Marketing Team Report | 2024

By Lawrence Carter, Sophie Kemp, Harry Shutler & Isabel Moss

With north of 180 yachts listed for sale, it should not be a surprise that the Berthon Sales Group marketing team continues to deal with a huge variety of tasks in the background to ensure that our international yacht brokerage service delivers.

The creation of listings is at the core of this service, and we pride ourselves on supplying clear and useful granular information in our yacht sales particulars. The goal is not just to ‘list’ yachts. It may have been once many moons ago but in 2024, where our clients’ active participation with and comprehension of digital media has never been more discerning, we aim to tell a vessel’s story through high-definition yacht imagery, video, and seller narrative.

The results speak for themselves…

HOW TO SELL A YACHT IN 2024

One of the major positives to come out of the initial Covid-19 era was the time it allowed for the design and rollout of our dedicated sales portal, berthonInternational.com. Bolstered by the freedom this provided, and as long term investors in/navigators of the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) sphere, a key focus for us—and never far from our minds— the goal has become simply ‘visibility’, whether digital or in the rapidly waning medium of print.

It is, therefore, very important in 2024 that the Berthon Sales Group, alongside berthonInternational.com (and its satellite sites, berthonscandinavia.se, berthonspain.com, and berthonusa.com), remain a subscriber to online marketplaces such as Yacht World, Boats.com, Seahorse, and Yatco.

From the Berthon Mothership in the UK, the Marketing Team is committed to providing the best possible marketing support to our brokers and hence the Berthon Fleet.

FURTHER ELEVATING YACHT LISTINGS

The hub of Marketing for the Sales Group has always been our Lymington HQ. Every set of sales particulars you see, read, and enjoy has been put together with the careful attention of our collegiate marketing team, including Lawrence Carter, Isabel Moss and Sophie Kemp.

In 2023/24, you will notice that our designs and format have changed somewhat for the first time in almost a decade! With a more modern layout, now more closely mirroring our digital marketing look, we have removed the small hard to see photos from our brokerage specifications. Instead, for every member of the Berthon fleet we create a comprehensive photo brochure to operate alongside the sales particulars and adjacent website offering.

The reason behind this is two-fold. It is our experience that, despite platforms like YouTube and Instagram being flooded with new build imagery and video with a lifestyle flavour, clients searching for a brokerage yacht still prefer to thoroughly examine every aspect of the technical details— from windlass to davits.

In a world where everyone carries a camera in their pocket with photo and video quality sufficient to be blown up to the size of a building, what we had before simply did not meet the standards for providing detailed information. We take pride in our yacht particulars and are constantly innovating, as we care that the yachts that Berthon are trusted to sell, have the best possible presentation.

DELIVERING YACHT IMAGERY AND VIDEO

Underscoring the importance of visual content in our yacht sales marketing package, we have long prioritized the inclusion of comprehensive sales videos, featuring full walkthroughs, as well as sea trial footage.

This became particularly crucial during the virtual viewings of the Covid-19 era, and it remains so today. Of course, having full time photographer and videographer Harry Shutler on the Berthon team helps – a lot! Harry manages our Berthon International Instagram account, a testament to his exceptional work, featuring our yacht listings and capturing his adventures during Berthon photo shoots. https://www.instagram.com/berthoninternational/

Our yacht brokers are also dab hands at using our ample supply of camera equipment to capture imagery and even produce videos themselves, which Harry skilfully edits into captivating content hosted on our YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/@berthoninternational

Outside our listings pages, where photos and videos obviously feature, all this supplementary information is also broadcast through our Blog. The blog carries tailored additional insights from our yacht brokers, where they delve into the histories of their yacht listings and provide further in-depth details on layouts both above and below deck, as well as other technical details. Our blog articles not only showcase our yachts for sale but also offer monthly market insights and keep readers abreast of any relevant industry news.

We are active on a number of social media platforms, which further helps to circulate all this content, and you will find us on YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, X and even Pinterest.

CRM ‘BOB’ Bids Adieu

After two decades of using a ‘sophisticated’ (for the turn of the millennium) Microsoft Access database for our client relationship management, named BOB (those of you who follow Blackadder will understand), we are excited to report that we made the transition to SuperBOB in late 2023. For more technically inclined readers, this new system is an online SQL database that allows yacht and client information to be accessed from anywhere with a Wi-Fi/4G internet connection. Our beloved SuperBOB has many benefits, amongst them the fact that SQL is the universal standard, enabling exciting interactions with modern software suites and ensuring compliance in a post-GDPR world. In SuperBOB, we trust!

We are still in the early days of this project rollout, but he has gained the trust and affection of our brokers in the UK and Spanish offices already. SuperBOB is expected to have circumnavigated the globe (and our offices) by the end of 2024. He brings greater efficiency in terms of information delivery and allows our brokers to function effectively wherever they may be; and supporting our brokers to deliver a better service to our clients, which is what makes the team in marketing tick.

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