The most common sight we now all see whether travelling on public transport at work or even at the dinner table, is people with their heads down, not in book but tapping away at social media. Scrolling for hours and hours.

This means we now have a major choice to make in our profession.

Do we continue to place our properties on the portals in order to reach prospective customers?

Or do we focus on the more visited Google, Facebook and YouTube channels to reach our target audiences? MECS are doing all three to ensure our agency becomes the best in Harborne.

My view is we all need to get better, slicker and more digitally savvy around these channels and use our own brands to promote our properties, becoming less reliant on the property portals, as new technology will certainly overtake them.  

The question is, are we ready? The resounding answer, for most estate agents, is almost certainly, not yet. However, at MECS we have been using social media as a tool for the last 12 months. As a result, our portfolio has expanded and our profits up by 30% per annum. I have hired two new members of staff. One of which is a fulltime digital marketer. Back in 2009 when I started my business, I never dreamt of having an ever-growing team, let alone a full time digital marketer. This is a result of moving with the times.

At MECS we have brought ICEBERG into play, which is already proving to be a game changer. This uses clever technology to put our property ads on social media feeds in front of the people most likely to buy – as well as those who aren’t even looking.

It’s far more advanced than using targeted Facebook ads, enabling us to show different permutations of ads for the same property, depending on the interests of the social media user.

We are now seeing passive buyers where we did not reach them before with traditional marketing methods.

Just over one month since launch, the increase in click-throughs to our own website has been astonishing.

Our properties have been seen by almost 10m people on social media – with 8% of people who see a property on Facebook, Instagram or Google Plus clicking through to our website, costing us just 3 pence per click.

At the same time, our number of Facebook followers has increased eight-fold. This is true digital disruption in estate agency. In October 2019 we had just 500 likes/followers on our Facebook page. Its now February 2020 and I have thousands. Most of my posts reach at least 23,000 people.

Even though social media and the digital revolution is shaping the way we operate, we still need the very best and highly trained teams to handle property sales. While technology may dictate how we do that, speaking and dealing with another human being will always be the preferred option for most people buying or selling a home.

This is especially true when the sale isn’t straight forward, and you need that human intervention to not only smooth out the problems but act in a reassuring way. A perfect example of this is when solicitors do last minute AML checks. I have driven buyers around in my car to and from banks, solicitors, work to ensure that we meet completion dates set. This is because I understand the importance of great service and a great reputation.