Which portals should I advertise on?

The question of which and how many portals to advertise on is one that real estate companies will always struggle with. Trying to get the best return on your investment but get maximum coverage is tricky. Not helping the issue is the fact that real estate portals tend to grow and appear like weeds in most markets. So how do you make the right choice and not waste your precious marketing dollars?

It goes without saying that you need to research your own market carefully. What’s right for one agency might not be right for yours - even if you do operate in a similar area or are part of the same franchise. You will most likely know who the biggest player is in your area/country and you should have an awareness of some of the second tier portals too. What you may not know though are the actual success factors of those sites versus the marketing hype. Have a representative from a number of sites come and visit your office to present their case and ask them for specific and recent statistics.

Here’s some points to consider when choosing a portal:

1. Look at where your competitors are advertising and decide whether you want to join them or try another tactic (and portal) to beat them.
2. Listen to your customers. If they are continuously asking to have their properties advertised on particular sites, don’t ignore them.
3. Consider the best value proposition from each portal in terms of cost of subscription versus the package you’re offered: number of visitors to the site; the amount of consumer promotion the site does; the reports and analytics the site gives its subscribers; and the extra advertising options available to you on each site that could help you trump your competitors. The most expensive subscription might actually be that way because it offers far more than the others - but then again it might not.  
4. Think about your market carefully and consider whether a niche portal might actually suit your business better ie. you specialise in executive leasings or holiday properties or premium listings. Smaller, more niche portals can often offer better targeting of potential customers to view your listings.
5. Take a trial run on a number of portals over the same period of time, advertising the same properties, and compare the results. This will give you a real apples-with-apples comparison that could help make your decision easier.

Top 50 Overseas Property Portals

After its recent revamp, independent UK trade portal globaledge.co.uk has revealed the latest top 50 overseas property portal rankings.

Many estate agents look to this rankings list and the information it provides on pricing and google rankings as a guide – where should they spend their advertising budgets?

In this market leads are hard to come by, and globaledge.co.uk has issued some valuable advice for agents with the rankings list:

“If you look down this list and simply choose the cheapest portals, you will NOT maximise the number of leads you generate. The trick to finding property portals that work for your business is to find those that your customers are likely to use.”

Criteria agents should consider includes: marketing and traffic, content and usability, and business model.

After a survey of 535 locations, globaledge.co.uk has ranked the top five overseas portals as:

1. themovechannel.com
2. findaproperty.com
3. hotprop.com
4. rightmove.co.uk
5. leadgalaxy.com (venture.co.uk)



The bulk of the information is only available to premium subscribers of globaledge.co.uk. Further information about the methodology behind the rankings is available at the website.

Dont Be Baffled by Stats

Portal sites around the world use a range of statistics when marketing themselves to agents. However, these stats are always large and often mean nothing. The real question is, what information should an agent be asking for when looking at which portal to use?

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