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Agencies & People

Martin & Co parent company increases spend on Google as its dismisses hybrid threat

Full year trading update for 2018 reveals a doubling of leads from Google pay-per-click advertising and increased profitability at Ewemove.

Nigel Lewis

The Property Franchise Group (TPFG) has doubled the number of leads it generates from pay-per-click adverts on Google to drive more business to its franchisees’ websites and businesses.

Vendor and landlords leads generated this way last year increased from 16,609 the year before to 30,474, its trading update for 2018 reveals, suggesting the company is looking for alternative ways to generate leads other than through portals.

Its CEO Ian Wilson has also dismissed the threat of hybrid and online agents, saying: “In a year when the online/hybrid property sector failed to make any inroads into the market share of traditional high street agency and a number of the sector’s players struggled financially or failed, we continued to make good progress with EweMove, and increased its profitability.

“The secret of our success is the offer, “no sale, no fee”, harnessed to the entrepreneurial drive of a local owner.”

TPFG, which operates five leading high street estate agencies including Martin & Co, says overall revenues increased by 10%, royalty fees from franchisees by 14% and that as a group it now looks after 55,000 managed properties.

Brexit

The company says 2019 is set to be a challenging time for its sales operation as Brexit rumbles on. But despite lettings represent more than two thirds of its operations, TPFG says the tenant fees ban will reduce its revenues next year by half a millions pounds, much less than originally feared.

“The resilience of our franchise network model has proved itself time and time again over the last five years,” says Wilson (pictured, above).

“When you couple that with a strong underlying revenue stream from managing let properties, the benefits in an under-performing property market have been all too clear to see.”

February 6, 2019

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