Rebecca Nixon on Real Marketing: Why Data, Story & Empathy Drive Agency Growth

In this game-changing episode of The Viking Chats, Kristjan Byfield sits down with Rebecca Nixon - PropTech growth specialist, strategic marketer, and host of The PropTech Growth Podcast - for a refreshingly honest conversation about what marketing really is, and what letting agents are getting wrong.

With years of experience helping PropTech founders, suppliers and property businesses align growth strategy with messaging, Rebecca offers clarity on a core truth: marketing isn’t an add-on - it’s the commercial engine of your business.

Together, Kristjan and Rebecca unpack the disconnect between what many agents think marketing is (“posting content”) and what it should be: a data-led, story-driven approach that connects with people on both an emotional and strategic level.

If you’re a letting agent, BTR operator, property supplier or growth leader who’s tired of doing “stuff” with no clear purpose or payoff - this one’s for you.

💡 What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

✅ Why most property marketing fails
Rebecca breaks down why generic content, weak messaging and surface-level “strategy” don’t deliver - and how to fix it by aligning brand, voice, and purpose.

✅ The role of empathy in strategy
Marketing that works makes people feel something. Rebecca explains why understanding your customer’s mindset and pain points is critical, and how emotional intelligence should underpin everything from brand tone to lead nurture.

✅ How to stop being reactive
Too many agents are stuck in a “do more, post more, hope for more” cycle. Rebecca introduces tools and frameworks - like 12-week planning - to shift from chaos to clarity.

✅ Culture and marketing are connected
Your team, tone and client experience are part of your marketing - whether you like it or not. Rebecca explains why aligning internal culture with external messaging is essential for long-term trust.

✅ Metrics that matter
Forget vanity. Rebecca shares what agents and suppliers should really be measuring - from conversion and engagement to message recall and brand equity.

📣 Why This Matters for Letting Agents, BTR & PBSA Operators

In a crowded, fast-moving market, standing out takes more than logos and listings. It takes strategy, substance, and storytelling.

Rebecca’s insights help letting agents, marketers, and industry leaders:

• Stop guessing and start planning
• Create content that actually converts
• Become the trusted voice their audience turns to
• Connect brand values to commercial results

This is marketing that doesn’t just look good - it works.

👂 Who Should Tune In?

• Letting agents aiming to grow smarter, not louder
• BTR and PBSA providers shaping premium customer journeys
• PropTech founders building scalable, human brands
• Suppliers and consultants ready to stand out and stay relevant
• Anyone ready to make marketing central to their growth plan

Transcript

Hi, good morning everybody and welcome to the latest episode of the Viking chats podcast and I'm delighted to be joined today by Rebecca Nixon Rebecca. Hello. Thanks for having me on. Well, thank you for joining me from the the tundra's of the Welsh country sides. those watching, this is not an AI backdrop, those are real stone built walls in the background. Rebecca, so tell us a little bit before we get going and we start diving into stuff, for those who haven't come across you before, you give us a little bit about who you are and kind of your journey to where you are and what you do now. Sure. So my background is in tech startups and in general, B2B SaaS marketing. I've been working in that field for 16, 17 years now. I've been specialising in the property sector since 2019. At the moment, my focus is on prop tech startups and their clients in the sector, helping them market their businesses effectively and with a real focus on ROI. I was in London from 2011 to 2020 and since then I've moved out to a small holding in Wales which is a very different pace of life but I stay very connected to the space in London and often travel around the UK to meet with clients and their clients and their clients. Yeah I think the last time we saw each other in person I think was Kefuffelkot. That's right. Yeah. By the shy and retiring Mr. Simon Wales and the really needs to learn to get out of his out of his box and really, he needs to stop being so timid and you know, just just let loose a little bit. I think so. Anyway, enough about him. He gets talked about too much. So, so let's dive into marketing. We were chatting about this before. And I was saying I'm I'm I'm kind of fascinated and disappearing down a bit of a rabbit hole that is marketing because there's so much to it. There's so many layers to it. And so something we touched on just briefly before we jumped on the call and we can talk about all aspects of marketing. It's kind of, yeah, like I said, I'm disappearing down this never-ending rabbit-warrant of marketing ideas and thoughts and concepts. But where I wanted to kind of start is looking at a lot of your work. Like you said, you work primarily with PropTechs, typically in the residential or property space. A couple of the ones you're working with at the moment, just the listeners, in case they know you're involved with Ask Binnie in Casapay. I know, so you were involved with Ask Binnie and you're still involved with Casapay. So a couple of brands that people should recognize and resonate with at the moment. But yeah, one thing I want to talk about. So in agency, there's a lot of talk about the person, about the customer, about the individual, about the service, which anyone who knows base, our agency, will know that's absolutely a core part of any marketing message. But as I touched on before we jumped on the call, the lettings industry is getting increasingly kind of professionalized. And obviously we've got the Renters Rights Act dropping in next, well, it's in place now, but dropping in over the coming months. And what we're typically seeing in the market is a growing focus towards portfolio landlords to a much more professional and business-minded approach. And so I'm really interested to hear kind of your thoughts because I feel like lettings is slowly kind of moving from a kind of B2C business to customer or consumer marketing channel to more of a B2B market, which is where your expertise really sits. And yeah, just really kind of keen to hear your thoughts around that and with that in mind what are the kind of key differences between those approaches between marketing to a consumer and marketing to a business? Sir a huge question. It is a huge one. I've not started delicately. No no it's fine. Who are you And now just answer what is marketing? Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, I can start by saying what it isn't and what it is. And making things look pretty or running loads of campaigns, spray and pray advertising. For me, fundamentally, the core isn't always has been understanding who your customer is and where they're at as the number one priority. But then the next step, which takes you from a great provider into being a great marketer, is knowing how to communicate that to new potential customers and to keep that feedback loop going. I think what happens so often, and it's true across, I think, all of B2B as a general rule, people get caught up in checkbox exercises and product features or really quite dry mundane things that at the heart of them are really important. Yeah. So for example, you meant you mentioned Brent has rights. Now, what's the first picture that comes into your head when someone mentions that legislation. What's the first picture? Paperwork. Stacks of paper. I mean, we've written digitised, but it's a mental image, stacks of paper. Yeah, yeah. So, how does that relate to people? Because stacks of paper in and of themselves, if they're just sat in a warehouse somewhere, aren't meaningful in any way, shape or form. But what if they're on somebody's desk. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. What that then means, overwhelm. Yeah. I've got a vision of kind of an image of a landlord sat at a table surrounded by stacks of certificates and compliance reports and everything else and yeah. And on the consumer's side, you might get a much sad image of a sick child, which has sort of triggered a lot of these sorts of discussions. Yeah. wasn't in private sector, but the point being that when we talk about these issues and the sort of technical aspects of the legislative aspect, things that actually really hit home to people are people and how they are affected as individuals. And that is something that is true across every sector. And the thing that I found most in B2B is that those elements tend to get pushed to the background. And what tends to come to the foreground is we increase your efficiency by 26%. And therefore your ROI will be greater. And people are like, everyone's saying the same thing, you know, transparency, efficiency and compliance. And what does that mean to the human being on the other side of the screen? And if you can communicate that and connect with that, they're actually going to give a shit when you start talking to them about all because you still have to get that across. You still have to get all the detail and technical and professional aspect across. That is beyond important. But to open the door in the first place, it's actually an emotional step that needs to be taken. Yeah and I think, I mean what leads up from me from also what you're saying is that kind of understanding of your audience and segmenting of your audience right because that 26% efficiency ROI is a I would consider wearing a supplier hat a very kind of corporatized message that is that's a message that will resonate really with a tiny number of clients yes potentially your big win clients but when you look at the marketplace, like you said, actually, with a lot of people, that's not, you know, your average agent is one to three branches. Of course, all owners, directors, decision makers obviously want to know that they're getting value for money. But are they utterly focused on some flippant methodology of ROI. Not really. I mean, I would argue, like you said, with most medium to smaller agencies, it's does this make their compliance easier and more robust? You know, does it enable their team to have more capacity, whether that's to do more business, or to nurture the personal side of the business, the relationships. I think something we talk about with depository a lot when we're talking to clients is job satisfaction. We talk about, and again, because that's a big focus in our industry, right, is we feel like we're losing the interest of young people coming into the industry. There's a lot of talk about you know, the fact that we're struggling to attract what the talent we would like to see coming into the industry. And you have to, you need to start asking why. And, you know, a lot of young people, they don't suffer falls. There's a lot of, there's a lot of strong thoughts on a lot of the attitudes of younger people. But, you know, they, they, whereas many of us have sat and done really dirgey, menial jobs, particularly early on in our careers, where we're just like, I feel like a software could do this better than me. Whereas we just sat there and quietly were like, oh, fine. You know, they would just be like, why am I doing this? AI can do this in like 10 minutes, and it's going to take me half a day. And I'm just going to hate my life. And yeah, they just, they you know they in that respect they just kind of don't suffer falls and equally you know those of us who've been in the industry long enough I mean some of our some of the loveliest comments we've had as people who've done are done the job that we're that we're overhauling the years and just accepted the fact that that is the status quo that is the way it works you do it in this method. There are no shortcuts. There are no, you know, and it is probably the least enjoyed part of an entire letting agents job is the concluding of tenancies and the reconciling of deposits. I mean, my God, it just sounds so sexy, doesn't it? And, you know, some of the loveliest comments we've had have been experienced property managers going, oh my God, like, this has changed my life, especially the cynics. I love the cynics who were like, "Being there, done it, thought this was another kind of plaster for a cut I didn't have." And then all of a sudden they realized that actually there are a lot of friction points in there and software can change that. And yes, we get comments like, "Oh my god, I finally feel in control of my day and on top of my day," and that does lead into mental health and everything else. But but one of the nicest things we get back is the fact that we're just getting rid of the dirge You know people going oh my god. This is just The task that I dreaded coming into every day that task that I wake every morning go Gotta chase that tenant, but uh, you know, whatever it is Yeah, it's interesting those those softer things in the market tend to be the things that resonate with the agent and the things that really tie them into the product. And kind of the feedback that come back to us that that's yeah, they kind of feel like the bigger wins in a way. Yeah, something that I've had to learn throughout my career and as I've got older, I've become a lot more confident in saying is just because something seems soft or emotional doesn't mean that it isn't exceedingly powerful. In fact, sometimes the real opposite true. Connecting with people on an emotional level is deeply important. The reason, and it's all about asking why. Yeah, so why does it matter that you're getting rid of the dirge? Because it makes people miserable. It screws up their mental health, it ruins their day, it saps their motivation. Well, why does that matter? Well, because people want to enjoy their work and they want to be focused on the things that do matter. Well, what's that? Connection, community, where does job satisfaction come from? Come from spending. Happy customers, right? Yeah, solving problems. You know, just even if you reply to a restaurant, you go into a restaurant and all the staff are miserable as hell. You're not going to have a good dining experience. No, even if it's no matter how delicious the food is, if you've got someone slapping that food down and, you know, versus that joyous enjoyment of people really loving what they do and genuinely loving what they do. Yeah, people enjoy and they get that through connection with other human beings, through doing things like problem solving, through being creative. So the reason that getting rid of monotonous and quotidian task matters is because of that. So we can talk all day about how all of these great solutions are are coming in that solve that problem. But the reason people will buy them is deeper than that. And it's an emotional reason. And that's great. Like we're emotional beings. That's wonderful. Let's just embrace that and be really honest about it. And for estate agents, going into a more professional way of working means understanding what those professional criteria are and all that translates into real life value for their customers. So I read a really interesting story recently. I was talking to an estate agent and he was sending me over some customer stories because I was like, tell me stories about your customers because your website says literally nothing about any of them. And one of his agents who's actually quite junior said, and there's a lady called June who was trying to sell her house. She was a little old lady and it was a great house. There's nothing wrong with it. But the decor. Yeah. Little old lady decor. Yeah carpets in the bathrooms, all that kind of stuff. Yeah and they try, they're like it's fine, we'll put it through AI and people can see what it might look like. It didn't work. And then they walk through the door and go oh, oh, I've got a quote Elaine Penhall from Lemon and Lime that we just pushed her episode live on Monday. Got a great line in that which I got her to repeat from the Voice of the Age in conference. And yeah, she was like the trouble with AI, trouble with tarting a property up on AI when the property isn't different is that, you know, you've got that misconceived perception. And she was like, and I think it's one of her team who actually coined this phrase, but it's like creating an amazing trailer for a really shit film. - Yeah. - And I think it's just the best thing. We've all seen that, right? We've all seen those trailers for movies where like, oh my God, this looks like the best movie ever. And you go on Netflix or whatever, you go to the cinema and you get like 20 minutes in, you're like, this isn't what the trailer said it was gonna be. - Yeah, but the solution that I found was really interesting was this agent was like, okay, Well, we know a local decorator. We know that this woman doesn't have a lot of money. Okay, we can't afford to redo the bathrooms or the kitchen or anything like that. But what if you can repaint it? Just repaint it, interior, light, fresh colors. - Declutter a bit. - Declutter a bit and just make it look a bit fresher. - Yeah. - I mean, that's 30 minutes of extra effort for the agent. and the decorator was able to come in and sort it out and the property sold within a few weeks. This lady really needed to sell her property. She was getting on, finding it really hard to manage the property, wanted to downsize massively and go live near her kids and cook like that and now she can. And that's the kind of, so you can say we've got five star reviews on TrustPilot. Our customers love us. We have 10 out of 10 customer satisfaction. I don't want to hear about that. I want to hear about June. - It doesn't mean anything, right? 'Cause every agent's saying that, right? It's, you know, we have this talk a lot with fellow agents, you know, with base multi-award winning and reviews and all this sort of stuff. And it's like, yeah, I mean, they're all true messages, but there's a lot of agents putting out the same message. And what does that mean? - Yeah, our world is actually touching human lives. If you can take that and find a way to share that appropriately with your audience. Because people talk a lot about channels when you talk about marketing. They talk about email, websites, socials, videos, what channels, what formats. We need to have this, we need to have that. And my way of working is, don't even listen to any of that noise yet. Let's start with your customers. Who are they? Let's understand them and get their stories. And then once we know what they are, we can translate that into messaging out across whichever channels are the most appropriate but you need to get to it. Story telling is is non-existent in the agency world. Yeah it really really is. He's such a dearth and agents are starting to grasp it but I love Tom Durant DCTR group because he's really trying to shake, he's really trying to get the property entity to wake up. We've got to break out of this thing of all of us messaging the same way. Yeah, and like I said, if it's not reviews and awards, it's a property mark membership, or it's look at the house we've sold next door, or look how much stock we've got, How many boards we've got a looker off fleet of cars or you know, and let's chuck in that one that no agent uses free appraisals I mean fuck does anyone charge for an appraisal? I'm really intrigued what would happen if an agent actually did a campaign where they were like We don't do free appraisals Because our knowledge is so fucking good. We don't give it away for free So if you want us to come and give you a marketing appraisal for your property do 150 quid I'm fascinated. I wonder what would happen. Probably no one would touch you with a barge pole. But I'm just like, it is the go-to of every agent. And I think also, as agents, we get-- and again, let's say sales, we get really, really frustrated with the fact that our clients often don't grasp where we really add value. That's because we're really shit at conveying where we add value. So, and I think this is true of sales and lettings. Of course, in a very simplistic view, a client appoints you to find a buyer. But as agents, what we know in both sales and lettings is actually the finding the buyer or the tenant point. It's actually probably one of the simplest bits. In most instances, you price it right, you market it right, you put it on a portal, you're going to get that chunk of inquiries. And if you nurture them properly, you should get an offer out of it. It's all price-to-write strategy. But whilst that is the focus, whilst you need a tenant or a buyer to facilitate the transaction, what we know as agents is actually the effort required to do a viewing and secure an offer. In the entire transaction, is maybe 5, 10% of your effort. And everything else you do from with sales, I would argue that a good sales agent, there's a lot of work up front. That's where good sales agents really deliver their value is the marketing advice, you know, a data led marketing advice, but also the property due diligence onboarding, getting that property not only ready for marketing, but ready for a sale so that when you've got a buyer, you're not losing the first six weeks catching up on paperwork that could have already been done. But lettings, talk about compliance. Lettings, I think the marketing bit for most letting agencies, just get it online, we'll get some tenants. Then when you get a tenant, that's when the hard work kicks in. Doesn't need a property license, it's got gas safety, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and that's increasing. As agents, we get really frustrated that our clients don't understand that's where the real value comes from, but equally, we do a really shit job of educating our clients generally, and I talk about it as an industry, we do a really bad job of educating them, because what we do is I feel we default into reinforcing messages that frustrate us, right? So, let's take the bull in the corner, right move, let's talk about this. The number one thing that agents equally love to love and hate in equal measure. And I would say, particularly from a sales view, probably the greatest frustration of most agents is this perception that right move is an essential part of selling RightMove kind of does the heavy work. You put a property on RightMove and RightMove goes, "Ha-ha!" Here are your buyers and everything else is easy peasy. And estate agents get frustrated with that, but then you go onto an agent's marketing and you will look at, oh, you know, they'll have, if you're lucky, they'll have a section about marketing. But you go to their marketing page and what does it open with? All of our properties are listed on RightMove and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Cool, have RightMove. If you really feel it's necessary, if that is something you get asked on on vows, and again, listen to your audience, 'cause I have to say our experience being a letting agent in London, right, it doesn't come up. It's not a question on an appraisal. - Back to speaking to your customers to begin with, right? So if you are approached, let's just make somebody up, for example, by a homeowner who wants to rent out their property. - Yeah. it feels to me that that conversation usually starts with what's the property like, how many bedrooms, what's it look like, what do you think you can get for it? (humming) I would encourage people to consider asking questions that are more open-ended. Like that's really-- - Why are you renting it out? Yeah. - Why are you looking to rent it out? What's going on in your life that's changed? - Yeah. Because if you can understand where a person is coming from, you'll understand their priorities. I don't think they give a shit about right move. I think they care about either getting it sorted fast with all drama, or they care about making sure that the property goes to a lovely family who will take really great care of it, or they care about actually just getting as much money in my own bank account as possible. I'm doing this because I've got place right now. So first-- - And what is it they're looking for from an agent? - Yeah. - You know, this is the other thing, like understanding what they want from an agent, because, you know, if we get a landlord contact us, and actually they really clue that, and they're super hands on, and they're just looking for an agent to kind of slap it on the market and bring them some tenants. For us, that's not, as I said, base, that's not gonna swing it. That's not the landlord we're looking to serve. We're gonna be way too expensive 'cause we don't rein in what we do. We don't, yeah, we can use our service and our fees to align with that. Equally, if you've got a landlord who's a newbie or they've been burnt, which is a very common thing for us, we have a lot of landlords who either themselves or through a poor choice of letting agent end up in a really sticky situation. at our front door. Now those are the landlords we can help because what they want is they want that safety and security of knowing that it's done professionally and properly and compliance is in hand. Quite often also they just want to know they're dealing with an agent where they can send an email and they all pick up the phone and someone answers and has a chat or replies, you know, same-ish day. - Yeah. - On the urgent need for you. - Very beginning of the customer relationship here is you are helping them to articulate what it is that they want and need from you. Missing piece very, very often is once you've provided that service or started providing that service, going back to them and checking in against the criteria that they themselves set and say, - Okay, you said this, this, this, this, and this is the most important thing to you. How do you feel we're doing on each of those? Let's talk through those. Have any of these changed? Are there things you need to add? Like get that feedback from them because when they start talking, first of all, if there is any negative feedback or things that need to change, you're proactively addressing them. - Yeah, and shut up and listen, right? Is the really important bit here? Just shut up and listen and let them talk, even if they're like, "Oh, I wasn't too happy about this. Don't try and defend it or push back." Just shut the fuck up and listen. - Yeah, so get all of that. And anything positive they have to say, you need to be capturing that and then using that as the basis for your marketing. Because the chances are that whatever worked for them and made them like you is gonna be exactly what somebody else will like you. and using their words and their experiences as real life examples goes so much further than trying to generalize everything. So keep it specific and personal as much as possible and then scale up from there. Make it part of your processes far too often it's, oh, you know, Rebecca, can you come in and gather custom testimonials? Well, yes, of course I will because that's gonna be the first thing I do before I launch. - What are you gonna do with that? But every time you onboard a new customer, what's your process for getting a testimonial from them further down the line once you're actually serving them and checking in with them on a regular basis? Because that's not just marketing, that's also retention, customer support, relationship management, it's absolutely vital if you want to actually grow your business. - And I think, look, and I think interestingly with lettings, We talked to this before. I do think we're entering a new phase of the PRS and we're going to see more and more portfolio landlords. We're going to see more landlords taking a far more business-like approach. The risk is just getting too great in the legislative landscape with the Renters Rights Act coming in. I think you're right, you've still got that kind of soft messaging, that the things that resonate. But I think in lettings as well, I think as letting agents, we get really worried we're gonna bore people. We get really worried that if we talk about all the technical stuff that we know and we do, people are gonna be bored. And so we kind of steer away from it. But at the end of the day, it is the best way to convey your expertise and your knowledge. Mm-hmm. And you know, I know some agents worry about oh, you know if I share XYZ then why are they gonna use me? Look you this is this is no secret, you know, you go out there if you go on to YouTube and Google how to sell my house You're gonna find 50,000 videos I'm telling everything about how to de-cut her and how to make it look a pretty and how to drop it in AI to tweak it afterwards the words and how you can do this all yourself and you know people who are inclined to do things themselves are going to do things themselves like if they come to your website and find some great information that the best you can hope for is that they take your advice they go off and do it themselves and they come back and go oh my god this advice was mega maybe they share it in a sell by yourself whatsapp group or facebook group or whatever great fine you are never going to get those clients in the first place but what you're building is an incredible authority that goes shit these guys actually know that stuff because we've followed their blueprint and it works and I think you know people like Perry Power have been really good and kind of were like front runners at that but yeah it's so technical and there's so many elements I think we we worry about boring people we worry about the fact that if we share all of this knowledge people are going to take all that knowledge and cut us out of the loop. But I think we need to embrace that. We need to embrace that kind of inner geek. I think in lettings it's so process driven and the more it gets legislated, the more it gets regulated, the more those processes come in. Again, lean into it. You can still have a personality. You can still, like I said, you can still have the the software messaging as well, or you can just apply some of that context to how you frame your more technical stuff. But if you don't educate your clients on everything that you do, you can't really get frustrated with clients or prospective clients not understanding where your value is. Yeah. Well, also being parent about the work involved can sometimes be enough to close a sale as well. And this happens with me because people will often come to me for marketing advice. I actually had an experience about six months ago now where somebody, we won't say who it wasn't anyone connected to us anyway, but somebody hired me to do a project and It was against my better judgment because I don't tend to work in this way. And I was like, I don't feel like this is going to work, but they really want this. They really want me to come in and do an audit and come up with a plan for all of the work that needs to be done. And I did that. And I mean, I fricking hammered at this. I worked so hard at this and provided them with this. Audits, priests, you've just gone through it with untrained. But it was also an action plan. It wasn't just, it was, here's exactly what you need to do. Here's how you do it step by step. - Yeah, here's your six to 12 month roadmap. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was, and they took it and they were like, this is the worst thing that has ever happened. (laughing) - Why? Because they were really upset because it told them all the shit they weren't doing. - They threatened me. Like it got really nasty. And I was like, I don't understand because. - So they threatened you with what? - Legal action. about what? - I know, it got thrown out as soon as they, it was... - Because did they tell you with criticizing them for what they weren't doing or? - Essentially, I went through this process with them where we audited everything and came up with a plan and I kept going back to them throughout the process. Right, here's where we're at. This step, this step, have a review, check in, check in, check in, keep you aware. And throughout the whole process, every time I got on a call with this person, their face seemed to drop a little bit more. And I should have taken that as a massive red flag and gone, hey, I feel like you're finding this a bit overwhelming. Marketing can be really overwhelming. Do we need to take a pause so that you can take some time to go over all of this with your team and see if it's even worth us progressing? But they were adamant that they were gonna be able to take this and run with it and implement it They didn't need any help from me or anyone else. They just needed somebody to come in, fix it, give them a program and then off they go. And I did that for them and they were like, well, this is at least a full time job for one person. Yes. Yeah, that's why marketing managers exist. I've even given you a scope to help you pick the right person. I've given you three different options for how you can get the talent you need and how you can do different costs so that you can manage. If you're not doing all that marketing stuff, it doesn't, it didn't have to be a full-time person. I mean, to deliver what you set out in whatever your roadmap was, six to 12 months, it might need a full-time person. But it's like, cool, you're not willing to make that commitment. All right. So hire a full-time person or commit X amount of resources and do this over three years. Take your time. Yeah, totally. And I even gave them a DIY handbook in case they just wanted to do it themselves without hiring anyone in. and they were absolutely horrified at the amount of work. They were like, this is completely unrealistic. We're not going to be able to do it. And I was just like, well, I did talk you through all of this from the very beginning. And I think-- - I'm so mystified with that reaction because I'm just kind of like, 'cause we, like I said, we're going through this process at the moment. We've had Unchained do an audit of bass. And it's really, it's coming back to marketing. I've been talking to a few agent mates recently about this. And I've been like, oh, you know, as I said, you were at the start of the call before we jumped up. We've never done marketing properly. We've done something. We've done what a lot of businesses do, which is just a radic kind of throwing stuff at the wall, less kind of copying what other people do. I tend to lean more into the creative, but no strategy, no roadmap, no overarching goals and objectives. And as we know, if you don't have any of that, marketing without any of that is just flouncing around, like just whatever. - Yeah, that's what we're doing is that's okay. Sometimes you just need to do your best, try a bunch of things out. Like you'll never get someone like me come in and go, oh, you've done it all wrong. You're just spraying and praying, you're this, you're that. I'm like, hey, cool, you've done the best you can with what you have. Now let's put some strategy in place. And if there's anything you've done that worked already, great, we can reuse that and repurpose it. Like it's not a zero sum game. It's not all or nothing, but-- - And it's irrelevant to where you are, right? I mean, like marketing, even the biggest brands in the world with insane budgets and entire teams and networks of people still don't get their marketing bang on. I mean, they're pretty much there. So, you know, if you're running a one office agency with five star and 98% of their day is spent doing the day job. And I think this, you know, that's a very common situation in agencies that marketing is a side hustle. It's something that is squeezed in amongst the day to day things of an agency. There's very few agencies, smaller agencies, where there is anyone with any training experience or expertise working in that role. I think the default with a lot of agents is it's quite often quite a young member of the team who likes social media, or gets social media, whatever the fuck that means. And yeah. - It's a big talk, Christian. And the thing is, I've seen this happen in agency, I've seen this happen in pro-tech startups, I've seen this happen in startups, established businesses, big businesses, get someone young and who likes social media or someone young and who is interested in marketing. That person is gonna be fantastic. They're gonna have loads of energy, they're gonna do loads of work and none of it's gonna turn into any money for your business and you're gonna get frustrated at them and blame them for it. What you need is a strategy so that that person has direction clarity and guidance and leadership. But I think you're using that reaction you had with that mysterious company. I actually think, but I think you would get a similar reaction, maybe not with a threat of litigious action. But I think you'd get a similar reaction from quite a lot of agents. I think quite a lot of agents with default being quite defensive. I'm very open about, you know, except I've spoken to quite a few agency friends and, and, you know, I've spoken to the reason I've been like, you know, we've just, we've got to, we're sorting out our marketing. We've got to get our marketing right because our marketing for 20 years has been shipped. And pretty much every conversation has gone the same way, which is like, what do you mean shit? Your guys' marketing seems like, you know, you, you're kind of at the front in terms of like video and content or this and I'm like, yeah, we've only just kind of Abe and consistent about that the last year. So it only took us like 19 and a half years to figure that one out. And I was like, really all we've done the last year is that was our sole focus. 'Cause I knew that's what that was the skill we had to develop in order for us to take the next stage seriously, right? We had to get good at consistency and constantly delivering an array of content across an array of channels with some sort of overarching agenda. But I knew we couldn't, there was no point doing a brand order a year ago. It's like you said, sitting down and looking at what we've been handed now, and probably very similar to what you did with that company. It would have been so overwhelming. I think it would have just gone into like a saved folder in my inbox. And it would have given me like hives every time I thought about going to have a look at it. But what we knew coming so to reason the last year going, we've just got to get this right. We've just got and we're not going to get it perfect. We don't get it perfect. But in the last year, it's that we built the habits, built the habit routine. And so now that we've got the habit in the routine. Now we can start layering on that expertise, technical knowledge where we can kind of take what we're doing and start tweaking it and refining it to really get the results we want out of it. We've got good results in terms of we've had more fresh business inquiries in the last 12 months than we've ever had before. This year, inquiries has been up and what's really nice about that is it's like cool, that's great with us kind of winging it. So now if we can layer in this extra layer of expertise, then we hopefully double that again or you know or whatever it is but um but it is it you know it is terrifying I mean we've been handed three reports by Unchained we've got a real kind of snapshot brand overview which is kind of like a three or four page report which is literally just like this is the kind of instant impression of the brand and what you're getting right what you're getting wrong in the verticals, although they rarely use wrong. So areas of improvement or considerations. We've then got our technical report, which is focused really technically on our website. And that is a seven page report. And that is literally a list of entirely technical things that most agents should be honest, even me, it's a tech founder. I look at that and I'm like, get about half of this. But it is purely technical in terms of what we've got there is kind of, well, it's a to-do list, right? And whether we do it ourselves or whether we pay an expert to do it, we have got a list there and whether that takes us two weeks, two months or six months. We work through that list, we cross off those issues, we resolve those technical challenges within our website but they are literally just like you know bringing an expert plumber to do it. It is here is the list of things you need to do. Thank you very much. And then we've got the really daunting report which is the 31 page report which looks at everything from kind of how we run the business kind of entrepreneur like business mind insights kind of analytics of the business which is fascinating. And then some of the soft stuff and a lot more technical stuff about how we refine our content and hone it over the next six to 12 months. But it is overwhelming. It's a lot. It's a lot to take on. And a lot of agents find it really hard to admit the stuff that we're not good at. I don't think that's necessarily unique to agents. I think businesses as human beings we're not really great at being like I'm pretty shit at this and I mean marketing is an interesting one because I think some people think it is this kind of like you just have a flair for it but that might be what gets you into it in the first place it won't sustain a career Yeah. And so I think what helps in most of these situations, obviously I'm very biased because this is what I do, but you know, things like an audit or a report and those things are really, really useful. But when it comes to knowing what to execute on first and in what order, what to prioritize, how to get things and how to get your ducks in a row and get things ticking over in a sensible fashion. Getting someone involved who's very experienced has done this for a long time and will lovingly, nearly you're asked to the wall and the stuff that needs addressing. There are only fires that need to be put out. That's quite a sweet spot. And I, there are a lot of opportunities to work with fractional people. Because what I, a lot, and one of the reasons I went into the line of work I'm in is people need that strategic high level, very experienced expertise, but they don't need it at a six figure ironing price tag. Because we've not actually, we've talked in an overarching way about what you do, but I don't think we actually use the terminology of a fractional CMO at any point in the early discussion about you. And I think that's a really important thing to come back to. And this was something that I would often feel when I would go to industry conferences, you know, and I've used this example before, but I remember I went to a property mark one, I don't know, about 10 years ago, and they had the head of marketing for Lego on the stage during a talk about Lego marketing. I was like, 10% of my brain was like, ooh, the head of Lego, like, amazing, this guy, like, there's going to be some like amazing stuff to learn here. But the other 90% of my brain was like, yeah, I'm not sure my like four person office in Shoreditch with like the world's smallest marketing budget necessarily relates to one of the largest commercial successes in the world and where their marketing thing is now. And I think for a lot of agents because our sector is traditionally so small, let's not forget currently 80% of the market is one to three branch operations. I think a lot of agents, if they allow their business mind to kind of wander down this avenue, they're like, "Ah, okay, if we're going to do this, we need to do this properly." And then they look at what hiring either a full-time marketeer like sat behind a desk site in terms of content production and optimization and running campaigns or going big dog like you said having an onboarding a marketing director I think very quickly they get a width of like you said you know a CMO a quality CMO substantial six figure but also that person is going to have enough work to do at your business so I wouldn't want them even if you could afford them no exactly because they'll be sat with it. They're having a lot of fun. They're having a lot of fun keeping busy. A few hours a week to get things ticking over, to make sure that you stay track, to get systems in place for tracking everything, to upskill any members of your team who are able to execute on things is a really strong way to go. It's not talking about bikes, right? And Like when you start drilling down into marketing and what is marketing, the more you start talking about your business, the more you realise that literally everything from your letterheads to your language to the navigation on your website to everything, how you conduct yourselves, how you dress at an evaluation or at an event you're hosting, whatever, it all feeds into it. And again, And I think for agents that feel so overwhelming. So like you said, having someone retained, who you know knows their shit, who like you said, does a few hours or a day a month and just goes cool. So last month I gave you X, Y, Z to put in place over the last 30 days, where are we? Cool, we've done 80% of what I said, just get a little bit better at this. And now here's your kind of tasks for this month. - Yeah, exactly. - Whatever it is. - Make sure it's all working, yeah. - Stop guessing. Stop guessing what's gonna work. Stop throwing shit at the wall and hoping something's gonna stick. Stop thinking portals are marketing. They're inquiry generation. And also typically from a customer level, not a client level. I don't know many agents that get good client leads from any of the portals. But yeah, I think it's so overwhelming. I think we're constantly talking about our industry wanting to be considered a profession. There's a lot of talk about Roper and the regulation and the professionalization and the raising of perception of our industry. We're really bad at practicing what we preach. - Yeah. - We're really good at being like, oh, you need it. You can't sell a house yourself. You need an expert to sell your house. You can't let a manager property to yourself. You need an expert to let a manager property to yourself, which is absolutely bloody true. You're not the best results. But then you've got to apply that same logic within your business. If you don't know shit about marketing, you're not the right person to deliver marketing. You might be really good at delivering action plans. You might be really good at following a framework. In fact, that's ideal, right? That's what you ideally want to be, or you want to ideally identify those people within your business. 'Cause they're actually probably the people that are gonna deliver your marketing effectively, not because they're creative, not because they're incentivized by seeing the company grow, but just because they're really fucking good at having a weekly schedule and going, Right, now I write today's blog about this. Now I'm doing this month's newsletter. Now I'm generating this month's reviews that we're gonna share across our socials. That is just delivery and execution, right? - Exactly, yeah, so it's all there. It's probably within the team, but getting a bit of support with making sure that those things are implemented in the way they need to be and are as effective as possible. And being tracked and yeah, making sure you sticking to the strategy. that's where the help comes in. - Yeah, I think we've just got to feel a lot more comfortable with what we don't know. - Don't be afraid to ask for help. The worst case scenario is you get someone in who's an expert and you find that their help maybe isn't exactly what you were looking for. Well, so what? They're fractional anyway. They've got a 30 day notice to scare them away. - Look, there's no difference to an agent. There's no different to a consumer having five agents come in and value and go, I think that's the best one. Yeah. And we know 50% of the time they're wrong. That's right. Right. We know 50% of the time they're wrong and that may or may not be the agent's fault, but and equally we've all hired staff who we think are going to be fantastic at XYZ. And it turns out they're not. Sometimes they're good at a different role than the business and you pivot and sometimes they're just not right for the business. But to get better at stuff, you've got to admit what you don't know, right? You've got to admit what you're not good at and what your areas of ignorance are. And I think, like I said, marketing is just so, it's so broad. Like literally every time I'm talking to you, I'm talking about marketing, my brain is just like. And it's and there is no perfect marketing strategy, right? there is like every marketing strategy like it's as good as it is on that given day because you know the next day of pivots the messaging changes the legislation changes the product comes to market whatever it is um yeah so so look let's let's pivot this into some more kind of direct advice now so If you're an agency director, owner, leader, whatever, and you're watching this and you're like, do you know what? You're right. We need to start having a plan. We need to figure out, you know, if we wanna get from where we are now to where we wanna be in three years time, we need a marketing strategy for that three year journey. How do you recommend agent goes about looking for seeking out the right person that's going to work for them. Obviously, they're going to reach out to you. But in a broader sense, what do those early stages of what would I call this? Kind of a marketing awakening or a realization. I think because so many agents do find it so overwhelming and it is intimidating to pay someone to be basically like, tell us how shit we are please. Oh yeah yeah, so you can edit this right? I mean sometimes. Because eight for another call. So I'll try and be as succinct as possible. The first thing you need to do is before you talk to anyone about marketing, talk to your customers, particularly the ones who are really happy with you and get their feedback and start collecting that in written and/or video form. Then what you want to do is think carefully about how you can disseminate that. Now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to provide a free downloadable PDF with this podcast episode, so you can download that. There's a bunch of really practical steps that you can take to start scoping. Yeah, I think agents would love to know what of those questions they should be asking their customers. Yeah, so that will help you get that started and then when it comes to implementing a process, I would say ask around your network for people who've done marketing strategy, have a look on LinkedIn for people who have effectively told these stories before and helped build real results for businesses and engage with them and start off small. Don't go in with a great big overwhelming project or a huge six month, 12 month contract. Go in month to month, one or two touch points a week, start get the ball rolling and just see what happens. And finally, the fixes, right? Like I said, you know, we're focusing on technical stuff because it's just this shopping list of things we can deliver. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And actually, the nice thing is that once off, there's a shopping list, fix these things done. I'm aware that you are late for a call so we're gonna let you go. I've absolutely loved this chat. Loving the fact we're gonna have the guide. So I will give you a heads up. Probably drop this episode in a couple of weeks. I will give you a heads up when we're coming up to that just to make sure we line up those resources. Thank you so much for your time today. Definitely need to get the wife and kids booked in to come and hang out with you guys and and do some hands-on gardening and chicken parenting and then talk marketing. (laughing) Over an evening meal. Thanks for the time, hon. And yeah, talk soon. All right, all the best. - Okay, bye. - See you, bye. - Bye.