When Quick Move Now, the UK’s largest independent cash home buyer, was established back in 1998, businesses were really starting to think about the impact of the internet and how it might affect their businesses. For the directors of Quick Move Now, the internet would prove invaluable to the development of a robust and successful business model that would see them buying over 5,000 properties in the first 17 years and achieving an annual turnover of over £42 million.

Whilst many other companies approached the internet as a ‘bolt-on’ to their existing offline business, Quick Move Now saw it as being at the very heart of its business model, and knew it would enable them to reach the volume of audience that would be required for their business to become a success.

Danny Luke, Managing Director of Quick Move Now, explains: “A cash home buying service is something that has quite a specific target customer – we offer our customers a quick, guaranteed cash house sale – we can buy properties in as little as 7 days- but of course for the business to be profitable we have to work in margins which mean we pay less than market value for the properties that we buy, so it doesn’t appeal to the mass market. Our customers are home owners for whom the speed and convenience of a quick sale is more important than the price they achieve from the sale; typically those who are downsizing or who have a large amount of equity in their property, those who are emigrating or relocating, or those who are keen to achieve a quick sale in order to consolidate their financial commitments.

“Technology plays a huge role in reaching our customers. It allows us to reach an audience we would never have access to through traditional offline channels; through social media alone we have access to millions of potential customers and are able to tailor our customer outreach and messaging to reach those our service is appropriate for.

“It also enables us to carry out a huge amount of online research, enabling us to go back to our customers with an indicative offer almost instantaneously, which in turn stops us losing our customers to a competitor.

“Technology is at the very centre of our business model – without the widespread adoption of online technology, our company simply wouldn’t exist.”