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Steven Cross
Principals must stop being influenced by what their competitors are doing and focus more on their own clients' needs, a prominent Sydney-based agency leader has said.
Speaking at the Real Estate Panel hosted by industry trainer Josh Phegan and independent auctioneer Damian Cooley, director at Sydney boutique agency BresicWhitney, Shannan Whitney, said consumers don’t care about marketing gimmicks.
“People in real estate say things like, ‘I’ve got a really good idea, we’ll get our signboard, and put lights around it so when you sit in front of it, it lights up and you can see all the pretty pictures’, stupid stuff like that," he told the audience.
“They’ll do that and their competitor will see it, copy it and say, ‘You know what? We’ll do one better and make it really big’ and someone else will say, ‘We should do it really small’.
“Everyone spends time on these sort of gimmicky things that say ‘we’re special because we do it different’, when what they’ve missed is that the consumer couldn’t care less about a light on a board, or how big the sign out the front of their house is. What they want is a better experience.”
Mr Whitney also claimed that listing sites had drawn buyers away from traditional marketing tools.
“The very fortunate thing about our industry is that there are the templates of [listing websites] realestate.com.au and domain.com.au. So, really, all we do at BresicWhitney is try to make that experience better, and by making it better we don’t look at competitors and try to figure out what they’re doing.
“We look at other areas and ask what do buyers, tenants, vendors and people find appealing? And what we really spend a lot of time on, is trying to not be influenced by other people, because if you talk to buyers they really don’t care about gimmicks, the industry thinks they do.
“We spend a lot of time on presentation and image; we started charging landlords $140 for photos four years ago, while our competitors are still using an iPhone.”
According to BresicWhitney's website, the company has developed into a strong force in the inner city of Sydney, holding over 25 per cent market share in Redfern, Surry Hills and Darlinghurst.
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