Top 5 Tips for Estate Agents Printing Flyers and Leaflets
Property Workshop’s Russ Jones explains how estate agents can maximise their return on investment when printing flyers and leaflets for potential customers. 
In an ideal world, estate agents would enjoy a steady stream of enquiries from potential sellers, bringing on enough properties to ensure a consistent churn of resale properties. However, this is not an ideal world, and these are far from ideal times. Indeed, as the latest lockdown drags interminably on, people across the UK are once again putting plans to move on hold.
In one respect, this is great news for agents. Available homes are being snapped up within days of being listed, often receiving multiple bids from eager buyers. Yet the dearth of available stock isn’t just a problem in terms of filling showroom window boards. It’s also making it harder to meet turnover and sales targets. As such, distributing flyers and leaflets may be more valuable than ever. As well as placing your brand in the minds of sellers, it can encourage prospective buyers to follow your brand on social media, while helping them to subconsciously identify your sale boards.
Many people are planning to move house in the next year, acquiring home offices and more outside space, or downsizing as their circumstances change. When the worst of the lockdown restrictions are lifted and activity levels begin to rise, a well-timed leaflet might influence whether motivated sellers contact your agency for a valuation or not. However, not all estate agent flyers and leaflets are created equal. Here are five tips for ensuring your brand has the best chance of standing out in today’s competitive and low-margin industry:
Top 5 Printing Tips for Estate Agents
- Opt for double-sided flyers and leaflets. If a single-sided leaflet lands face down on the doormat, especially among other unsolicited missives, it could be binned without even being seen. A double-sided flyer ensures something will catch the homeowner’s eye as it’s picked up – bringing us onto our second key point…
- Lead with a hero statement. Use a large font and potentially a breakout box or circle to showcase a key USP of your agency or branch. Again, this mitigates the worst-case scenario that a recipient only glances at your flyer. Impart at least one significant piece of info – your percentage fee, how long you’ve been established, how many homes you sold in 2020, etc.
- Include a photo. Text-only estate agents flyers and leaflets look dull, whereas a full-colour image adds interest. It also localises your brand, especially if you can gain permission from a previous customer to publish an image of a property you sold to them. A photo of a local house or flat above a SOLD sub-heading demonstrates your effectiveness in this area.
- Personalise the text for the locality. Building on the last point, ensure leaflets and flyers are customised for each area. Sellers want to feel you understand their neighbourhood, so quote USPs like the number of buyers on your books looking for homes in their postcode. This shows people that their home is desirable to potential buyers you already know.
- Never criticise the competition. Negative advertising is frowned upon by UK regulators, and it won’t impress prospective clients. Don’t claim you’re better than a rival, promise to undercut them or question their effectiveness. If a critical leaflet lands on the mat of a rival agency’s employee, it could lead to bad blood – and you will bump into them periodically…
