Weeks
Prepare and go to market, launch, review and refine, assess and adjust.
Section two
The weekly plan
for selling a home.
The Muvin 4-week marketing cycle. It is the plan for how a home is taken to market, and it has review points built into it so you can react quickly and keep momentum.
The marketing cycle at a glance
Portals
Rightmove, Zoopla and OnTheMarket, all live in week two.
Click-through target
Portal views as a share of portal impressions. Ten per cent or higher.
The price step
Where the price improvement strategy comes in, and not before.
Run the cycle on every instruction, from the day the media is finished. The review points are the part that stops a home drifting.
Section two · the cycle
Four weeks.
In order.
Prepare and go to market
Getting the home ready to launch. Everything that happens in the other three weeks rests on the media being finished first, so do not launch on a half set.
Before the home goes anywhere public, match it to the active buyer database and work those matches. That is the off-market week.
Then start the social campaign. Where the media fee includes a paid campaign, it runs as a paid, targeted campaign.
Week one
- The best photography and media complete, so the home is ready to take to market.
- Off market first: match the home to the active buyer database.
- Launch the social media campaign, paid and targeted where the media fee covers it.
Launch
Live on the major portals. The home goes up on Rightmove, Zoopla and OnTheMarket in the same week, so the first week of portal figures covers all three.
Go back to the database matches from week one and chase every one of them. A match that was not called is not a match.
Review the social campaign at the end of the week, so week three starts with the portal numbers rather than catching up on the social ones.
Week two
- Launch to Rightmove, Zoopla and OnTheMarket.
- Chase the database matches.
- Review the social campaign.
Review and refine
Reading the numbers. Pull the first week's Rightmove report and read the stats on it. The click-through rate is the one you check first.
If the click-through rate is lower than target, the advert is what you change. Go through the photo order, the headline and the description, and make the changes needed.
This is the week for the advert, not the price. The price step is week four.
Week three
- Review the first week's Rightmove report and stats.
- Click-through rate under target: review the advert.
- Photo order, headline and description, changed where they need it.
Assess and adjust
Keeping momentum. Read the numbers from the portals again, and put the viewing feedback next to them. Virtual viewings and full viewings both count.
Then the price step. If the click-through rate is the same or dipping after the advert changes, move to the price improvement strategy.
If the home is not yet at its sale-ready launch price, adjust it to the sale-ready price.
Week four
- Review the numbers again from the portals.
- Take the feedback from virtual and full viewings.
- Click-through rate the same or dipping: move to the price improvement strategy.
- Not yet at the sale-ready launch price: adjust it to the sale-ready price.
Section two · the measure
Click-through rate.
10% or higher.
One number carries the cycle. It is the number week three reads and the number week four acts on.
Click-through rate, 10% or higher
The click-through rate is the portal views divided by the portal impressions. An impression is the home appearing in somebody's search results. A view is that person clicking into it.
Ten per cent of the people who see the home in a search result should click into it. So on a Rightmove report, total views should be at least ten per cent of total impressions.
Below ten per cent, the advert is the problem before the price is. Enough people are seeing the home and they are not clicking, which is a photograph, a headline or a description doing the wrong job.
That is why week three reviews the photos, the headline and the description first, and week four moves to price.
The target
- Click-through rate of 10% or higher.
- Total views, divided by total impressions, times 100.
- Read it off the Rightmove report in week three, and again in week four.
A worked example from one Rightmove summary
| Device | Impressions | Views |
|---|---|---|
| Desktop | 16,677 | 519 |
| Mobile | 3,117 | 115 |
| Total | 19,794 | 634 |
634 views divided by 19,794 impressions is 0.032, which is a click-through rate of 3.2%. The target is 10%.
Ten per cent of 19,794 impressions is about 1,979 views. This advert produced 634, so it is at roughly a third of where it needs to be.
Do the same sum on your own report. Total views, divided by total impressions, times 100.
The figures above are one Rightmove summary, used to show the sum. Nothing about the property or what happened to it is part of the example.