First, who are starberry?

Starberry is a global digital agency specializing in brand strategy, web design and digital marketing for estate agents, new homes developers and the Proptech industry in the UK and internationally. Winners of the ‘Best Large Supplier’ EA Masters 2021 award, Starberry has over 20 years' experience in working with estate agents to create exceptional property brands, targeted KPI-driven digital marketing strategies, and bespoke enterprise-level websites with exceptional return on investment. Their decentralized constellation of super-talented creatives and tech gurus are on a mission to create awesomeness and deliver results for their clients.

And who are the speakers?

We have 4 speakers talking to our very own David Mintz

Ben sellers – Co-Founder & CEO at starberry.

Passionate about sales and all things creative and tech-driven, Ben, along with his brother Rus, has helped lead innovation in the digital marketing space since 1994. They launched Starberry in 2001 as a remote-first, decentralized digital agency with a core focus on designing and developing web platforms for the next generation. The company has since then grown into a full-stack digital agency, delivering lead generating digital marketing strategies & award-winning websites for the property sector.

Nitten Nair – Business development manager at starberry

Nitten has 14 years of Marketing experience across Hospitality, Fitness, FMCG, Automotive, Travel & Tourism, Government and most recently the Real Estate sectors. He places emphasis on creativity, innovation and strategic thinking across all projects and responsibilities undertaken. He’s currently heading the business development team at Starberry and is working closely with Starberry clients to deliver their digital projects and help them generate more leads.

George Cobb – Managing director at Daniel Cobb estate agents

George has a background in marketing, having worked for Nescafe and Coca-Cola, and is now getting an enormous amount of fulfillment, putting all that valuable experience towards helping grow and build the family business. George is fascinated by the property industry because of how significant a role it plays in all our lives. He brings a unique and fresh perspective on how to affect a step change in his business and the industry as a whole and remains relentless in the pursuit of offering an exceptional level of customer service to Daniel Cobb customers.

Trevor Holmes – Director at Cambridge property lettings

You’ve heard of accidental landlords, well I started off as an accidental agent. A friend of mine, knowing I had my own small portfolio of rental properties, asked me if I would manage the property of a friend who was going to live abroad. The rest, as they say, is history and 26 years later we still manage that property and a few hundred more. This came after careers in the army, as a solicitor and working for the church, all of which have been useful in running a lettings agency. I’m passionate about giving old fashioned personal service using modern technology, remembering we are a service industry to landlords and tenants.

“What do you think the Biggest challenge for agencies right now when it comes to generating online enquiries?”

Starberry is a useful tool somewhere in the journey but if you're going to just dump someone straight into it, you're not going to get the answers that you want. You’ve got to tell your story, you’ve got to have stories, you’ve got to have your creative campaign which has its place somewhere along that journey.

One of the reasons Trevor and George were invited to the panel was because earning their businesses they have always embraced going over and above the call of duty and never wanting to go down the cliché estate route with the famous Lego houses, handshakes and keys. They’ve thought about what they’re doing and the USP’s for their own businesses and together have created some valuable engaging content, which as we speak is smashing it out of the park ion terms of driving valuable leads.

Another thing to highlight is that when the market is going great, they're focusing on their prime source of business, that is getting sales done, getting lets done etcetera. That’s not the point in time where they can devote enough time to creating content, working on strategy or the digital space. That’s where Starberry comes in, they almost take the weight off their shoulders working along with them to drive more leads.

“They can do what they do best and leave us to do what we do best” Nitten Nair

“Having a pretty website isn't quite enough to generate leads. So how are you doing it?”

“We are very open to new ideas, so whenever there is something new that you feel is slowly picking up steam, you probably need to start incorporating them into our whole marketing mix, George and Trevor are usually the first ones to say, ‘yeah let's give it a try’ and that’s the kind of trust we have built over the years. And vice versa, whenever they come across something, they pass it on to us.”

“It's all about trust and allows us to understand what the clients are looking for, you can get a load of junk, and it's very easy to build upon that, to get quality leads you need to Waid through the junk to find out where those gems are and what did you do that may attract those gems and for us it's all about continuously optimizing the campaigns, seeing what works best and then just repeating it and trying to do better.”

I think it's fair to say that independent agents who are maybe smaller than those big faceless corporate enterprises, they’re more agile by nature because ‘you have a voice, it's easier for you to find your voice, it's easier for you to get out there and respond to events’. I think that the public are much more receptive of supporting smaller independents as well when it comes to community support, as agents we make the mistake all the time in thinking that the only thing on people's minds is ‘When are they moving, are they thinking of buying or selling or renting’ but they’re not. They're intensely concerned though about where they live and the personalities behind the businesses they walk past every day. The places that they shop. And if you’re able to tap into that it’s a beautiful synergy between independent estate agencies. And the community around it.

We are seeing a lot of Proptech which is great, but it doesn’t get away from personal relationships. Sincerity is the hardest thing to fake.

“In terms of generating interest is it evenly spread across online and Facebook? or should we be shifting our focus to newer platforms?”

The rules of the different channels are changing as we speak, so you know there was a time when Facebook used to deliver all the leads that you need, you didn’t need any other platform, but often what we are seeing is although Facebook is continuing to deliver that traffic it becomes more powerful as a brand building platform. So, the essence is to identify how a platform is helping you as a brand, for one person it might work brilliantly but for someone else it might not be delivering as much for you. And vice versa, Instagram may be doing brilliant for you but not for others.

“It's about identifying what really works for each client because you really can't go out there with the cookie cutter and say this is the same thing that would apply for everyone, you could be in a place where you have a lot of the young population, and you probably need to look at different channels where they are at if you want more people to come in and rent out your apartments.

On the other hand, you might be in the high street in London where it's high end so you really need to choose your channels properly.”

Thanks, nitten... I’m thinking about cookies now!

“You’ve been able to reduce the cost in evaluating really significantly by up to 50%. How are you doing this?”

It’s a combination of using the right channels properly. You have multiple channels, and you know exactly what you're looking for. An evaluation lead is one of the most priced assets for many clients, so what we’ve done is we have firstly, tried to get the right traffic in, and second is to make the process so seamless that its completed, your booked in evaluation meeting or you’ve booked in an appointment with as few clicks as possible.

So, it’s a combination of marketing, driving the right lead and your website working overtime to ensure that the whole process is as seamless as possible, and when you start breaking down each of these elements into individual smaller systems it becomes much easier. We find that google ads are a great source to get targeted people from a particular location with whom we can drive.

On the other hand, social media is helping you nurture the kind of people who visited your website but didn’t get down to putting together a lead, so when they jump off, we have remarketing kicking in. So, that you're constantly building the brand and keeping your brand up there. The next time you decide ‘okay fine I'll go ahead and just try out an evaluation’ the first name that comes to mind is the website you were looking on 2 weeks ago because you’ve been seeing their ads continuously.

“Nurture leads on one end and drive them on the other”

“With most of the hard work done, does it now get easier?”

“I don’t think it does actually” Thanks Trevor, I appreciate the honesty....

“I think the more you know, the more you know that you should be doing it, so in one sense, it becomes more challenging.”

“I have to recognize my capacity and the size of agency we are. I look at some of the things George does, I look at the stuff George does on food for example, I think it's wonderful. And I looked hard at ‘could we do a similar thing’ but we just don’t have the capacity, so I think limiting what you do is important and doing that very well.”

“i think the other thing I'd just pick up on is leads, when we did have our little fory into another software, we learned so much of how to handle leads. I learned that for a small agency like us, we’re handling about 10 thousand inquiries from tenants a year, and we weren’t doing it properly, and now I've learned how to do it”

You’ve just got to keep pushing, and if it doesn't go quite right or quite the way you wanted.... you learn from it; you use this information to better yourself.

So no, it doesn’t really get easier.

Thank you to Ben, Nitten, George and Trevor for your contributions today and thanks for reading.

Visit the Starberry landing page on Kerfuffle for more information and to see their reviews