Douglas Lyons and Lyons Case Study

Where it all began?

• Arjun met with the MD of Douglas Lyons & Lyons, Mr. Baz Rattan, in Aug 2016.
• Estate Agents in the world’s most expensive property market.
• Very competitive market with established brands and agencies.
• DLL wanted more visibility and more leads in this highly competitive market.

Where DLL were?

• Boutique Estate Agents for 55 years with virtually no online presence.
• Only walk-in and referral leads.
• DLL were feeling the pinch and wanted to explore and win in the online game.
• A dated website with irregularly updated listings and no content meant they did not come across as the leaders in the market.
• Ranked number 65 organically on Google.co.uk for Belgravia Estate Agents.
• No online credibility or authority as property agents in Belgravia.
• Did not have a paid Ad campaign running and therefore DLL were not visible for any searches whatsoever.

Challenges Were

• To get leads for DLL in the world’s most expensive property market which was obviously highly competitive with well established players.
• To increase visibility and establish DLL as “thought leaders” in the market. - To make the existing website look swanky & be more functional.
• To target 2 types of customers:
  • High net-worth customers looking to buy or rent properties in Belgravia.
  • Existing Belgravia landlords looking for an effective/trusted agent.

Our Strategy - Part 1 - Initiation

• We started by redoing the DLL website. Transformed the old yellow to a brand new crisp look, updated information and high-end backend systems to manage the website.
• Kickstarted a Google Adwords campaign targeting people looking to buy and rent property on one hand and landlords looking for a trusted agent on the other.
• Keywords like “property to buy in Belgravia”, “property to rent in belgravia”, “2 bedroom apartment under £X in Belgravia” etc. for people interested in buying or renting. - Keywords like “estate agents in Belgravia” and “estate agents in Knightsbridge” were used to generate instructions from landlords.

Achievements from Part 1 Strategy

• The adwords campaign straightaway started getting interested people to DLL’s website and the phone started ringing.
• DLL started seeing value in the campaign.

Our Strategy - Part 2 - Digging Deeper

• In order to stand out in a saturated market, we decided to find a way to get inside the heads of people looking for Belgravia properties.
• We identified the reasons why people look to buy/rent in Belgravia and what type of research is done by them.
• We divided Belgravia into over 200 different regions like “Kinnerton Street” and “Wilton Crescent” etc and started writing high quality content regarding these areas on DLL’s website.
• We also started writing articles about other general topics such as “Best schools in Belgravia”, “Where in Belgravia should you invest?”, “Heritage and Culture of Belgravia”. We referred to old historic texts and made the content genuinely interesting and unique.

Achievements from Part 2

• Part 2 of our strategy brought people looking for these internal areas to the DLL website and they started associating DLL as the expert in Belgravia.
• People at this level of research are highly qualified leads because they know what they want, what price for and where. Nurturing these people into reading high quality content was a big win.
• Over a period of time, DLL started emerging as the “thought leader” in the market. - A lot more people were visiting the website generating more interest and inquiries.

Overall Results so far for DLL (7 months)

• Top 5 rank on Google.co.uk organic for “Belgravia Estate Agents”.
• Top 3 snack pack map listing. - Continued success with “instruction” generation keywords on Google Adwords i.e. keywords targeting landlords via paid ads.
• Well established “thought leadership” campaign underway getting highly qualified, interested leads.
• Overall, we are generating way more leads for DLL and that too at a very decent price per lead.
• Our campaigns have enabled call measurement. We can track which calls are generated via Rightmove/Prime Location and which ones by our efforts.

Conclusion

Our campaign continues to build credibility via PR, reviews, citations for Douglas Lyons and Lyons with the aim of establishing them as the number 1 player in the Belgravia property market.