Guides are a great way for your estate agency to show its expertise and marketing nous.

Yes, we’re biased because we create expert guides for estate agents. 

But we only do that because they work so well. If there was no demand for them, we wouldn’t supply them. Simple.

They are popular because they help you get new leads.

They help you turn prospects into clients who instruct you.

They make your agency stand out.

The key is simple

Have a range of guides that appeal to different seller niches.

The leading Australian agency coach Josh Phegan came up with a list of reasons people sell. 

They fall into several categories.

We wrote our guides around those reasons to serve those categories.

These include first-time sellers, people downsizing/upsizing, relocating for work – I could go on. (The full list is at the end of this article.)

Why do they work so well?

By niching down, you show prospects you care. 

You make them feel special. 

Because, hey Mrs Smith, you’re selling a probate property and we’ve created this guide just for YOU.

Having access to great guides is one thing. 

But how do you make them work wonders?

Below are nine ways to turn them into instruction winners.

1) Website: Create a section on your website dedicated to all your different guides. Consider calling it something like:

Expert Guides – Knowledge Centre – Advice Area – Sales Guides – Help for Sellers (or Landlords)

You have two options here: 

A) Get people who want these guides to leave a digital fingerprint – their email address in return for your guide. 

B) Offer it up as an instant download. It’ll be branded from your agency and plays into the law of reciprocity – when people are given something for free, they instinctively want to return the favour (ideally through calling out your agency for a valuation).

2) Email Signature: Think of how many emails you send out a day, a week, a month, a year? Use that opportunity to highlight a link to the guides section in your email signature.

3) Email Marketing: Send out an email to your database introducing your range of guides and include links to each individual niche of seller. Some ideas for subject lines are: Whatever your reason for selling, this email can help – If you’re selling for one of these reasons, this info will help you. Depending on how detailed your data is, you can go direct and send to people who have said they were selling due to downsizing in the past and give them a link to your downsizing guide.

4) Team Talks: Train your team to seek opportunities to proactively send the guides to prospects. 

Here’s a scenario. The phone rings.

Agent: Hello Acme Estate Agents, Bob speaking, how can I help?

Caller: Hi there, My name is Harry Jones and I’m interested to know how much my home is worth?

Agent: … goes through their spiel, asking questions, getting some info and building rapport. Then asks: May I ask why you are thinking of selling, please?

Caller: My wife and I are relocating for work.

Agent: Thank you for sharing that. We have a helpful guide that’s been created for people in selling due to relocation for work, would you like me to email it to you?

Caller: Yes please.

Agent: I’ll have that over to you as soon as we end the call.

Already you can see how this can give your agency an edge. 

You haven’t just suggested sending them a generic brochure about your agency; you’ve served up something that will help them in their specific situation. 

5) Print Works: So, you’ve booked the valuation and are off to see the Joneses. You back up the digital copy you sent with a printed one that you leave with them. But it’s not just a guide you leave behind. You have left Mr & Mrs Jones with the impression that your agency has a personalised, detailed, well-thought-out approach to helping its clients.

6) Rack ‘Em Up: If you have an office where people visit, invest in a rack where you can showcase all your guides. Then, during a face-to-face meeting at your office, you can ask that: ‘and why are you thinking of selling?’ question. Get the answer, then add: ‘Ah, I see, bear with me a second as I have something that will help you.’ 

Then go grab a guide and present it to them. Remember, all these actions are building a picture of your agency being on the ball and one step ahead.

7) Get Social: “Mass marketing is now a mass of niches.” – Chris Anderson. 

Guides are a great way to seize attention in this relentlessly busy digital world.

What’s going to capture the attention of a person scrolling online and thinking of selling their elderly mother’s home to pay for the cost of her future care: 

To find out how much your home is worth, click here. 

OR

Selling due to care home costs? Here’s how to sell successfully and get the best possible price. 

I know which one I’d be attracted to if I was in that specific situation. 

You can also create short animations on Facebook or Instagram that feature all the guides you have available. 

8) Proactive Promotion: Good guides are like a gym membership. They work as long as you do. 

We’ve clients who have bought our guides and have used them very cleverly as ways of building bonds with local companies and potential referral sources. 

For example, the agent in Manchester who spent a morning delivering: ‘Selling property to pay for caring fees’ to local care homes in his area. 

Or the agency in Leeds that posted packs of 10 ‘Selling due to divorce or separation’ guides, along with a handwritten note to divorce solicitors in their region.

And there’s the go-getting agent in Essex who used a quiet Thursday to drive around his patch popping into building sites to hand out his ‘Selling a property development guide’. One of his visits saw him bump into a developer who was impressed with the guide and the agent’s proactive approach. 

He now instructs him to sell all his developments.

An agent in Stoke called up local removal companies to offer them an incentive to promote the guides on their website.

Several agents with connections to mortgage brokers make sure they have digital access to the agency’s collection of guides.

There are loads of ways to get proactive when you are armed with specific guides. 

But my favourite is the agent in Seaford, East Sussex, who took handfuls of ‘Selling due to upsizing’ to local nurseries and won two instructions off the back of them within a month.

9) Core Content: So, core content is basically a meatier, more in-depth piece of marketing than a blog. 

But if you’re smart, you can use both to work together. 

Here’s how. 

You publish a blog called – Five Fantastic Tips for First-Time Sellers. The blog is 400 words long. The key here is to get the attention of this niche – which a well-written, well-promoted blog will do. 

But here comes the real magic.

At the end of the blog, you include this simple call to action: 

To download our eight-page ‘Guide for first-time sellers’ which is filled with helpful information and experienced, expert advice, click here. (Clue – The guides are your core content.)

This takes the reader straight to the guide. This strategy helps you get the most out of your online articles and is a technique you can use again, and again. And again.

We’re constantly adding to our guide collection. 

To find out more about the guides we have available – which come complete with area exclusivity – https://www.kerfuffle.com/suppliers/estateagent-content