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OnTheMarket.com launches on 26th January, asking agents to make a critical choice. We invited the three players to state their case for your business.

PROPERTYdrum

otm_zoopla_rightmove_portalAgents’ Mutual, founded last year by some of the UK’s best-known estate agents, will finally try to challenge the dominance of Rightmove and Zoopla by launching its own portal, OnTheMarket.com, on 26th January 2015.

OnTheMarket, which has been in the planning pipeline for two years, will aim to break up the so-called duopoly held by Rightmove and Zoopla and it is already starting to having an effect on the market with its ‘one other major portal only’ rule which, in effect, requires their member agents to stop advertising on either Rightmove or Zoopla.

Spicerharrt and Barton Wyatt, for instance, both announced during the tail end of last year that they will no longer be listing properties with the Zoopla Property Group, while Henry & James and Kaye & Carey have both informed The Negotiator that they will be leaving Rightmove.

Both Zoopla and Rightmove are confident that OnTheMarket.com, which has close to 5,000 branches signed up so far, will not have a major impact on their business, while Agents’ Mutual is confident that their new rival portal will add genuine competition in a market.

At this stage, the impact of OnTheMarket.com remains an unknown quantity, making its launch one of the most talked about events in the property industry in 2015, the question is, in the short term and the longer term, which is best for your business?.

OnTheMarket, Zoopla and Rightmove ‘state their case’:

OnTheMarket.com

ian-springett-on-the-market

Ian Springett, Chief Executive, writes: Our new portal, called OnTheMarket.com, will launch as a competitor to Rightmove and Zoopla. We will inject much-needed competition into the marketplace and disrupt the existing duopoly, which has generated eye-watering profits for shareholders at the expense of estate and letting agents. In their most recent full year results, Rightmove’s income was £140 million and profits were £104 million (a 74 per cent profit margin) and Zoopla’s income was £80 million and profits were £39.6 million (a 49 per cent profit margin).

The exisiting duopoly has generated excessive profits at the expense of estate and letting agents. Ian Springett, Chief Executive, OnTheMarket

We have heard from many agents that these portals do not create sufficient value to justify such earnings. To quote agents in their own words, many have been left feeling, “like a means to an end for Rightmove and Zoopla to make money.”

They have told us they are “fed-up with being held to ransom” by the “arrogant” portals, who frequently “fail to recognise smaller agents are in the mix.”

The portals are felt to exist to feed ever increasing dividends to their shareholders, which they achieve by hosting precious property data and content provided to them by agents. It is clearly time to disrupt this market if agents want to regain control of their content, advertising costs and market position.

Agents not yet committed to OnTheMarket.com should know:

  • We do not have shareholders
  • All profits will be ploughed back into the business
  • We aim to reduce fees for members
  • We will constantly focus on improving the search experience for the consumer.

As our momentum has grown, many member agents have suggested they launch their newly-instructed sole agency properties through OnTheMarket.com before advertising them on their other chosen portal. This is a move we are looking to facilitate and we will give these new and exclusive properties a special presentation in our search results.

For consumers, our search will be slick, simple, fast, state-of-the-art and compatible with the latest technologies. The website will adapt seamlessly to fit the screen of any device used to view it. There will be no clutter from irritating third party adverts, nor any spam mail. Also, there will be no potentially misleading valuations based on historical statistics.

Our multi-million pound advertising and marketing budget is in place. We will run commercials on prime-time TV, full page adverts in the national press and have plenty of online marketing. This campaign will attract consumers to the website as a “must view” destination with a unique set of listings.

In addition, OnTheMarket.com has the unique advantage that our members have committed to brand their offices with our logo. The powerful aggregate effect of this will help embed our portal into the psyche of the consumer.

Membership

As a mutual organisation, each firm that joins OnTheMarket.com is given one vote regardless of its size and we are now a very broad organisation with the support of many different sized firms. Our Gold, Silver and Bronze membership schemes have been designed with all business models in mind. With Gold and Silver, agents sign-up for five years to fix their fees for this period but with Bronze, agents can join for 12 months at a higher tariff but with a six-month break-clause.

With all three membership schemes, agents agree to advertise on a maximum of one other competing portal. Of course, this decision has made waves among our competitors but it is widely seen as a necessary measure for us to effectively to challenge the duopoly. At the outset, we consulted lawyers about our plans and there is nothing anti-competitive about them. On the contrary, we are increasing the choice for agents and consumers by entering this duopolistic market and challenging the giant incumbents. Member agents have already suggested that our impending launch has had a positive impact during price negotiations with the other portals.

The future

Many agents are also dissatisfied with the way the portals mix their properties in with offerings from online-only agents. But unlike our rivals, we champion the full service which local agents provide and we know the majority of the public recognise the benefits of having a professional in place who can manage their sales or lettings process.

OnTheMarket.com will be the only portal endorsed by both the National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA) and the Association of Residential Letting Agents (ARLA).

On Monday 26th January, the portal landscape will change for ever. It’s a revolution which is long overdue. The more estate and letting agents who join us, and the sooner they join us, the faster we can deliver the benefits of OnTheMarket.com to agents, to their clients and to property-searchers.

Zoopla Property Group

zooplapro_marketviewJon Notley, Commercial Director, writes: The world of property marketing is changing fast. The digital landscape is constantly evolving, the way we market homes has changed permanently. Even in the nine years that I have been in the property portal market, social media has emerged as a powerful, valuable source of audience, while mobile has developed to such an extent that today, Zoopla Property Group’s (ZPG) websites receive more traffic from mobile devices than from desktop computers. The pace of change is dramatic, the businesses that thrive will be those who embrace and adapt to this change.

ZPG has national brand awareness of 77% UK adults, it’s cost effective.

Staying ahead

Web savvy vendors appoint agents to get them the best outcome in terms of price and timing and expect their agent to act in their best interest. They are hungry for information and Zoopla has proven that consumers prefer and demand whatever information is available. They also expect to see their property being advertised on the major property websites that have become the number one place for searching property and are now household brands.

In this ever shifting digital landscape you need to stay ahead of the competition and ensure your marketing works hard for you; and most importantly that you see a return on every marketing pound spent. Even if you look at our basic advertising packages, subscription to all of the ZPG’s websites including an extensive list of partner websites costs on average just £300 per month. For the typical agent that equates to just £5 per property which is astonishingly cheap in the context of traditional advertising through the press. For this low cost our members, and by extension their customers, are given access to a huge audience of around 45 million visitors every month. We generate 2.5 million leads per months for our members and have national brand awareness of 77 per cent amongst all UK adults. ZPG is an extremely cost effective means of generating buyer interest, viewings and transactions.

Over the past couple of years, the range and breadth of the services that we offer has increased dramatically; today we are so much more than a property portal. We have extended our services because we see a substantial opportunity to support our members to navigate the digital world that we experience every day.

Just like the digital marketing landscape we are continuously evolving and developing innovative new tools, products and services for our members to ensure that their marketing works as hard as they do.

There is not room in this article to talk you through all of these services, so I have highlighted three examples of products and services that we believe every smart agent should embrace in 2015:

1. ZooplaPro – our reporting and market intelligence tool is available free of charge to all of our members. We have recently added some powerful new tools such as our new Agent Profile product that allows you to customise your company page on our websites and include links to your website, social links, photos and information on your team and your opening hours. We have also added the ability for you to display your accreditations and affiliations (e.g. TPO, ARLA, NAEA, with RICS coming soon). You can easily identify growth opportunities and monitor your competition with MarketView and win more instructions with the use of our very powerful Comparables Reports.

2. Appraisal Booster – Zoopla’s unique Current Values section is designed to offer valuable information to consumers and drive valuation leads to our members. Our Valuation Booster tool is one of the best sources of qualified valuation leads. Valuation Booster pre-selects your agency for valuation requests on our websites. Your details are highlighted and pre-selected so you will be automatically included to be contacted with valuation requests. During the last 12 months, ZPG has referred over 40,000 unique home sellers to its member agents for valuations, which equates to over £150 million of potential fees. Sellers who are referred via the tool provide full address and property details before enquiring, resulting in highly qualified leads for ZPG members.

3. Behavioural Targeting – one of our most recent and exciting innovations.

Traditional advertising is passive in the sense that you place your advert and wait for consumers to contact you. Behavioural Targeting allows you to proactively target those consumers who are most likely to respond to your marketing messages.

We do this by using our unique data to identify your ideal target audience and then serve your advertising exclusively to them across our network of websites – and across the wider Internet. By identifying those most likely to respond to your advert, we cut out wastage and improve the performance of your campaigns. Our research has shown that it is five times more effective than standard banner advertising.

In 2015 we are running a number of workshops for our members to expand on these ideas. If you are interested in taking part, email us at [email protected] /[email protected]. The workshops are free to attend at our head office in London.

The world of property marketing is changing at pace and the best way to keep ahead of the competition is to partner with ZPG to ensure your marketing spend is working as hard as you do.

Rightmove

rightmove_portalsIain Kennedy, Head of Marketing: We generate over four million leads every month for agents and we put your name and properties in front of the biggest number of landlords and prospective sellers in the UK, giving you the best chance possible of getting a competitive edge in your local market.

Your clients are five times more likely to find a buyer on Rightmove, 7 in 10 movers turn to Rightmove first.

Instruction winning opportunities: Your clients are five times more likely to find a buyer for their house on Rightmove than anywhere else.

Biggest audience: Rightmove is the UK’s number one property website and one of the top 10 busiest websites in the country, so you are guaranteed more home-movers will see your vendors’ properties. We also have you covered on mobile as our market-leading mobile site and apps mean we are as popular with home-movers on smartphone and tablet as we are on PC.

At the forefront of home-movers’ minds: Google named Rightmove as the mostsearched for business in 2014, showing just how high awareness is among consumers.

User engagement: Seven in 10 homemovers say that Rightmove is the place that they turn to first when looking at property. Home-movers spend longer on site and look at more pages than any other property site.

rightmove_new_technology_poNew technology: Our new Real-time Data Feed is an industry first and means agents can have their new instructions loaded onto Rightmove within minutes, and sent out to prospective buyers through our new instant property alerts. There’s more innovation coming in 2015 too.

Access to new tools: New market insight tool RightmoveIntel is now available to all members as part of their standard membership. It is updated daily and includes a new market share report that delivers insight on an agents’ market share of instructions, available stock and agreed sales in their local patch.

Next month agents get their chance to comment – write now to: [email protected]

February 16, 2015

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