Online users are becoming more and more sophisticated about their expectations of online marketing. So it is vital that they have at their disposal a wide range of advertising options, particularly on property portals.

Having a basic listing on a property portal can only provide limited exposure and it is vital that portals have product provision which empowers agents with the capability to not only maximise the exposure of their listings on behalf of their customers but also to give agents the opportunity to expose their brand.

Part of any agent’s marketing presentations should be focused on how their sellers can obtain the best possible result online.

Estate agents spend a great deal of time doing this around offline marketing but too few really put the emphasis on new media - yet a rapidly growing percentage of their potential customers are extremely Internet savvy.

So what are the main areas of product that property portals are (or should be) providing to assist an agent’s business?

• Listing Placement: products that provide prominence to individual listings.
• Push marketing products: electronic brochures, email alerts, distributed to targeted portal databases.
• Display advertising: banners, skyscrapers, advertorial, pop-ups, etc designed to promote estate agency brands and drive traffic to agent sites.
• Web design: Agency websites, individual property mini-sites.
• Back-office tools: Online products designed to increase agency effectiveness.

It is my view that the “depth of product” available to agents from a property portal should be one of the considerations an agent makes when selecting which portals to advertise on and how much of their marketing budget to allocate to them.

Depth of product has the ability to increase the average leads received from a portal quite substantially by making available relevant and effective advertising products. But an agent needs to think strategically about how they can utilise and leverage them. If an agent approaches this seriously it could also be a key decider in a prospective customer choosing that agent over their competitor (see our related article: Selling Online Advertising to Vendors).

Once these depth products are available, support should be available to enable agents to on-sell them to their customers and to provide agents with the conviction to develop an effective online marketing plan.

Some of the things which agents should consider include:

Promoting their brand and business?
1. What products are available and what are the benefits?
2. What is my approach and budget?
3. What do I want to achieve?

How can you better promote your customers’ properties?
1. What products are available?
2. Do my sales people understand the benefits?
3. How do I sell and leverage these products?
4. Do I charge the customer and how much?

In future posts we will have a closer look at some of the individual products that are available on a number of the portals, how to use them and how your business can benefit from them.

John Hart is the Industry Sales and Marketing Manager and Consultant at Classified Ad Ventures. John spent over six years with the REA Group including the position of Group Sales and Marketing Manager working across 10 countries. Prior to REA John was with one of Australia’s largest real estate networks, First National for 12 years with more than 7 as their National Marketing Manager.

If you would like to ask any questions of any of the Classified Ad Ventures Consulting Team please email [email protected].

[image: flickr/aussiegall]

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