Hi

This is my first post! Looks like an excellent site...

My question is regarding branding / awareness adverts for companies that don't have a high-street office.

We're a relatively new agency based in Sydney, Australia (1 yr old last month), we're an independent agency rather than a franchise / household name, and have set up our business with a central admin function rather than a high-street office. I genuinely believe that this is an excellent model (that is commonplace in most industries) and enables us to limit our expenses and pass on savings to our customers in the form of reduced commissions. Whilst I've read many articles about justifying high commissions (high in Australia = 3% as we don't have the same setup as in the US) I haven't seen many referencies to companies that operate the same, other than the hugely successful 1/2% in the UK. My questions are: -

Can you point me to agents in the US that operate in a similar way? and

Can you point me to any brand awareness adverts of such agents.

Our key points of difference to our competitors are: -

1) reduced commissions (borne out of the operational model that we have chosen, rather than reduced levels of service); and

2) educational, providing our community with lots of information on how the buying and selling processes work.

My challenge is how best to market these points of difference.

I'd also welcome any feedback on our website, that aims to be informational and lead-capturing rather than just a list of the properties that we have for sale.

Any info leads would be greatly appreciated.