Spicerhaart is pioneering in the UK a new social media software, invented in Scandinavia and called Flink, which puts property ads on social media in front of the people most likely to buy.
Spicerhaart describe it as an absolute game changer which could transform the house selling process – with the suggestion that it might take over from property portals as well be one more challenge to local newspaper advertising.
CEO Paul Smith told EYE: “This is not like normal advertising on social media.
“This technology intelligently understands far more about the people who are clicking on a social media advert, including their lifestyle and ambitions, using some of the most powerful data sets in the world; it then serves the ad to other people with a similar profile.
“The technology taps into buyers that aren’t registered with an agent or portal like no other.
“It creates up to 72 variations of the property ad and learns people’s preferences to show them the ad that they’re most likely to engage with.
“It also optimises in real time throughout the life of the campaign.
“We’ve only just launched it and we’re already being contacted by prospective purchasers who’ve seen the ads in their social media feeds.
“It’s an absolute game changer.”
‘Flink’, which is Norwegian for ‘good’ and ‘clever’, enables the advert variations it creates to run on the UK’s largest social media channel Facebook, as well as Twitter, Google Plus and Instagram.
Smith said: “We’re still advertising in newspapers and on property portals such as Rightmove and OnTheMarket, but with over 23.5m people in the UK on Facebook daily, you have to question what the future holds for such forms of advertising.
“We can reach those people who buy houses who don’t even know they are looking until they fall in love with a property.
“We’re using a cartoon character called ‘Jess’ to promote our service and explain that Flink finds the buyers that other agents don’t – providing a quicker sale for a higher price.”
Scandinavian estate agents using their own version of the software are said to have reported a target audience of 150% of the size they saw previously, leading to 28% more buyers, resulting in sales price increases of up to 6% and reducing the time to sell by 27%.
Spicerhaart, which operates the haart, Chewton Rose, Felicity J Lord, Haybrook and Darlows brands, has also created a dashboard for sellers to keep track of the interest being generated via social media in their property.
We would be interested to hear readers’ views – and remember, you read it here first!
https://www.haart.co.uk/flink/
Another day … Another ” game changer “…
NOT!
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Social media advertising works well for me but I seem to remember PIE running a story about a very similar system to that described above a few years back
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Not seen the system.
But from someone that spends a good deal of money on social media advertising. Here is what I have found from trial and error.
Facebook / Twitter users to not care about the latest new property you upload. Unless it has a hook such as a famous individuals property or 10 bed mansion (and only then it people liking and commenting they will never buy it)
In short posting properties on social media does not work.
What does work is local news or ‘Trends’ if you you are social you get the interactions.
Once you build up a few hundred likes on your page you can drop the occasion sales pitch in regarding your company – too many agents post daily on there success rate of boasting they list / sell the most …… people do not care in the main they sure as he’ll will not like or share the post.
Videos Gif and memes work well to get people to interact.
Do not look as social media as a sales tool to sell a property it will not work you will waste time and money. Do use social media to befriend people to help people to make people engage as your brand will increase be seen as a leader in your field and you will gain refferal’s off the back of it.
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Couldn’t agree more.
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‘Flink’ is a word usually saved for verbally rewarding a pet – such as ‘flink Hund!’ where we would say ‘good doggie’.
SO – is this a case of digitally patting a dumb animal on the head?
Or another way for the tail to wag the dog?
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I seem to remember On The Market also being promoted as a “game changer”. That’s doing well isn’t it.? …………………NOT! Worst decision we ever made. The highest percentage of people using social media are youngster’s, who won’t be interested in an unsolicited advertisement for a property flashing up on their mobiles.
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As part of the younger generation, I don’t think this will work. Just because it’s on social media, doesn’t make it automatically successful.
Much like “the best place to hide a body is on the second page of Google”, social media users are already learning to scroll past sponsored posts as a matter of course, even for things they’d ordinarily be interested in. Users really don’t want to give companies the satisfaction of clicking their ads.
Nevertheless, this will have traction. The law of averages means the odd person will buy a property via social media, but I can’t see significant gains to be made from this strategy. Maybe 10 years down the line social media advertising will be a bigger part of a company’s marketing strategy but, right now, having sponsored posts appear on your feed against your will is clunky, ugly, doesn’t endear you to users and doesn’t generate as much interest as people think.
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I would think agents would see a better ROI using social advertising for their vendor proposition rather than trying to compete with the portals in attracting buyers. The portals already invest heavily in social media advertising anyway and you will pay handsomely for the clicks on those 72 advert variations.
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Not sure it’s a game changer as stated. However first impressions suggest this “bolt on product” looks like an interesting development and could create opportunites for some and possible headaches for property portals.
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I suspect that buyers want to make sure that they have access to all available properties on the market, this will only link them to just one agents properties. This is another way of generating enquiries.
There will always be a requirement to have 1 place that lists most, if not all, available properties available at any one time.
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Whether it works or not is sort of irrelevant. The target audience may not actually care or respond to it and the sales may be minimal, but it’s what the vendor thinks that counts, so pitched correctly, it could win instructions. I suspect that’s the reason SH have got it.
Not forgetting anything that gets your branch into the minds of the public is no bad thing.
Let’s not forget that PB and the rest of the gang have been selling the dream that on-line is the only way to go and plenty of people lap it up even when we all know that its not true and they are paying for it too!
In reality, any decent agent should be able to combat this and sell themselves over any gimmicks. A good agent already knows the buyer for your property, they don’t need to go looking for them online.
The one thing that trumps all else is enthusiasm, work ethic and picking up that thing they call a phone! Nothing beats it and it doesn’t matter how many leads you generate via social media, printed press, online, offline, through the door or on the back of a bus, its no good if the person dealing with the lead doesn’t have the first idea on how to convert the business.
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The programmatic ecosystem is something we’re just beginning to roll out. What works well, depending on your data set, is running content on the socials instead of straight ads. They will still be sponsored, but if you know the area a set of individuals are looking to buy, say Purley in Surrey, you can draft an article such as ‘The 5 best reasons to buy a house in Purley’ and promote that on the Socials.
People are on Facebook in some downtime or they’re a bit bored, if they see an article relating to a place they’re looking to buy, there’s a stronger chance of them clicking that than a single property. And once they’re on your site, you could have Purley Properties on there, which they’ll no doubt at least sift through.
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Spend your time and money targeting sellers not buyers, you can’t sell what you don’t have.
The age demographics between the two are very different which is why many agents still advertise in local papers, not to sell property but to attract sellers. The age range of the readers of local papers and homeowners sit well together with more than 50% of homeowners over 55 and around 35% over 65.
The problem is the people ‘most likely to buy’ are the people who say they only want a detached house in a very specific area ‘don’t bother me with anything else’ so you ring them (I know, how so 20th century is that) with the perfect property only to be told they bought a semi 40 miles away!
That’s why the answer to the age old question ‘Why do you keep sending me properties I don’t want’ is ‘Because you keep buying them’.
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“That’s why the answer to the age old question ‘Why do you keep sending me properties I don’t want’ is ‘ Because you keep buying them’.
🙂 Love it.
Echo the above posts as well, target sellers, if you have the properties then the buyers will follow, even the portals know that!
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We stopped our property feed to twitter after losing about 20% of followers when we started doing it. We were tweeted a few times, by people saying stop spamming us and tell us something interesting.
Facebook, I think has a place for property, but the odd one, beautiful homes, unusual homes, funny pictures, fab stories, but the place to “search for property” #nochance otherwise all RM would do is open their feed to their RM FB page and bing bang bosh, your one stop shop for SocialMedia property search.
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Very simple really. If they spin it well, some sellers will think it works. This is just another ploy to con sellers into thinking that they can somehow reach a market that others can’t. They are rather good at that!
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Behaviours on SocMed varies enormously from country to country. Whilst in the US it can be leveraged to generate sales, this has failed in many sectors in the UK. You might get people ‘window shopping’ at property but if someone is seriously looking they will be on the portals. The clue is in the name ‘social’- and as ‘smile please’ says, the best and most successful content engages in a social manner- not selling. What is it with startups claining to be unicorns on every launch or arrival in the UK. Persoanlly Id be more interested by products with moderate/realistic ambitions rather than every product claiming to be a game-changer or a portal gladiator. Yawn.
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The concept behind this is very good. Be careful re the stats. They are taken from one Norwegian real estate brokers own figures and not google analytics. They have no relevance to the UK market.
Flink is powered by CCT Marketing and I’m told Spicerheart have UK exclusivity on use.
We’ve been operating with similar technology on Facebook, instagram and twitter integration since the middle of last year with another solution which in our view has more advanced features.
The missing link with CCT is tracking.
We’ve spent the last few months getting the techies paired up with Googles top European digital team to integrate google tags, analytics, facebook pixels, utm tracking and all the weird stuff to track leads. And we then re-market to them across media link Bing, Youtube, Gmail, Linkedin etc, opening up more options. As with Spicerheart- the Digital team have sole supply rights to us.
We’re currently generating leads at £20.28 (Google analytics) and that’s going down each month.
So it definitely works and hats off to Spicerheart for this. It is REALLY powerful at winning instructions. We can show customers real time dashboards of 9,000 views of a property, 100+ clicks, 20 shares, x comments and they love it.
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Good news for all the bedroom agents, you can soon grown your stock from 2 to 3 properties – But will you have time to service the extra property around the school run and housework?
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Thank you for the alternate view from the misogynistic estate agent.
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How do you get misogynistic out of the comment Glenn? – Maybe you are for assuming i meant women (which i was not).
I think that makes you the misogynist, should men not do house work or the school run? (between attempting to sell property).
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I do not flink this is going to have half the impact some people flink it will.
My apologies to the assembled company. I shall get my coat…
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is this a tool for skin-flinks ?
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The biggest ‘game changer’ is still training your staff. Teach them how to build relationships so they then understand their buyers and the sellers needs without the need for FLINK!
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can haart also calling people from witheld number? what is to hide?
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