Voted the number one startup in the UK in 2015 by Startups Magazine, Purplebricks combines traditional estate agent service with a round-the-clock online platform, helping customers oversee the sale of their property at any time and from any place.
Buying and selling a home is a major life event that not everyone is comfortable with managing online. As more and more people learned about Purplebricks through search engines, Twitter, Facebook, TV adverts, and word-of-mouth, a new challenge arose for the Purplebricks team.
How could Purplebricks prove they can be trusted to sell peoples' homes?
The solution they found was surprisingly simple. Here’s how they did it.
Goal
To build a trusted reputation across every marketing channel that minimizes customer doubt and increases sales.
Work and results
Step 1: Build credibility
When the industry you operate in is considered a little untrustworthy, there will always be some cynicism around your reputation. To get around this, it’s critical that you empower your customers to build that reputation for you.
Purplebricks collected reviews with Trustpilot, adding the credibility of an open third-party website. They started collecting reviews in June of 2014 and quickly gained over 3,500 reviews, 86% of which are five star.
Step 2: Drive qualified traffic through paid search
In paid search, Purplebricks leveraged their reputation before customers entered their site by the adding Google Seller Ratings extension earned through Trustpilot reviews. By showing these gold stars in their paid search ads they saw an improved click-through-rate of 39%, driving more traffic to their site
Step 3: Back your reputation in organic search
What do potential customers find when they research your brand online?
For Purplebricks, a key benefit of having a large amount of customer reviews on Trustpilot.com is the credibility these reviews give their reputation in Google searches. This is especially important as “Purplebricks reviews” is searched more than 2,500 times every month. Since their profile page on Trustpilot.com ranks highly in organic search, it’s had over 235,000 impressions in the last 30 days.
With a 1.55% click-through-rate, 3,656 potential customers in the last 30 days have read genuine customer reviews of Purplebricks. This builds further confidence in the Purplebricks’ brand which helps convert those considering them into customers.
Step 4: Increase lead conversions onsite
Purplebricks continued to let their customers do the selling for them by incorporating Trustpilot reviews on multiple landing pages to increase visitors’ confidence and drive more leads. They also include their TrustScore in radio advertisements and at the end frame of TV ads.
Step 5: Build brand through social
Because they are an online estate agent platform, it’s important for Purplebricks to humanize their brand so prospective customers can relate to them. This makes social media a major focus and another important platform for leveraging reviews.
Purplebricks posts Trustpilot reviews on their LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google Plus channels. They also use Trustpilot’s Facebook app to automatically post reviews on their Facebook page, once again building trust with potential customers no matter what online channel they use to find Purplebricks.
Additionally, Purplebricks recognizes their employees on social media who are crucial to making customers happy. Since they tag their reviews to estate agents, they can Tweet at their employees, congratulating them when a customer leaves a positive review about their experience. This further backs up their reputation and humanizes their brand.
Step 6: Reward employees for excellent customer service
Finally, to help continue their focus on service, Purplebricks uses their customer reviews as KPI’s to rate and monitor individual Local Property Experts' performance. They do this by tagging customer reviews to Local Property Experts, which provides each individual with an overall TrustScore.
If a Local Property Expert receives a bad review, the Head of Customer Service is notified who in turn helps improve individual performance and rescue the unhappy customer. This system drives Local Property Experts to not just focus on quantity of sales, but on the quality of each customer experience. Individual Local Property Experts’ TrustScores are a crucial part of their performance reviews, and they also have competitions and incentives for employees with the highest reviews further rewarding good customer service.
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