A technology company that specialises in helping estate agents promote their listings on social media says it has signed up 1,500 new estate agency offices in just two months.
Adfenix, a Swedish company, raised £4.5m in venture capital last year in order to expand into the UK.
It claims that its technology helps agents find buyers more quickly, with less reliance on portals.
The firm has now announced that in February and March, among those it signed up were the Property Franchise Group, Connells Group, Savills, Your Move, Andrews, Winkworth and Bradleys, with “many other brands” in the pipeline.
Gabriel Kamienny, co-founder of Adfenix, said: “Over the course of last year we have grown from a few small pilots in the UK, to having signed major partnerships with a large number of the top 100 agencies – growth which we’ve replicated in northern Europe and the Pacific.”
David Plumtree, group estate agency chief executive at Connells, said: “Adfenix fits seamlessly into our armoury of proactive and intelligent marketing options for our vendors, providing a sophisticated solution to promoting properties as widely as possible and in line with our aim to always find the right buyer at the right price.
“Although it is early days, we are already seeing excellent results.”
Comments (30)
I took part in an initial trial with Adfenix and the results were good, so we now subscribe. In answer to some of Smile’s comments, the property ad is targeted at a relevant audience and response monitored to further refine the targeting, so it isn’t “spray & pay”.
However, what these posts seem to be missing is that a lot of the marketing we do is about generating vendors, not buyers, and this is the main reason we subscribed. Prospective V’s see the ad as well as buyers, so it generates further awareness of your brand and in doing so, differentiates you as being digitally progressive blah, blah. Adfenix even have a specific product (Agent Booster) which is the social media equivalent of “sold in your street” canvassing and again, this is tightly targeted to a relevant audience. Also, if comparing it to a SIYS mailer campaign, it’s a hell of a lot cheaper!
It’s also an instruction winner, as V’s like the idea that we can use social media to further complement their marketing, which there is no doubt it does.
lol on their website:
Three years later, in February 2017, 12 people sat cramped up in a small and cosy office in the centre of Gothenburg. A single shirt was hanging on a lamp, and every time someone was to have an important meeting, the lucky garment went too. If the success was thanks to the lucky shirt or pure talent, we don’t know, but this was when the real action began.
wow that beats the started in a garage baloney they normally use.
so what is it? their website doesnt say anything?
do they chuck your property on facebook and email your vendors to show them? thats all i can work out.
It is very possible to sell on Facebook, but there are two very distinct techniques for doing it.
The first is “spray-and-pray”. This will be a standard property post, or even a paid advertisement, that targets a pre-defined demographic of your choosing. Reading the comments, I’m thinking this applies to most people’s experience here? It can work, but it’s random.
The second method is “Dynamic Ads for Real Estate”. This harnesses the microtargeting technology that has Cambridge Analytica and Facebook all over the news.
It’s pretty clever. Facebook’s tracking pixel picks up “intent signals” from people visiting real estate sites; signals could be viewing a property, doing a search or sending an enquiry. Aggregating these signals tells Facebook a HUGE amount about potential buyers. Price range, location, property types. Combine this with their cat video habits etc, and we suddenly know a very large amount about every user/potential buyer.
Dynamic Ads allows you to load your property feed into Facebook and join it to this deep audience; the system microtargets the right listing direct to only the most relevant buyer. It’s classy technology, or spooky, or both – depending on your view. In practice it means people start seeing listings in their feed that are relevant to the intent signals they’ve given off.
The big sites are already using Dynamic Ads, and Zillow in the US are now effectively acting as a broker for this type of Facebook advertising for agents who don’t have direct access to the technology.
It isn’t entirely clear to me whether Adfenix is harnessing Dynamic Ads for Real Estate, or just acting as a layer over Facebook’s standard ad system. Their help docs imply it’s the latter, in which case you should probably just do it yourself. Facebook ads aren’t hard.
If you have a decent amount of traffic on your own website though, it’s worth taking a run at Dynamic Ads.
Microtargeting got Trump elected, it can probably sell a house too.
(Disclosure: I work for a portal – albeit not a UK one. Please don’t hate me!)
Exactly this. The question to ask though is this – if the ‘matchmaking’ expertise that was traditionally one of the main strengths of a good broker can now be effectively outsourced to an algorithm then does this over time fundamentally devalue the broker?!
This shows a complete lack of awarness in the housing market. You should have lunch with Alison Platt sometime.
The internet does not sell properties.
Agents sell properties, a good set of details, floorplan, photographs, portals all help but believe me. I have been in the industry long enough to know its the people that make the difference.
Algorithm to sell property. Feel free to ‘Code’ away but if you and i had the same budget, starting in the same area on a cold start. I would out perform your Algorithm every time.
I’m not sure I meant an algo could sell property. It can certainly generate leads though.
People do make the difference, smile please.
But the debate here isn’t do you invest in tech OR invest in people. Great agencies invest in both – and thats how they stay ahead of competitors who view the industry as simple black and white.
Famously, 100 professions were asked to rank the professions they thought least likely to be disrupted by technology, and all of the professions gave their own field as one of the areas least likely to be disrupted.
Maybe you’re one of the property professionals who believes property is fundamentally different and fundamentally untouchable. There were a load of taxi drivers and hoteliers and bookshop owners who thought like that too.
The super successful guys still remaining in those fields are the professionals who understood what specific elements of their job would best be delivered by technology, and which would best be delivered by people.
New homes industry so a bit different, but we can attribute several hundred million pounds worth of sales to Facebook advertising in Q1 2018. The thing to be clear on here is it was targeted advertising, not just us posting up on our wall as I suspect a lot of people are thinking of.
And those houses wouldnt have sold before rightmove and facebook were magically created…
To say facebook has created £300,000,000 of property is plain wrong.
And start building houses that have 2 way roads with 2 parking spaces for every house and shops…
apologies..you probably build the best houses in the world…New Homes industry doesnt though.
We could attribute a property sale to anything from 1 – 20 interaction points. Facebook is working as one of those interaction points and if the time from marketing the property to getting the sale can be shrunk by using the fewest interaction points then our marketing costs come down. Of course I’m not saying advertising on FB generated a direct return of £300m, but it did play a big enough part in the sale that we can attribute it back to the FB spend.
We have strong enough marketing of our own that we no longer advertise on Rightmove or Zoopla.
To clarify. I did not say social media does not work, it does.
However, its pointless just uploading property. Look at your own facebook page, twitter feeds and that of your competition very little interaction.
Post engaging posts – sorry but nobody cares you are “Number one in your area” for listings, or the 3 properties you have been instructed on today. Its lazy social media and get a pants response.
I have seen an advert on FB this morning from this lot for Sequence, its a 1950’s ex local authority house. Its the same as the other circa 50 on that estate. There will be zero positive engagement with the post. Its a waste of money.
Seriously, if you guys are posting property to FB and Twitter, PB deserve to put us all out of business.
Look at the people subscribing to this, Sequence, CW, LSL – When have they ever led from the front? – They are out of their depth, no idea what to do and going along with this lazy mass market choice.
Get some real content and engaging posts! – Trust me this is a waste of time and money.
I’m not sure they trust you, smileplease.
But best of luck to you!
Fool and their money …..
We tend to tease new instructions. Occasionally people will tag potential buyers in. More often than not we don’ have the buyer registered. We find it a good way of increasing our applicant database. Plus the more often we pop up on potential vendors leads the better as far as I am concerened.
I have sold properties directly from Facebook and contact made on Facebook messenger. If they are placed on relevant buy and sell sites or locally community Facebook pages. Some of these sites have at least 20000 locals all having every post sent to their feed. I have one property with 84000 views and over 1000 shares.. FREE ADVERTISING
I would also say that general Facebook advertising is starting to work. If you can target every person between eg 30 and 50 that lives within 20 miles of your location that has got to count for something.
Also the dreamers create the illusion of interest.
I think agents generally can not think outside their own 200 likes on their Facebook page.
It’ not all joy though, I think Twitter is a waste of time as it does require following and usually the only followers you have a friends family and other agents.
Do you remember back in the 80’s someone said that there is this “thing coming to our industry. It’s called the World Wide Web”. In the 90’s we were told “business is going to change… Everyone will have a personal number and you will be quick time communicating by something called the email – it’s like a fax, but better”. And then the new newspaper arrives…. It’s called social media. For someone who started in a windowless back room photocopying details and folding, licking stamps and walking to the post office, to someone who is in their 50’s and still possibly ahead of the game, I feel happy to lead, not follow. Off to work to carry on with my passion now. Have a great day selling!
If you knew anything about social media marketing, the dreamer person commenting and tagging their mate is worth a hell of a lot to you.
Depends. If you are selling 1.5m properties and you are have 5000 likes from council estate renters it’s not worth a great deal.
You want engaging targeted posts that are relevant.
Has anybody ever had a meaningful enquiry about a property advertised on Facebook or Twitter?
Sure you get a few likes every now and then. And the occasional comment from a dreamer tagging their other half in “Babes this would be ideal, if only we could afford it LOL”
Baffles me agents that post listings on FB complete waste of time.
I am glad that most agents think that way, otherwise social media would be too ‘crowded’. We sold a 1.25m property only yesterday as a direct result of posting on Facebook. The buyer was there in and amongst the reach of 5000+ 40+ comments (including the dreamy comments)… But whose to say that those dreamers are not our buyers of the future?
Can you share the link please?
Was that request to me? I do not wish to reveal identity or location in the country. However very happy for PIE to contact me and confirm statements made as true and factual. Having just looked again, reach is over 6000, shares at 59 and over 599 comments. However, property now under offer anyway, with certified proof of identity brought straight in to us, together with verification of funds. #moderntraditionalagent!
Sorry I just don’t believe somebody flicking through Facebook finds their 1.5m dream home and books a viewing off the back of it.
Perhaps they had already seen on a portal or viewed on a portal and then commented on it.
Still glad you feel the benefit is there for you. Crack on. I will leave it to you.
Advertising property on FB is as bad as Countrywide using bloggers last year to endorse them.
Just because it’s the latest fad does not mean it translates to the audience.
Just ask the onliners losing millions each year and now ditching the pay up front option.
Hey smileplease.
You might not believe it – but your belief isn’t necessary. One of the great things about our platform is that it is trackable. We don’t ask for blind faith – we show you the value very clearly.
But the leads aren’t everything. One of our customers (a 100+ location brand) drove a 6% boost in their success at valuation meetings NETWORK-WIDE by using our technology as a competitive advantage.
Another of our customers is now getting 90% of their new visitor website traffic from Adfenix – thats a mountain of new connections that the agency can then work on harvesting.
There’s lots of different pieces to this puzzle beyond you simply believing that people book viewings from Facebook.
thanks
Its trackable, So are sponsored fb posts direct. I can post a property today. Get it seen by 5000 people get 100 likes, couple of shares, few comments does not mean its helps in any single way.
I do not believe your product is a direct result of 6% boost in sucess at valuations, can you supply the study that shows this with evidence? – Not just success increased by 6% during the time they started using you. Many other factors, staff changes, market changes ….
Thanks for your comments.
Well done CB, I don’t disbelieve what you are saying and whilst I don’t think the future is social media orientated I do think it’s another great way to market both properties and your brand.
Looking at what a lot of agents do across social media, it’s fair to say it’s not yielding huge results yet as isn’t being used in the right way.
Any chance to speak to large groups of people using your brand should be looked at, the main issue being that agents just flood their page with listing after listing and nor much else.
(I do appreciate much of this post is formed by generalisations to say the least).
P
country bumpkin do you use Adfenix, another service or have you created your ads yourself?
We too use social media, not for every property, but I believe it’s a great way to spread the company brand locally. I haven’t yet directly sold a property off Facebook, we have had instances whereby there have been hundreds of shares, likes etc which may have contributed to its sale, but haven’t tracked it.. stupidly.
I would like to know more about how you presented it on social media and whether you paid to boost the ad too as we are looking at increasing our social media usage.
Happy to speak to you off here.
Always happy to help any agent …
no we are all ‘inhouse’ Not to say adfenix don’t have something new to offer so will be looking into it.
Give me a contact number if you wish
Sounds great. I don’t want to stick it on here, so will pass my mobile via PIE if that’s ok.
much appreciated.
That’s perfectly understandable!