The last significant shift in estate agents’ operations came with the advent of property portals, I don’t remember any of the predictions that said they would take over estate agent marketing. Since then, several evolutions have changed the industry, but I think more big changes are coming. It would be best to start thinking about your position in the market. Personally, I can’t see things staying as they are in the long term.
Before I get onto what I think will change, let’s look at how things are now.
When people contract an agent today, it is with the expectation that:
- An accurate valuation is provided
- The agent understands the local market
- Their property is marketed effectively
- The agent has an excellent online presence and has good local contacts
- They communicate effectively and often
- Fees are transparent and value for money
- The agent is proactive and a good negotiator
- Viewings are assisted (mainly)
- Legal and Conveyancing help is provided
- And they are trusted and in good standing (reviews and testimonials).
That’s a fairly comprehensive list; decent agents will do their best to meet all expectations. That is, after all, how you build a reputation for being the best.
For many people, agents still play a vital role in buying and selling homes, but the landscape has been changing for some time. You may be unable to list a property on Rightmove or Zoopla today without an agent, but who’s to say that Facebook, Gumtree or another popular platform won’t release a fantastic innovation that disrupts the market?
But I get ahead of myself, back to the present.
The Current State of Lead Generation
With the rise of online marketing, traditional lead generation has fallen out of favour with most agents.
Gone are the days when estate agents had to
- Canvas door-to-door
- Advertise in the local papers and magazines
- Distribute leaflets in the areas where they work regularly
- And rent billboards.
While these methods still work, they have become comparatively expensive compared to online marketing and are much more difficult to track.
Online is where significant changes are already starting to happen.
Where most agents make the biggest mistake is that they focus all of their online activities around various outcomes. Usually, their latest instruction, offer, or government deadline dictates the “content” they release. While this will appeal to some, it is far from an all-encompassing strategy that will attract buyers, sellers, investors or even renters.
The best agents show up when people look for anything related to their service. I advocate for this and primarily what I am here to teach.
Modern Lead Generation Strategies
Many agents struggle with lead generation today. The rise of property portals and their effectiveness have made many agents lazy. Sorry, it’s true.
Online marketing has made lead generation more accessible, but it is still a skill that needs to be learned, practised, and refined over time. The myth that because everyone is online means you can reach them at will is, well, just that, a myth.
It is a fairer reflection of how the internet works to say that the best online lead-generation strategies make you visible to people asking questions and looking for solutions. I won’t get into that here since I have a dozen other posts about the importance and effectiveness of creating expert content and its benefits for your business.
Here are a few:
Most agents struggle to generate leads because they don’t understand how to position themselves effectively online or are unprepared to do the work.
If you were only to look at where a chunk of your profits were going, you might figure out what you need to do.
Have a look at these links:
If content didn’t work as well as it does, do you think these companies would spend your money on creating so much of it? I thought that might get your attention.
Challenges Faced by Estate Agents in Generating Quality Leads
Any business must overcome several obstacles to generate high-quality leads. This is especially true of people working in property since lack of trust is one factor that can put you out of business. While lead generation has become more accessible with technology, managing all aspects is challenging.
For any business to generate quality leads, here are the basics you need to cover:
- Stand Out in a Crowded Market
- Target the Right Audience
- Generate Engaging Content
- Balance Cost and Effectiveness
- Build Trust and Rapport Online
- Stay Ahead of Your Competitors
Once you’ve got your head around all that, there are online privacy concerns, scepticism about online-only marketing, and technological barriers that always seem to be changing.
You will be left behind if you have not adopted a continuous learning environment. Continuous learning is the foundation for most successful businesses.
Whether they need to
- Learn to be better leaders
- Improve their services
- Build a better brand
- Make operations more efficient
- Market their services better
- or utilise the latest tools more effectively
you will only improve and move forward if you are always learning and applying that knowledge.
The Power of Content Marketing in Lead Generation
I am a big advocate for content marketing, especially for property professionals. Sadly, it is lacking in the industry, which is one of the reasons it doesn’t have the best reputation.
Before I start hearing about how TPO & PRS only got 15,000 complaints in 2022 and there were over a million homes sold, you only have to look at Facebook groups and online forums to realise that many problems go unreported. These problems never make it as far as an ombudsman.
- How many people must switch agents once, twice or three times to get their home sold?
- How many don’t get the asking price?
- How many must wait two or three times longer than expected?
- How many people must constantly chase for updates and get unsatisfactory answers?
- Do all these issues get reported to TPO & PRS, or is the good old British public more likely to vote with their feet and tell all their friends?
I know what I think…
If even 10% of the best agents in the UK were creating expert-level content that educated and informed their perfect prospects and clients, I believe the status and reputation of property experts, particularly estate agents, would be beyond reproach. Sadly, I’d be surprised if the number was as high as 1/2 a per cent.
We would see a consolidation of agencies and fewer agents overall. There would be a natural barrier to entry, and the industry would effectively clean itself up and set its standards far beyond anything the government might try to enforce.
Don’t worry! I’m working on it. I think it will take some time, though.
Understanding Content Marketing in the Property Sector
People are looking for a trustworthy, experienced, proficient professional who will work with them to achieve the desired outcome when they take on an agent.
Finding these professionals is challenging since they aren’t doing enough to make it easy for consumers to know who they should consider.
Benefits of Implementing Content Marketing for Lead Generation
When you use content marketing to attract your perfect prospects, you show up much earlier than when you wait until somebody is ready to buy, sell, rent, or invest.
When you show up early enough, you have more time to impart your wisdom, values, and experience without pressure or urgency. This builds trust and rapport and makes your brand more memorable.
Because you’ve taken the time to understand what your prospects need and create content that solves their problems, you’re personalising their experience with you. Even if you don’t know their name. You’re more relatable by sharing your understanding of their situation and demonstrating your expertise.
If you’re still hoping to find new clients from your property portal subscriptions or your latest ad on Facebook or some other platform, you’re leaving it way too late to be in with a serious shout of being a contender for many potential prospects. In my last post, Unveiling the Power of Valuable Content for Your Business, I cover this in more detail. If you’ve not seen it, I recommend you give it a look.
Predictions and Trends in Lead Generation
Okay, what are the significant changes over the next few years that will change the face of estate agencies or, more importantly, buying and selling property?
To be clear, I’m not pretending to be an oracle or to have any unique insight into the future. That said, I worked in IT for over 25 years and have lived through the World Wide Web’s inception to what we have today. I understand how technology works better than most, and I can see unprecedented things happening today in the 30+ years of the internet’s life as we know it.
The significant changes will be driven by artificial intelligence (AI), but the knock-on effect could be dramatic. Other “innovations”, such as the property portals, will pale into insignificance compared to the scope and impact AI could have.
Personalised Content Experiences
What we are already seeing with AI is a strong leaning towards personalised and tailored data delivered with a specific point of view.
Ignoring for a moment all the potential biases from the source content the AI has been trained on, I am thinking more towards the point of view of the person asking the question.
With the power of AI, you can ask:
- What can I make with the leftovers in my fridge? List the contents, and AI will tell you.
- Maybe you want to create a website for a new hobby. AI will tell you how to do it, what might interest other enthusiasts and even give you ideas that will make your site unique.
- Do you want to know about the history of the monarchy with insights into the likely mental stability of each ruler based on the recorded historical actions each took? AI will come up with something for you.
Almost anything you can think to ask with details of your personal needs can provide a detailed and tailored response from the new wave of AI tools being released.
AIs currently have many limitations, and accuracy is often questionable, but this technology is improving rapidly. What’s available today (Feb 2024) is an enormous leap forward from the November 2022 release of ChatGPT. While AI has been around for nearly 20 years and has moved forward quite a lot, it is nothing compared to the speed of AI evolution in the last year.
How does this help property professionals?
As more data becomes available online, AI gets a better understanding and can analyse and interpret more accurately. Governments have been moving towards an ever larger online presence for several years. The ability to implement AI to assist with menial tasks and reduce the number of civil servants and labour costs while increasing efficiency and accuracy will inevitably mean it happens.
Land Registry is still working on digitising all of its records. AI will undoubtedly speed this process up.
The Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG) has most of its online data.
The National Planning Policy Framework is available online.
How long will it be before these systems are indexed, linked, and analysed by a specialist AI that finally enables the whole system to be a usable and efficient portal?
Okay, it’s the UK Government. It’ll cost ten times more than the budget and take three times as long. But with AI power helping make decisions and overcoming problems, even the politicians will have a hard time screwing it up. Honestly, AI is that good.
Once a system, even closely resembling an AI-powered government property management portal, is built, it will be a game-changer for the entire property industry. When three or four months become weeks or days for land searches, checks, and title deed transfers, time and cost will decrease, and with the prop-tech companies, disruption is guaranteed.
The Legal System
Law is another area I see being massively disrupted by AI. While AI Solicitors might be a few decades away (people still won’t trust AI enough to automate the legal process 100%), AI-assisted legal professionals are already here.
While it might take years to feed every law and precedent into a legal AI and explain all the contradictions in enough detail that the AI can accurately predict case outcomes, other processes aren’t so complicated.
Anything a solicitor currently performs in the process of a property purchase or sale seems to be a prime target for automation. There are already standardised online legal forms you can buy. Add an AI to that, pay a legal professional to train it in all the possible variations and outcomes, and you’ve got an instant contract maker who doesn’t make mistakes or take two weeks to reply to a progress request.
Interactive Content Formats
This is where an estate agent’s role could change significantly.
We all know that property listings are essential to the selling process. Accuracy, detail, and points of interest are all important.
At the moment, if you want a 3D virtual tour, you need to buy expensive equipment and a matching monthly contract to produce high-quality virtual walkthroughs.
I can’t imagine it will be long before an AI-assisted app is created that allows you to turn a video into a walkthrough. All you will need is a smartphone with a decent camera and some instructions on how to get the best out of the app by ensuring your video includes everything required, and you’ll have a low-cost, speedy solution to virtual tours that can be included with every listing.
This will inevitably lead to more interactive property listings that will become standard. Homeowners may decide to do it themselves since producing these listings will be quick and easy.
I’m sure the prop-tech guys will be there, ready and able to help.
Video Content Dominance
Videos have taken over as the primary format for new content. While I still love a blog and an audiobook, I won’t deny that I sometimes get carried away with YouTube shorts. Yup, I can lose 30 minutes just like that.
With AI, you can already create a digital avatar of yourself and have it produce content from a script created in your style. While these videos are currently obvious, it’s harder to detect the videos that change the language and the mouth movements to match. It still sounds like you, and it looks like you’re speaking another language, but it is all AI-generated.
Video is already significant for marketing today, but digital avatars make the scope of what you can achieve all the more impressive.
Sure, not all of these advancements will be useful to an estate agent working within a 10-mile radius of the high street agency, but new and exciting ideas are constantly popping up. Who can guess what a property listing might have evolved into over the next several years?
Not me. but, I will be making a guess very soon about how agents might find this helpful.
Personally, I think there will be “tells” for AI-generated video for some time yet. There is also the possibility that laws will be passed that require AI-generated content to be tagged as such.
Either way, video will still be an essential part of your marketing strategy and something you must work on.
Voice Search Optimisation and SEO
SEO should be a part of your marketing strategy. If it isn’t, and you aren’t yet producing high-quality expert content for your perfect prospects, you will be left behind.
Voice search optimisation is a part of SEO. It essentially means that your keywords focus on how people ask questions naturally. This gives you a better chance of matching the searcher’s intent with the content you create.
AI tools are already available to help implement SEO in your content and on your website and can even help identify other websites that would be a good fit for a backlink.
SEO has had the benefit of AI since the turn of the century. Undoubtedly, AI will keep evolving, focusing on quality content and the best user experience.
Here is a quick timeline of how Google has become the number one search engine in the world with AI’s assistance:
- 2001: Machine learning helped correct user misspellings in searches, making it more user-friendly.
- 2006: Launch of Google Translate, using machine learning for automatic language translation.
- 2004-2005: Machine learning algorithms started factoring in website quality and relevance to refine search results beyond keyword matching. This marked the earliest stage of AI influencing SEO, though its direct impact was likely subtle.
- 2011: Launch of Google Panda, an algorithm targeting “thin” websites with low-quality content, emphasising user experience and content value.
- 2013: Penguin update penalised websites using spammy link-building tactics, highlighting Google’s focus on natural link profiles.
- 2015: Introduction of RankBrain, a complex machine learning algorithm understanding search context and user intent, further influencing ranking beyond traditional keyword factors.
- 2018: Neural Matching update utilised AI to match search queries with relevant webpages based on understanding their meaning and context.
- the 2020s: Ongoing advancements in Google’s AI capabilities allow for a deeper understanding of user intent, search context, and content quality.
I don’t see how one AI will beat another regarding SEO and ranking your content. Computers are excellent at pattern recognition. Whoever has the most data to analyse will win. Nobody has more search data than Google. If your content isn’t high quality, unique, and relevant, you’re just not going to show up.
Even with all the AI help you can get, you must be a part of the creative process. If not, the chances of your AI content being detected and penalised are right up there next to whether the sun will rise in the east tomorrow morning.
Of all the significant changes I see coming, the human factor, creativity, and personal touches aren’t ones I see being replaced by AI.
Embracing AI and Chatbots
We currently live in an instant gratification society. If you can’t immediately give people what they want, they will go elsewhere for answers.
This is where the video avatar could get interesting. Instead of using it to make “fake” content, what about it becomes the face of your new chatbot? Yes, you could be on call 24/7 via a lifelike version of you.
I love a good chatbot. While some good ones are around, they are primarily based on a logic tree and programmed with pre-written responses based on the keywords they detect. Some will also prompt the user with pre-programmed questions to lead the conversation along the programmed path.
Since AI was introduced, we can now teach AI about our business, have it respond to natural questions, and incorporate users’ speech or writing styles and topics into the responses, making them more personalised. You don’t need to programme every response and figure out where the conversation might lead; AI does that for you.
Admittedly, this is not a simple process right now, and you’ll need to bring together several systems to make it seamless. However, new developments are being released all the time.
How long will it be before you can build a company AI by uploading your existing content to build your brand identity and then selecting the relevant industry reference materials to build an instant chatbot?
Think about that. The chatbot would effectively know everything about your industry that’s available in writing. It will be able to instantly answer a question that you might need to look up.
With a video plugin and the requisite shot of your preferred avatar, you have an instant customer services/helpdesk / FAQ / Q&A video chatbot that knows everything about your business, industry and previous content and can answer any question instantly. With your voice and knowledge backed up by industry-standard information, you will be delivering the information as if the user were speaking directly to you, only a bit better.
Think about it. All of your existing content is fed into a database, then augmented with data from the TPO, NAEA, RICS, NALS, ARLA, UKALA, Propertymark, and the Guild of Property Professionals.
Now imagine you’re an agent who lives in an area with communities where English isn’t their first language. Would the ability to translate everything into Polish, Punjabi, Lithuanian, or any one of a dozen other languages be useful now? It’s just a thought.
It won’t be long before you can speak with an AI avatar of you on a video call and have it answer questions in real-time.
If what I’ve just described comes to pass, 136% will be a distant memory. It’ll be more like 1360%.
Now, I haven’t seen anything quite this advanced just yet, but it’s coming. Somebody somewhere is working on it. You can be sure of that.
Now, what could it do if we were to add a marketing module into the AI and have it follow up and nurture our leads? 🤔 Offering to send updates on a property or deliver a checklist to an email. Oh, the possibilities.
I’ll leave you to think about that one…
Implementing a Successful Content Strategy
AI is here to stay. It is immensely powerful and fantastic for assisting you in all aspects of your business. There is a learning curve right now, and no one tool does everything well. In time, this will change, and unified systems specifically for property professionals will appear.
I suggest you get a ChatGPT premium subscription and play with the various tools available in the app library. Get a feel for what AI can do today, its limitations, and what will be helpful in your business.
One thing that you will need to enable you to jump on the AI bandwagon effectively is a lot of high-quality expert content. Video will work, but writing will be better.
Look at my post about AI-Assisted Content Creation for UK Property Professionals to learn more about how AI will help and avoid the pitfalls of using AI to create everything.
Without expert content that captures your values, stories and experiences, you’ll rely on bland, impersonal AI-created content that will not serve you or your business well.
Integrating SEO Best Practices for Content Visibility
For those who have expert content or intend to create it, use the AI SEO tools to evaluate your content and advise how to apply SEO to make you more visible in your area.
It is worth taking the time to learn about SEO and how you can apply it effectively to your content and website. My post: What is SEO? A Stupid Simple Explanation is a good starting point. If you’re already using AI, why not ask it for a plan for your website and see what it thinks?
If you get stuck on implementing any of the suggestions, ask AI to explain how you do it in more detail. You can be very specific about what you need.
Tell the AI:
- Who your website host is.
- What platform is your website built on?
- Any features or plugins in use.
- What you want to achieve.
The more information you provide, the better the advice you will get back.
Just be aware that if the AI doesn’t know the answer, it might make stuff up (one of the current limitations).
Should You Wait for AI to Improve?
This is one of the areas where I expect to see many improvements over the next few years. You might think that waiting for a fantastic super-duper AI all-in-one package that does 90% of the work for you is a good idea.
No. It’s not.
SEO is a long-term strategy. The sooner you start, the sooner you start seeing results and building on the compounding effect of a good content marketing strategy.
Let’s say your competitor starts today and has to put more time and effort into building their content goldmine and automating their lead generation. Too bad for them, huh?
You get in early on the latest deal for a whizzy AI in 2026 that will connect to all your portals, social media, and websites, help you with unique daily content, and quickly and efficiently build your online presence.
You are still two years behind your competitor, and although you will save time each week in preparation and creation of your content, you can’t compress the time it will take to establish yourself as a quality content creator. You’ll also compete with the other businesses in your area who waited like you did. You’ll be back to keeping up with the Joneses rather than getting ahead.
You must do what others don’t to get ahead of the curve. Right now, if you’re a property professional, that means creating expert content and showing up on Google. If you wait until anyone can do it with the push of a button, you just be another one of the heard, all doing the same.
Leveraging Social Media Channels for Amplification
Another great thing about AI is that it can already repurpose content really well. How well it does this can only improve over time.
Growing your social presence by using your expert content is much easier with AI. It can take a post and create many promotional posts in different styles that focus on various points so that you can talk about your post for weeks without repeating yourself.
It will create new headlines and suggest images you can make to have the most significant visual impact. Improvements in this area will continue as AI copywriting skills and graphic creation advance.
Measuring and analysing content performance metrics will give you the information you can feed back into your AI, which will help create better social posts in future. You can already do this with search engine marketing (SEM) tools such as SEMrush and Ahrefs, but it will require a monthly subscription.
As AI improves, your social feeds continue to look more professionally curated, insightful, and engaging. I can’t guess how AI is going to influence social media. Misinformation, hateful and harmful content and racism will be more readily identified and removed, but beyond that, we’ll have to wait and see. I suspect legislation will also define our social platforms over the coming years.
What I do know is this. AI has been used on all social platforms for many years and will continue to utilise it for many more. The tools to help you get the most out of social media are integrating AI at a high speed. There is no avoiding it. At the same time, online privacy has become a political football and tracking visitors is set to become ever more difficult without explicit consent. This will mean that in future, your content will have to be engaging and attractive since you could lose the ability to track them around the web.
Learn how to use AI, get the most out of it, or get left behind.
Lead Generation and AI
We are a long way from AI doing everything for us. That’s a good thing.
Right now, it means you can still stand out and make a difference by putting yourself out there and demonstrating your value to prospects and clients. The easiest way to do that is with expert content.
AI will make many of your tasks easier, but it will still require time and effort.
One final thought: Who will be training the AIs?
For an AI to be effective, it needs lots of information. Where do you think it’s getting the information from? If you think “the internet”, you’re correct. The higher the ranking on Google, the more weight and authority your content will have.
One final prediction.
I believe that AI-created content will have to list the sources of content it draws from in some form. I don’t know how it will work, but let’s say an accreditation system is put in place. Each time a source content is used, the AI may add one credit to the post it used – think of it as a “like”. Sure, a Citations button will be somewhere that lists everything, but nobody will ever read that.
The more likes (AI credits) you get, the better it is for your SEO. And who knows what the search engines will look like in a few years?
Do you want all the content you create for your website to push your competitor’s content up the rankings when you get AI to do everything for you in a couple of years? Or, do you want to be the one whose content gets pushed because everyone who waited a couple of years too long is using your content goldmine as a reference and resource?
I know which option I’m going for. You’re reading it. 😊 Not that I expect this post to be relevant in a year, let alone five. It might make for a fascinating look back on my thoughts, though.
If you want to get hot qualified leads on autopilot, you need to show up at the earliest opportunity and capture the details of your lead. The best way to do that is to start building your content goldmine today.
AI can and will help you.
Please, do not; whatever you do, try to get AI to write everything for you. It will not get the desired results, and you’ll waste a lot of time editing and rewriting the dull and uninspiring content it creates. It might read well and be factually accurate, but there will be no personality.
If you want to know how to create better content, check out the posts I mentioned earlier.
Watching AI evolve is exciting, and I look forward to seeing where we are in 5 years. I doubt I will look back at this post and think, wow, I nailed it.
Will the social and portal landscape even be recognisable?
I guess I’ll have to wait and see what I got wrong, like those Tomorrow’s World programs from the 70s.
Google who? What’s Rightmove? Face what now?
Only time will tell. 😊
