Knowing your target audience is key - that's marketing 101. Using that information to offer customers the right value at the right time is where many businesses slip up - but not estate agency Nock Deighton. Here's how it saw an opportunity with property investors and turned it into a success.
"We're always looking for new, innovative ways to stay ahead of the market," says Dawn Clarke, Lettings Director at Nock Deighton. "The main reason for our success is never standing still." Being on the lookout for new opportunities led the agency to realise a lack of investor-specific information for the large pool of property investors in Shropshire - and it reacted quickly to give the market what it wanted.
An authority on property investment
"I'm speaking to so many investors at the moment who are still looking to invest and put their money into property," says Dawn. "Even though there is still a lot of legislation, there's really nowhere else to put your money. There's no point in keeping it in the bank because interest rates are so low at the moment."
This trend is a positive one for agents but, with housing stock low for many in the lettings industry despite high tenant demand, the challenge still lies in capturing the attention of this interested investor market. "What we've tried to build over the last two years is an 'investment opportunities' side of the business, where I'm promoted as being the expert because of my experience and the number of landlords that we have," Dawn says.
Demonstrating the agency's expertise is a strong tactic, but what takes its service to the next level is in how far it goes to help landlords invest in the right property for them - even if that means promoting the properties of other agents in the area. "We're trying to help investors find the right property for them - not just by promoting our own properties, but by looking at other agents' properties as well. We want to be seen to be impartial."
Put the landlord first
This considerate approach - putting customer needs first with no initial commitment expected from the landlord to use Nock Deighton's paid services - ultimately ensures a positive return on investment for the agency.
"I'm spending a lot of my time that I'm not charging for in the hope that people will then really see the benefits and what they've gained from us, so they know they can trust us to manage their assets for them," says Dawn. "We're seeing the shoots of that come back to us now, so it's really paid off."
While waiting for this return on investment, the agency continues to live up to its mantra of not standing still, and is seizing every opportunity to create value for potential investors. "Last week I was talking to a couple who inherited some money and wanted to look at investing in property and they had no idea what to expect," says Dawn. "They were asking me questions such as what are the things that we haven't thought of, the unexpected costs and things like that."
"I spent the last two hours that morning putting together a list of all of the expected expenditures for them - which I'll end up repurposing as a blog myself, on our own website and on our Facebook page as well, so I'm not just throwing it out there. We're making sure that everything we do can bring value to a wide pool of our clients."
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