“The internet is our shop window to the world”
Rightmove Optimiser customer stories: Hudson Moody
Ben Hudson is Director at Hudson Moody, an independent, family owned estate and lettings agent with 3 branches in Yorkshire.
We caught up with Ben to understand how being on the Rightmove Optimiser package helps his business.
With the Rightmove Optimiser package, Hudson Moody pay no core membership fee. Instead, all of their spend on Rightmove is on advertising products – giving them maximum exposure for their brand across all of a customer’s buying journey.
Headline stats:
- Brand exposure to 135k visitors every week
- Over 200 Rightmove enquiries per month to their York branch
- 4% of enquiries explicitly ask for an appraisal, but many more have a property to sell
Advertising on Rightmove means more exposure than traditional methods
Hudson Moody’s brand gets exposed to 135k visitors every week on Rightmove, through a combination of Local Home Page and Featured Agent advertising and their property listings.
‘The older generations in our market still look for properties in papers and it’s still a way for us to showcase our services to that relatively niche market. But most of what we used to spend on papers we now spend online instead. Our newspaper spend is now a fifth of what it once was and it’s dropped dramatically over the last 10-20 years.
Why? Rightmove gives us much wider exposure. With the newspaper, you’re reliant on people picking it up and reading it and you’re only talking to a narrow local market. Rightmove puts your properties on a world stage. It allows a local agent like us to advertise immediately to people looking to buy in the area from around the world and means we can compete with the big national chains. Newspapers didn’t give us anywhere near that level of coverage.
As in all areas, canvassing in York is overdone, so we tend not to do it. When people are getting 3 or 4 leaflets through their letter box every day, they get exasperated and it’s not an effective use of our time and effort. The only time we canvass is if a client is looking in a very specific area. Otherwise, we focus our marketing spend elsewhere, like on Rightmove’.
Featured Agent adverts help get our name out there
Hudson Moody’s Featured Agent ads are seen by around 70,000 visitors to search result pages in their target market every week.
‘Appearing on the search results page as well as our properties, our Featured Agent adverts mean we dominate the page and come across as a leading, credible agent within that area.
It’s not just about people buying. It also gives us exposure to potential sellers looking for the types of properties we want to sell. Even if they aren’t ready to sell right now, being visible across the search results helps us be one of the 2 or 3 agents that spring to mind and gets invited out when the time comes.
Premium property products mean more chance of finding a buyer quickly…and more sellers
In their York branch alone, Hudson Moody receive 200 Rightmove buyer enquiries per month. 4% of these explicitly ask for an appraisal or have a property to sell that is not yet on the market.
‘We use Rightmove’s Featured Property and Premium Listing products to get more buyer enquiries. They’re a good source of sellers, too – especially now that potential valuation opportunities are highlighted clearly in the subject line of Rightmove email enquiries. Our staff are trained to spot valuation opportunities straight away and jump on them quickly by asking the right questions.
We know that our best chance of selling a property is when it’s fresh to the market, so we capitalise on that by rotating our Featured Property on to our newest property, to give it maximum visibility and an early push. We sometimes get enquiries within seconds of new properties going live, from the keenest buyers who are constantly refreshing the listings.
We also use Featured Properties on the fly, to help certain clients depending on their circumstances. For instance, if the property is struggling to sell, or if they find their dream home and suddenly have a greater urgency to sell more quickly. It’s great for us to have that flexibility.’
Using premium property products as an instruction winner
‘We use the fact that we can offer vendors extra exposure with a Featured Property to differentiate us when out at valuations. We sell the benefits of having more photographs, the shaded background and bigger space on the page as ways we can help their property stand out further.
On properties that are more upmarket and deserve the extra promotion, we offer these products as part of our standard package to try and win’.
A lesson for others? Wherever you’re advertising, the same old rules apply
‘We love the exposure we get from advertising on Rightmove. But like all marketing, if you don’t update your creative, you start to see the numbers decline – so you have to be on the ball and keep things fresh.
We’re in the back-end every day swapping photos and headlines and changing things up, and make sure to refresh our adverts every quarter. The internet is our shop window to the world, so it’s really important that we’re making the best impression!’
To see how your business could benefit from maximum exposure with Rightmove Optimiser, speak to your Account Manager.
