Whether you run a small boutique estate agency, or are involved in marketing a national chain, how your brand is perceived by the market is more important than ever.
It’s widely known that, unfortunately, estate agents are one of the least trusted professions, so building a brand that engenders trust and reassurance to your audience allows you to establish your business in the locations you serve.
Undertaking market research allows you to “take the temperature” of the market. Be it getting more information about how your customers see your existing services, or testing a new product or rebrand.
But how can you harness research to integrate it into your estate agency brand?
Why research matters to your estate agency brand
Market research can provide the most crucial information about how your organisation is perceived and the business landscape you operate in.
Knowing how your existing customers and prospects view your business allows you to take decisions which are focused on customer need, not just what your internal teams think.
It’s not unusual to have a perception of your business “in house” which is at odds with what your existing and potential customers see.
Undertaking market research allows you to really get under the skin of what your audience truly think about you. From the colours you use in your branding, to the words you use on your website – knowing how this is seen from the outside helps you to form unbiased opinions on what you can do going forward.
How to use the results to shape your brand strategy
One of the key parts of market research is actually putting it into practice. To get valuable results that allow you to shape your brand, you need to start with the right questions from the outset.
Consider what might be subjective (do you like this logo) and what might drive better understanding of the sentiment behind the answer (how does this logo make you feel about the business).
While some questions can be asked in a straightforward scoring way (quant research) when it comes to brand, often the real “clues” are in the qual research.
Understanding customer sentiment
Another key area to forming your brand strategy is knowing what your existing customer pain points are when it comes to your business.
Measuring how your customers feel about all aspects of your service allows you to plan your marketing and brand materials.
For vendors this may mean asking questions about how they feel your estate agency performed throughout the entirety of selling their property. You could ask questions around the valuation process, how their property was marketed, or the sales progression stage.
This will allow you to then identity weak spots and find out how you can improve them.
Here at Know Your Market we can help you to not just undertake market research, but also analyse the data. This allows you to better put the results into practice and scale your agency brand.
