Turpie & Co wins national estate agency marketing award for its local and individualised approach.
MARKETING TEAM OF THE YEAR, THE NEGOTIATOR AWARDS 2013
West Lothian-based estate agent Turpie & Co has been recognised by its industry peers at a national awards ceremony in London. Turpie & Co of Bathgate was the only Scottish-based firm to win one of the 23 national award categories. The firm lifted the coveted national title of Marketing Team of the Year at The Negotiator Awards for ‘innovative and stylish’ marketing and ‘strong brand awareness’, with a strong local and individual focus. The judging panel included representatives from the Property Ombudsman, Zoopla and the National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA).
Speaking of the win, Managing Director Craig Turpie said: “I was really pleased and quiteoverwhelmed to win such a prestigious award. Effective marketing has been central to the business capturing more market share in the dynamic and highly competitive West Lothian premium market. It’s been about really focusing on individuals and their motivations, and using a range of marketing channels and a properly structured social media presence to give customers that level of service and interaction that they are now looking for around the clock. It’s all light-years away from the old estate agent image of the guy who just puts up a board and takes a few pictures!”
From the outset, Turpie & Co was determined to create a premium estate agency on people’s doorsteps. As Craig Turpie says, he and his staff were driven by the belief that people deserved the highest standards and that each property sold by the firm would benefit from having a specific marketing campaign that made effective use of the latest marketing ‘channels’.
It’s funny how you get to win a national award by being local and individualised – but that’s really what every business should be.
Craig Turpie
Managing Director
As part of this, Turpie & Co set out to gain an understanding of sellers by interviewing them so as to get to the heart of why they had bought their property and what they had enjoyed about living in it and in the surrounding area. It was an approach that went far beyond the ‘traditional’ feature-based marketing of properties, trying instead to unlock people’s true motivations as owners/sellers and matching them to those of prospective buyers. As Craig explains:
“People who buy a property usually buy it for the same reasons that attracted the current owner or seller. Of course, once you have uncovered those motivations, you have to be able to communicate them – and that’s where the marketing skill and expertise of the team comes in. It’s also why we also use the skills of other marketing specialists to ensure we reach the right audience. Things have certainly come a long way from the days when an agent could tell a seller that a house would ‘sell’ itself.”
Turpie and Co was founded in 2008, at the start of the financial crisis. In Craig’s view, this has stood the firm in good stead, making it efficient and creative: the firm has grown year-on-year and has doubled its property sales in the past 12 months. It began as a home-based business and today, the firm employs some seven full-time staff, plus associates, and operates out of its high street offices on Edinburgh Road, Bathgate.
Like Turpie & Co, West Lothian has changed dramatically over recent years. The new railway stations at Bathgate and Armadale have seen significant investment with large, and small, companies setting up in these areas. This has also seen mass building of new houses, which in turn brings new people to the West Lothian area and an increase in population. Changes in market conditions have created new and higher expectations of service.
Turpie & Co is firmly focused on just what is happening in the locality. It’s why the firm has introduced a monthly e-newsletter, ‘Coffee Talk’, which shares not only property news but also forthcoming activities and events in the area and carries regular guest expert advice columns. The firm believes that this is what people are looking for: expert local knowledge of market conditions, coupled with customer service at a highly personalised level, which includes agent-accompanied viewings. People are increasingly asking for such viewings as they feel more comfortable having an open dialogue – and people who are new to the area can ask, and get answers to, a whole range of questions about the area in general.
In today’s property market, people want information on demand, and so the firm uses social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube as well as personal login accounts so that clients can see all activity relating to their property and individualised content. Feedback and communication are constant, reflecting people’s high expectations of service as delivered by leading high-street retailers.
