Marketing
News covering the marketing of residential property, lead generation, buying and selling and business development.
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OTM drops ‘one other portal rule’ for commercial property launch
OnTheMarket.com has launched a channel on its website for commercial property which the portal says will not feature advertising or additional information other than the listing. The channel is an attempt by OnTheMarket to match the services of rivals Rightmove and Zoopla, which also have commercial property channels. OnTheMarket.com is offering its new service to residential agents who already have commercial properties within their feeds and will be free until the end of next year to any agency listing with it. The portal is also dropping its ‘one other portal’ rule for its commercial listings but is to ban online-only agents from the new channel, as it does within its residential listings. “It is exciting to launch our new commercial property channel to complement our existing residential UK and overseas searches,” says Ian Springett, Chief Executive of OnTheMarket.com. “It is a service which many of our member firms have actively encouraged us to develop and it represents yet another sign of growth and strategic intent for OnTheMarket.com. “We are looking forward to working with agents to build a high-quality search experience for commercial property-seekers.” The new channel will also be open to agents who don’t list residential properties with OnTheMarket.com. But OnTheMarket has its work cut out if it…
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OnTheMarket.com highlights ZPG ‘inconvenient truths’
OnTheMarket.com chief executive Ian Springett has countered ZPG CEO Alex Chesterman’s assertion this week that the Agents’ Mutual portal is a ‘failed experiment’. Springett says that while it ‘clearly suits’ ZPG to position his portal this way, he challenges some of the ‘inconvenient truths’ for Zoopla. “The number of UK agents listing on the Zoopla platform remains 22% down compared to the period prior to the launch of OnTheMarket.com,” he says. His comments are based on ZPG’s own Annual Reports for 2014 and 2016 which show that the number of agents advertising on the site has dropped by 3,000 to 13,373 since OnTheMarket launched. Springett also says that he believes Zoopla has, unsurprisingly, been using price to try and wrestle agents back off OnTheMarket. “Our direction of travel remains clear. While Zoopla Property Group claims to have increased the number of UK agents listing on its portals by 5% year-on-year, meanwhile the number of offices listing at OnTheMarket.com at the end of October 2016 had increased by 15% year-on-year,” says Springett. “The consumer appeal of the service is clear from record-breaking traffic in September of more than 10million visits, an increase of 79% year-on-year. These are not the achievements of a…
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Zoopla buys another agency tech provider
If Brexit has damaged the property market this year then Zoopla has managed to dodge the worst of it, its full year results reveal. Profits at parent company ZPG increased by 44% to £36.7m in 2016 while revenue jumped by 84% to £197.7m. Revenue from agents is up by 5% and the number of agents listing with Zoopla increased by 10% this year. ZPG says all its sites, which includes Zoopla, PrimeLocation, uSwitch and recently-acquired agent software provider PSG, totalled 600m visits over the past year. PSG is not its only tech acquisition. ZPG also reveal that it has bought Essex-based cloud agency website design provider Technicweb. ZPG hasn’t quite seen off the OnTheMarket threat despite the upbeat full year results. During a webcast this morning ZPG said its portal-only revenue is down 1%, due to both ‘churn’ created by OnTheMarket and ‘other headwinds’. But it is clear from the results that the purchase of PSG has been a major plank in ZPG’s strategy to grow its agency customer base by luring back OnTheMarket switchers, and today’s announcement that Welsh agent Robert and Co has returned to Zoopla from OnTheMarket would seem to confirm this. The Newport based company said ZPG’s PSG…
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Welsh 12-branch agency quits OTM for Zoopla
Leading Welsh multi-branch agency Roberts and Co has says it is to leave OnTheMarket and re-join Zoopla. The company is based in Newport in South Wales and has a further eleven offices around the region and operates in both the sales and lettings markets covering Monmouthshire, Caerphilly, Torfaen and Blaenau. Roberts & Co, which was established in 2002, says that following an internal portal review it concluded that returning to Zoopla Property Group offers its vendors and landlords the best possible marketing for their properties. Director Mark Roberts (pictured), said: “It was the right time to review our portals [after a] Roberts & Co re-branding – the opportunities that Zoopla Property Group can now offer us as a result of the Property Software Group acquisition [by ZPG] are very exciting and now is the right time to be part of this.” OnTheMarket.com has already taken Roberts and Co’s properties and listing off its website. The Negotiator contacted OnTheMarket but its spokesperson said they did not want to comment. Roberts and Co are well known in the industry, and locally, for another reason. One of its other directors, Alan Darlow, is a friend of singer David Essex and in 2008 backed the…
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Hatched.co.uk reported to ASA for touting
Connell’s recently-acquired online-only agent Hatched.co.uk has been reported to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) by a member of the public for touting. The complainant received a piece of unsolicited direct mail from the company, which commiserated the homeowner on their sale falling through and named their agent, a multi-branch agency part of the Spicer Haart network. Hatched.co.uk’s letter goes on to ask whether “we could help you find a buyer whilst also saving you £1,000s in the process”. The complainant objected that the mailing was breach of the ASA’s advertising codes, which state that ‘unsolicited e-mail marketing communications must be obviously identifiable as marketing communications without the need to open them’. The ASA has put the complaint through its informal resolution process and after being contacted by the advertising watchdog it agreed to withdraw the letters from their marketing. “We reminded them that their mailings should be clearly labelled as marketing communications and told them not to repeat those claims in the future,” a spokesperson said. Hatched.co.uk is a member of the The Property Ombudsman (TPO) and the letter is also potentially in breach of TPO rules on canvassing for new business. These state that member agents should make it…
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Knight Frank launches tool to win new instructions
Knight Frank has launched an innovative tool for gaining instructions that pulls in curious house owners with detailed information about their local postcode. The site, called myPropertyGenius, was soft-launched a few weeks ago but has now been officially launched by Knight Frank. The site draws in data from the company’s own sales activity as well as from its large research team plus third party information to present detailed local area reports based on postcodes using an eye-catching mix of graphics ad photos. It’s free to use and to access the information home owners are asked to punch in their property type, its size and the local postcode. They are then taken to a results page that offers information on how much house prices have risen locally over the past five years based on the first half of their postcode, as well as data on number of sales, asking prices, sold prices, local social media trends, local amenities plus the most popular food and drink outlets. Knight Frank is also using data from the site to create national property postcode reports and for the launch has revealed that CM18 in Harlow, Essex is where properties are selling the fastest in England and…
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Online-only letting agency founder attacks Gumtree
Online only letting agent founder James Davis has launched a scathing attack on UK classifieds portal Gumtree. The site, which was established in 2000, is a significant player in the lettings sector with over 66,000 properties currently on its site, around three quarters of which are in London. Davis (pictured), whose Upad portal currently lists 880 property with Zoopla, says in a blog for a landlord website that that although still popular, he asks whether Gumtree is “about to be left behind as spam, adverts, and unreliable tenant leads flood its user base”. “Due to a laxer approach to posts and how they are moderated, [it] has become inundated with spammy and out-of-date ads,” he says. He also criticises its lack of sophistication, comparing it unfavourably to Rightmove and Zoopla’s refined user experience and highlighting Gumtree’s lack of local search functionality. The Upad CEO also thinks size matters. Davis criticises Gumtree because it “only attracts a small fraction of housing stock on the market at any one time”. Davis also questions the quality of Gumtree’s users. “Research by Upad found that the quality of enquiries from Gumtree users was lower than enquiries made via the leading online property portals,” he…
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22% of public recognise OnTheMarket, says Zoopla research
The marketing mountain that OnTheMarket must climb to catch up its two main rivals has been revealed today after Zoopla published its latest brand awareness figures. Parent group ZPG paid market research firm Harris Interactive to quiz 1,100 people about which of the three main portals – OnTheMarket, Zoopla and Rightmove – they recognised. It found that 22% recognised OnTheMarket, an increase of 1% compared to May this year, while 90% recognised Zoopla and 83% Rightmove. The responses from the research were prompted – meaning the people surveyed were shown the portals’ logos and then asked if they recognised them – but Zoopla in addition asked them to recall the main portal brands unprompted. Zoopla says this research revealed that 47% of respondents recalled its name while 39% remembered Rightmove and 3% recalled OnTheMarket. The fruits of Zoopla’s ‘always on’ promotional activity is clearly bearing fruit. In recent years it has often outspent Rightmove on TV and, for a time, had a virtual monopoly on London’s black cab advertising. Also, in July this year it wrapped an entire fleet of London buses in purple. Gareth Helm, Group Chief Marketing Officer for ZPG (pictured), says: “Our ongoing investment in brand resulting in consumers…
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Are the online-only agents gaining traction?
After reading the criticism of online-only agents by their traditional counterparts on Twitter it’s clear that much of the industry dislikes and fears the way these digital ‘disruptors’ do business. High profile operators such as Purplebricks, Easyproperty, emoov and House Network regularly feature in the national press and, helped by their extensive PR outfits, are hard at work persuading the public that online-only agents are the future. Research by The Negotiator into the market reveals a different picture. The online-only agents have a fair way to go yet before they can claim to be a major threat to traditional agents, industry data reveals. With the exception of hybrids (i.e. staffed but without high street branches) such as Purplebricks and YOPA, they have yet to gain a significant foothold in the market. There are 21,925 properties currently listed on Rightmove by online or hybrid agents which is 4.03% of the market based on Rightmove’s current listing of 543,612 (minus the online agents). Purplebricks dominates the online sector with 44% of all listed properties listed followed by HouseSimple (12%), emoov (9.8%) and Easyproperty (7.2%), Housenetwork (6.4%) and YOPA (5.5%). Most of the smaller online agents including recently-launch Settled, which lists 316 properties for sale, have the same inventory of a five to…
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Agent investigated by ASA over use of Rightmove Intel data
The potential dangers of using market comparisons tool data incorrectly in local marketing campaigns were highlighted by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) today following a complaint to it about Bolton-based Harrisons Estate Agent. A competitor, Miller Metcalfe, complained to the ASA about a leaflet distributed by Harrisons that urged potential customers to “join the fastest growing estate agent in Bolton” and that it was “first out of 79 agents… our results speak for themselves”. The leaflet also included a pie chart showing Harrisons’ market share compared to other agents accompanied by text saying “sales agreed report” alongside a list of local postcodes. This will all be familiar fare to any agent who uses the Rightmove Intel tool and its Market Share Reports, which come with a strict ‘user guidelines’ manual for agents using data taken from the tool in marketing activity. This, among many points, stipulates that “report results are subject to the geographical context and property criteria which have been defined by the user, and as such this must be clearly referenced alongside any use of the data” and that data should be used in a “professional manner”. Harrisons appears to have stuck to the guidelines except in one element, it…
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