The number every agent and principal should know

There is a conversation I have almost every week with prospective agents and principals who are thinking about their next move. They are performing. They are winning listings. Their marketing spend has gone up, not down, and yet the cost of being noticed keeps climbing and the return on every dollar feels thinner than it did three years ago. 

New research helps explain why. The Awareness Advantage study* analysed brand tracking data alongside advertising performance for brands across Australia and New Zealand. Its central finding is one every agent and principal should understand: brands known by 60 per cent of their market achieved 2.86 times the conversion rate of brands known by 20 per cent, at the same level of investment. Medium-awareness brands, at 40 per cent, achieved 1.48 times the conversion rate of low-awareness brands. 

In other words, awareness does not simply add to performance marketing. It multiplies it. 

What makes that finding particularly relevant is the metric behind it. The study found a correlation with conversion rates – a measure much closer to a real business outcome than softer engagement metrics such as advertising clicks. 

The study also found a tipping point at 37 per cent awareness. If your brand awareness sits below that figure, your advertising spend has to work harder to generate leads. Above it, the same spend goes further. Most independent operators are working well below that 37 per cent line and paying for it in every campaign they run. 

Translate that into our industry and it becomes very practical. A vendor deciding who to invite to an appraisal is running a conversion process. So is a landlord choosing a property manager, and so is a good candidate choosing an office. If the brand on the sign is already familiar and trusted, less of the work has to be done from a standing start. If it isn’t, the agent carries that cost personally in time, in discounting, and in enquiry that sometimes never arrives. 

This is why I am careful about how we talk about brand at LJ Hooker. Brand is not a logo exercise. It is a commercial asset sitting underneath every listing presentation, every lead and every recruitment conversation across our network. With LJ Hooker’s brand awareness at 95 per cent nationwide, our offices begin most conversations already well known, which changes the economics of everything that follows. 

That advantage shows up in the numbers. Across the past financial year, our digital marketing engine delivered close to 25,000 leads to offices across Australia and New Zealand, with Australian sales leads up 21 per cent year on year and property management leads up 31 per cent. Those are not just marketing metrics. They are appraisals, managements and settled outcomes that an individual office would otherwise have to generate on its own. 

Our offices feel it at ground level. Brent Spooner brought his business under the LJ Hooker name in Bunbury and now runs LJ Hooker Property South West WA, one of the network's largest regional operations. 

"We converted twenty leads that came to us from head office, worth around $330,000 in commission," he said. "That is business we did not have to go out and find. The brand has already done a lot of the work before we pick up the phone, because people in this region know the name. That is the difference between paying to be noticed and starting the conversation already known." 

That is the practical version of what the research measures. The marketing support converts the way it does because the awareness is already there to begin with. 

That matters for principals with ambitions to expand into multiple locations. Today, 33% per cent of LJ Hooker business owners operate across multiple locations, compared with fewer than 4 per cent of independent agency owners. That gap is significant. Expanding into a new market carries enough operational complexity without also having to establish an entirely new brand. Starting with a name consumers already know gives business owners a stronger platform from which to enter a new area, attract people and build a pipeline. 

It also shows up in the decisions people make. New offices have continued to join our network, and we recently recorded a record month for franchise renewals, 18 in a single month, with principals across the network recommitting to the brand. Renewals are the honest measure. They are what happens after an owner has run the numbers on staying, which makes them one of the truest reviews a network ever gets. 

So, if you are weighing up a move, ask how much of your growth currently depends on you being personally known, and what might change if the brand did more of that work for you. Ask what awareness a brand holds in your market and how it supports lead generation for its offices. And, finally, ask what the brand intends to invest over the next three years, not just what it spent over the last three. 

The research puts some weight behind something our industry has debated for years. Brand building and performance marketing are not competing priorities. Awareness helps make marketing spend work harder. For anyone planning for the next decade rather than the next quarter, that is more than a marketing consideration. It is part of the growth strategy. 

Source: The Awareness Advantage, TikTok and Tracksuit, analysis of brand tracking and advertising performance data across Australia and New Zealand.