Optimising your Rightmove Adverts

Knowing that over 95% of people view properties online (with the majority using Rightmove),you may be interested in tips on optimising your Rightmove adverts.

The secret is understanding Rightmove’s marketing analysis tools. Each agent can run reports which show how many times a property has been viewed online, printed off, had more details requested etc.

The analysis can also rank properties in turns of their ‘Click Through Rates’ – (or CTR’s) – This is simply the % of people who have clicked through to view your property after it has appeared on their initial search. If 1 person out of 20 clicks for further information, your Click Through Rate is 5%.

The key is to monitor this report and make sure that your CTR is is high as possible. Rates near 10% are very good, below 5% are poor and require review. Quite simply if your CTR is doubled, it will mean twice as many viewers, more appointments and more applications.

You can see an example Rightmove Click Through Report here; https://s3.amazonaws.com/NPG/Rightmove+Click+Through+Rates.jpg

Once you understand this information, you can take action. Click Through Rates can be improved as follows;

1. Better Photographs, especially the main house photo 2. Better Summary Description – Use punchy text to grab peoples attention!
3. Better Pricing – Price too high and you will get fewer enquiries 4. Market as Featured or Premium Listings on Rightmove

In terms of the first 3 – this is fairly easy to understand. You only have a few seconds to WOW your target audience.

If you use a drab photo with a grey sky, a car blocking the view, a bland description and priced 10% above the market rent – your click through rate will be predictably low!

This is a good site to use to re edit your photos. They can make skies blue, grass green and even remove cars for only a few £ – http://www.vizzishots.co.uk/ This will be much cheaper than a re-visit to the property.

What is also important to note is that you get double the response in the first 14 days as you do thereafter. So you need to make sure you have everything perfect and your property is marketed in the best way possible before you unleash it onto the market. If you get it wrong, it is much harder to pull back the lost momentum.

Rightmove also allow you to upgrade properties to Premium or Feature.

Their stats show that these listings attract between 30-40% more clicks. Most agents will charge landlords up to £125 for this service! We do so as part of our standard charging at no extra cost.

Premium listings have a banner ‘Premium Listing’ with 3 photos showing on the search and a larger advert. Hence they stand out more. They run for 2 months.

A Feature Listing will appear at the top of the search page for 1 week. It is therefore best to use the Feature listing when you first market a property to get the additional advantage of the first listing bounce.

Once somebody has clicked through onto your listing – now the real work begins! How to convert. You want people viewing your page to book viewings.

In my next article, I’ll share with you the secrets of converting prospects into viewings.

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