Christmas: A festive jolly or a glowing opportunity? Get the best of both.

Year on year, the portals boast record festive traffic across both sales and lettings. In 2016, Rightmove received 31 million page views on Boxing Day alone. This upped to 44 million on 30th December. In fact, Christmas and Boxing Day figures were up 22% on just two years before.

Undoubtedly, there is a huge surge in activity at this time. Those ‘looking to move in the New Year’ are already putting their feelers out in the market. They might even have some new Christmas gadgets to play with (we bet the majority of traffic are on a mobile/tablet), or they’re bored of the turkey sandwiches. Or more likely is that Uncle Roger has driven them to absolute despair and isn’t going home until 2nd January. It doesn’t matter what the reason is, this is a prime time to engage and capture new leads for 2018.

With the influx of visitors looking at property, how ready are you?

• Floor plans
• Lead generation
• Good photos, festive options as well where possible
• Being available – Live Chat/Skeleton resource for email and phone enquiries

Floor plans

With 86% of buyers deeming a floor plan as ‘essential’ or ‘very useful’ these are not just a festive ‘must-have’, they are a pivotal to best present your properties, all year round.

• It’s really easy; plans can be drawn in under 5 minutes
• Receive free ongoing training and support for your team
• Bespoke designs to style your plans to match your branding

It’s not just the buyers you need to appease. Rightmove reported that 37% of sellers wouldn’t instruct an agent that didn’t include floor plans. Is that a risk worth taking?

Lead Generation

Are you engaging with your web visitors? Do you know who they are? With an instant valuation platform serving your website this Christmas, your business will be generating new leads whether you’re in the office or at home sipping a mulled wine.

• Visitors interact with you via instant valuation
• They get their valuation and you get an instant lead alert (name, contact details, expectations and time frames)
• 24/7 – Capture leads all the time
• Identify new business for start of January/right now and line up future prospects for later next year

Property photos

It won’t be a surprise to hear that Rightmove rank photos as the most important part of your property listings. 

The first image sets the tone, competing for attention with all rival properties. How is yours going to stand out? The popular approach is to use a photo enhancement service to help ‘blue sky’ and make your images first class.

But what else can you do? It is the festive period after all, so we suggest seasonal photos. If there is snow in your area, there’s a great opportunity to have seasonal photos to pull on the emotional strings of your web traffic.

Open fire? Put it on and set the tone for what a wonderful Christmas your buyers could be enjoying in this property.

Some experts believe that 90% of decisions are made subconsciously. Make sure you’re giving the right messages to feed this and plant the seeds of why it would be great to live in this particular property.

Availability

What is your plan to effectively manage all the new leads and enquiries over the festive period? You don’t want to be a ‘Scrooge’ but the most effective agents will have a plan to handle their potential new business and keep them engaged.

• Live Chat can be tuned into a lead generator. Some Live Chat services will manage all inbound conversations for you, create leads and keep your brand interacting, even when you’re not working.
• Skeleton Staff. Not in the spooky sense, but a heavily reduced workforce on a rota basis can at least keep things ticking over, ready for the New Year. Home working is an option here too. 
• Where your office is closed over Christmas, a ‘catch up day’ can be very effective. Typically on a day between Christmas and New Year (28th December this year), a few hours are scheduled for your team to respond to emails, return calls and interact with your new and existing clients when enthusiasm is high. They’ll probably be impressed to receive contact from you at that time.
• Instant Valuation. Back to the SmartVal point, but a great way to satisfy curiosity for the immediate term, at any point of the day.

I'm proud to be part of Landmark Estate Agency Services, where we consistently make the lives of agents easier, alleviate stress of compliance and generally help improve business. If you have any questions, or would like some free advice, feel free to get in touch. Here are some festive treats to help you evaluate ahead of 2018:

Metropix – FREE floor plans. Have our service for free for two months. Have a floor plan on your details for the Christmas rush and ready to kick start your instruction wins for 2018.

SmartVal – FREE lead generation. Let us hand deliver new leads to you, 24/7. Also free for two months, start 2018 in the way you to intend to continue and let SmartVal wow you.

To take advantage, please contact Steve Sanashee on 01184 672800 or email the team: [email protected]

Have a wonderful Christmas and prosperous New Year from all of the Metropix and Landmark Estate Agency Services Team.