What Real Estate Agents Can Learn From Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Cognitive psychology can be a dry subject, but I (author of this article,
) dig into them occasionally, and often come out with creative ideas that can be applied to the marketing world.The Nobel Prize winning author Daniel Kahneman’s book titled Thinking Fast and Slow (New York Times Best Seller in 2011) offers valuable insight on how the human brain perceives information based on how it is presented, and I found several valuable points that can be applied to help our real estate agents perform better.
Lesson: Specific Examples and Numbers Trump Overall Statistics!
As real estate agents, how do you entice homeowners to trust you over the competition? How will your performance out-shine others?
Chapter 16 Causes Trump Statistics offers great insight on people’s perception on overall statistics vs individual cases. Take the following quote:
… even compelling casual statistics will not change long held beliefs or beliefs rooted in personal experience. On the other hand, surprising individual cases have a powerful impact and are a more effective tool…
These findings validate some of the design & messaging direction we have been taking when it comes to Realtor® marketing — instead of just presenting overall market statistics (which are a dime a dozen), we put more focus on individual success cases.
Concepts & Examples Of Focusing on Individual Case Studies
#1 —Showcasing a successful case study of a listing that an agent sold for a great price in a quick period of time! The above sample shows a website screenshot from Vancouver Real Estate Agent Devon Owen’s website that showcases a few successful North Shore home sales.
#2 — Showing off outstanding performance in sales success rate, sold to asking price ratio, and days-on-market against the rest of the city’s average! Fraser Valley Realtors® Houlihan Oryall Group showcase critical statistics which are key to their success and authority.
# 3— On our own website, we showcase case studies of successful traffic & lead increase results of our Search Engine Optimization campaigns. One such case study is about Nest Presales, a team specializing in Vancouver & Victoria presale condo/townhomes & assignments.
#4 — Results and stats oriented case studies published by one of the most successful marketing agencies, Major Tom. This case study examines the results of a months-long marketing campaign for Teck Resources to highlight copper’s antimicrobial properties.
#5 — Content designer & Easelly’s resident wordsmith Kai Tomboc has a blog article emphasizing the importance of infographics — a major component in conveying specific stats & figures.
Visual Elements Prompt Visitors to Spend More Time on Page
In a recent article on custom-designed webpage modules which drive engagement, we reviewed Google Analytics data to determine the impact of visual elements — pictures, videos, infographics — on bounce rate.
We found real estate websites which didn’t feature images on their services pages had an average 58% bounce rate. However, websites with images saw drastically lowered bounce rates. For instance, The Esposito Team’s bounce rate was only 23%! This represents a massive change in visitor retention just by using visual elements.
Avoid Reliance On General Statistics
It’s easy to fall back to the typical (and overused) stats:
- “Hiring a Realtor® gets you a 5% higher sale price than for-sale-by-owner”
- Spitting out average condo/house prices of a region
The research done by some of the top psychologists, as well as our results in on-page engagement, shows that specific and explicit case studies & examples make a bigger impact on the audience.
While this real-life statistics driven marketing approach may seem like a “duh” moment for many of us, carefully modelled experiments and studies that confirm the how and why the human psychology works this way is a great re-affirmation that we’ve been doing it the right way all along!
— Written by CEO
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