues to be a “contact sport”, a leading coach has said.
Speaking exclusively to Real Estate Business, News Limited general manager of sales Tom Panos said the industry would continue to see advances in technology, but what would not change was the importance of conversation.
He added that despite the rise in digital media, print advertising and signboards were equally important in connecting with a range of buyers.
“Digital continues to get active buyers and that’s growing. Signboards get local buyers, print appears to get passive, aspirational buyers,” he said.
“In most of Australia, a multi-platform approach of print and online gives you a higher selling figure and higher success rate.
“And video is becoming absolutely critical, and we are going to see more and more of it. But I am seeing the best real estate agents realise that real estate is still a contact sport - it’s about getting bums on seats.”
When asked where agents should be spending their marketing money, Mr Panos advised agents to ensure they were obtaining vendor-paid advertising to achieve the best marketing for their clients.
“If you’re not very good at getting vendor-paid marketing, if you haven’t got a good value proposition to articulate to a vendor, you’re going to have a scarce amount of money to actually use,” he said.
“My approach is quite different. My approach is treat selling the house as the biggest commodity you’re going to sell as a vendor; articulate to the vendor that an extra $4,000 in marketing is half a bid at an auction.
“Explain to a vendor that if you don’t use all the marketing resources available, if you don’t use 100 per cent of your marketing resources, how will you know you’ve achieved 100 per cent of the result?”
Mr Panos said agents relying on 'cheap' campaigns, such as cheap internet marketing, would lead to poor search results.
“Unless you are on page one or page two of the search results, you have done what Google says and that is you have built a billboard in the forest [and] no one is going to notice you. People don’t sit on websites and go to page 10 of the search results,” he said.
“I really urge real estate agents to actually have a chance over the next two to three months to reinvent themselves and become world class at getting vendor-paid marketing because marketing campaigns aren’t going to reduce in price.”
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