You may think a real estate business’s longevity is born from strong relationships and word-of-mouth referrals. These factors are important, but you must continually reinvest in your business to maintain market share and profitability.
The low barrier to entry for new real estate agents and agencies, coupled with the highly competitive nature of securing listings, means that even the most dominant agencies must avoid complacency. Continuous and strategic marketing is essential to remain competitive in an ever-evolving real estate industry. But how do you protect your position?
Capture each property’s history
Real estate principal Lachlan Elder of LJ Hooker Mona Vale and several of his staff have been serving Sydney’s Northern Beaches since the 1980s. They’ve experienced over four decades of property market cycles and seen the region evolve.
Since opening its doors, the agency has leased and sold more homes than any other real estate agency in its core suburbs. Not only do they know the history of the region, but they possess a comprehensive history of almost every property in Mona Vale and its surrounding suburbs, knowing each house, its builder, past owners, and current residents. They know more about the properties than the current owners!
This unmatched level of historical property knowledge sets LJ Hooker Mona Vale apart from its local competitors.
Support rather than compete with your agents
Lachlan has maintained an exemplary reputation. Not only is he a successful real estate business owner, but he has also helped mentor and finance several agents who worked for him to start their own real estate agencies in neighbouring suburbs.
Lachlan’s staff retention rate is also enviable, with more than 50% of agents having worked at LJ Hooker Mona Vale for more than 20 years, some 30. This is pretty much unheard of in our industry!
Their collaborative team culture provides an insightful case study on staying relevant and highly visible in an ever-evolving real estate industry. Let’s take a closer look.
Reinvest for real estate business success
Staying at the forefront in a competitive industry requires more than just experience and knowledge. As a team, LJ Hooker Mona Vale has consistently invested in innovative marketing and sales strategies to maintain their position as local real estate leaders. Their success is underpinned by a dynamic marketing strategy that goes beyond traditional approaches, leveraging multiple levels of support and visibility.
The agency’s marketing efforts are multi-tiered and spread across five levels, each contributing to its overall visibility in the local market:
Level 1: Corporate marketing campaigns
LJ Hooker Head Office plays a crucial role in supporting its local offices. Every quarter, the head office marketing team develops seasonal lead campaigns, which are run at a localised level, i.e. with the office name appended.
Each ad campaign is run through the Mona Vale office’s marketing accounts so that the office name benefits from the visibility, not the national brand. This means that while the campaign is part of a broader LJ Hooker brand initiative, it’s tailored to resonate with the Mona Vale market, ensuring that the office remains top of mind for local home sellers.
In a recent national lead campaign, LJ Hooker invited home sellers to enter a draw to win $30,000. The campaign was run over a period of 15 weeks, giving prospective sellers plenty of time to participate. Half of the prize money was allocated to a prospective seller who booked an appraisal, and the other half was allocated to someone that went one step further and engaged an LJ Hooker to sell their home.
Level 2: Office marketing
At an office level, LJ Hooker Mona Vale also invests in brand marketing with the support of our team at Hoole Marketing.
Rather than employing in-house marketing staff members who require a more costly ‘salaried approach’ to marketing resources, they benefit from a full team of marketers, creatives, and advertising executives who look after their office’s ongoing digital marketing. We liaise with the office manager for marketing budget approvals and one of the admin staff members, who is the conduit between the agents and the marketing team.
Through a combination of content marketing and lead-generation activities that discuss the local area in detail, from its lifestyle and the uniqueness of each suburb to the types and styles of properties and nuances of selling or renting homes in the area, the marketing messages are personalised to the office and its target market. There’s no generic messaging, so each subject carries the name of the region or the suburb and stands out in ad campaigns and social media feeds.
Below is a snapshot of weekly blogs that cover different topics aimed at people who are both active and passively interested in real estate. The content is relevant to people who reside in the area as much as those who might be thinking of selling or renting their home in the near future.
Next, we have videos that specifically discuss each of the different suburbs, including onshore and offshore homes on Sydney’s Northern Beaches. The beauty of video is that you get to meet and hear advice from agents before meeting them in person. This is perfect for homeowners in research mode, as it helps them decide who to call to conduct their property appraisal.
Every real estate professional wants leads, and LJ Hooker Mona Vale are no different. Leads are the lifeblood of any real estate business. Once local residents or property inventors have been ‘warmed up’ to your agency and trust your advice, you can go fishing for leads. A property market report is an excellent tool for capturing names, emails and phone numbers. This example report below yielded 6 high-quality leads per day whilst it was being run.
These are just a few examples of the real estate office marketing activities that we put in place for LJ Hooker Mona Vale.
Level 3: Agent marketing
When we first reviewed the office marketing messages, we noticed a distinct lack of faces from the business used in the office marketing. Many of the images were stock photos, and many didn’t depict the bush and beachside feel of the area.
So, in the same way, that the corporate marketing budget was invested at a local area level, supporting the Mona Vale office, the principal invested the office marketing budget in a way that would feature the agents, not just talk about the sales and property management services at a high level. The office marketing budget, therefore, benefits not only the owner but also the agents at an individual level.
Each agent within the LJ Hooker Mona Vale team also invests in their own personal marketing. This individual agent-driven effort further boosts the agency’s overall reach, allowing each agent to connect with their specific audience and build a personal brand while reinforcing the broader brand message.
Level 4: Property campaigns
There are many advantages to securing vendor-paid marketing, one of which is that each property campaign goes towards building the footprint of office and agent marketing across the neighbourhood. In the same way, the agent with the most signboards seems most memorable; with Australians spending on average 2 hours a day scrolling through social media, you have a better chance of being seen within these feeds.
One of the most effective tools the agency has implemented is property campaigns. These not only showcase the latest listings but also promote the agency itself. Property marketing campaigns, therefore, increase exposure and help drive leads to the agents.
Level 5: Community support & investment
Finally, the team at LJ Hooker Mona Vale are deeply invested in the local community. For example, Asha Kerr, an auctioneer and agent working in the team, frequently volunteers at charity auctions, and sale agents Joesphine Cowling and Kylie Segedin actively support local fundraising events like Lighthouse to Lighthouse, which raised over $160k for children’s cancer research. Other team members have long associates with club sports like surfing, sailing, soccer and rugby.
Taking an active role in local community events and club sports, team members have fostered their personal brands and become well-known with a reputation for giving back, which goes a long way toward helping them secure listings without the hard sell.
Why LJ Hooker Mona Vale turned to Hoole.co
Despite their long-standing success, LJ Hooker Mona Vale turned to Hoole because they recognised that outsourcing their brand marketing to a specialist real estate marketing agency would grant them access to the broad expertise needed to reinvigorate their brand messages. This enabled the creation of more strategic campaigns, helping the office and agents stay competitive in a rapidly evolving market.
First things first: develop your marketing strategy
We began our engagement with LJ Hooker Mona Vale with comprehensive research that helped us develop a new direction for their brand marketing strategy. The goal was to understand their marketing clearly and how they could better position themselves to retain and regain market share.
A key part of the process was understanding the local homeowner demographic. Mona Vale and its adjoining suburbs have a unique mix of affluent older residents, families, and a small proportion of property investors. Each prospective client has different needs and expectations. We identified the best way to communicate with each market segment.
We tailored the office marketing strategy to better reflect the agency’s unrivalled knowledge of the area and their team’s collective experience. Together we determined the overall goal was to refresh LJ Hooker Mona Vale’s marketing while preserving their rich history and deep local knowledge. Despite their decades of experience, we identified that they hadn’t fully capitalised on what sets them apart. One missed opportunity was not maximising the brand-wide catchphrase, “When you know, you know,” which perfectly encapsulated the unmatched local expertise of the Mona Vale office. This tagline emphasised their deep market knowledge and long-standing relationships, which needed to be more than implied – it had to be a central part of their narrative.
We integrated key brand elements – such as colours, logos, and visual styles – into their marketing templates to help make their marketing messages instantly recognisable. This alignment allowed locals to quickly associate social media posts with their office, reinforcing the message that LJ Hooker Mona Vale is part of a more extensive, reputable network.
Team-focus: the power of a collective
Another asset we identified as being under-utilised in the office marketing was their team members. Many agents had years of experience and were well-known in the area, yet their faces weren’t showcased online. The agency doesn’t operate under the typical structure where the principal is front and centre, with agents working as separate, smaller teams. Instead, Lachlan prefers to act as a mentor, shining the spotlight on his team rather than himself. His ideology has cultivated a strong, united team that works closely together, presenting themselves as individual agents and as part of a collective, experienced unit.
Lachlan’s approach shaped how we presented the agency’s marketing. Instead of positioning the agency around a single ‘star principal,’ we focused on the collective experience of all 18 agents, both sales and property management. Everyone in the office contributes to the agency’s success, and it was essential that their marketing reflected this unified, team-focused model.
We organised a team-wide photo shoot to create a comprehensive image library that highlighted all members of the LJ Hooker Mona Vale team. This enabled us to update their online profiles across all platforms, ensuring they reflected each agent’s unique approach but in a common tone of voice. In addition, we filmed a video series focused on the real estate market in the key suburbs they service, with each video featuring a different team member. These tactics showcased their collective expertise and helped personalise their interactions with local clients, making their digital presence more engaging and relatable.
Organising photo and video shoots for such a large group posed a challenge, but the team’s enthusiasm and willingness to participate made the process enjoyable and productive. It was a rare opportunity to present an agency as large as LJ Hooker Mona Vale as a collective, not a fragmented group of sub-teams and individuals. The group effort symbolised the agency’s family-like atmosphere and strong collaboration.
Realising the impact: how active marketing leads to sustained success
LJ Hooker Mona Vale’s decision to partner with Hoole is a testament to the importance of continuous marketing and branding efforts. Their story illustrates how even established agencies with solid market positions must remain vigilant and proactive in their marketing to maintain their edge.
Our collaboration has led to exciting developments in just a few short months, including brand revitalisation, successful lead campaigns, and increased visibility across various marketing channels. Their marketing now reflects their unique selling proposition.
When it comes to running a real estate business, standing still means falling behind. By prioritising its annual marketing spend, LJ Hooker Mona Vale remains at the forefront of both the industry and their local property market.
Ready to get professional marketing help?
If you’re a real estate principal who wants to take your office marketing to the next level, book a free 1-hour consultation with me, Melanie Hoole. I’ll give you on-the-spot recommendations specific to your business and show you how digital marketing can help position you as a local real estate expert and help you retain superstar agents. I look forward to talking with you.
Written by Melanie Hoole
My team and I specialise in helping real estate and property professionals perfect their personal brand, build a first-class digital profile and implement inbound marketing activities to attract leads. If you are unsure which direction to take with your digital marketing contact me for help.
