Estate Agent Today

We have 58 guests online

Today's Headlines:

House prices fall or rise (take your pick)
4 comments
House prices went up slightly – by 0.4% – in July, the Land Registry has reported. It

Knight Frank stay quiet after conman is jailed
9 comments
A tenant who faked his identity when renting through Knight Frank has been jailed for three

Rich overseas buyers keep prime London market aloft
0 comments
Chinese buyers are expected to replace Russian investors as major players in the prime central London

Moving occasion: today's the day!
0 comments
The most popular moving date is today, September 1, the Post Office has revealed. The two next

Prospective first-time buyers sink to new low
0 comments
The proportion of buyers expecting to buy for the first time in the next 12 months

Housing market 'edging towards double dip' claim
2 comments
Net lending plummeted in July to the second lowest monthly figure since records began in 1993,

Henry Pryor Blog
0 comments
Welcome to a new monthly blog by Henry Pryor, estate agent turned entrepreneur, inventor and expert

Rightmove profits climb 39% as more agents sign up
14 comments
A rise in the number of agents and an overall willingness to pay more to Rightmove

Portal creates new 'check out your competition' stats
1 comments
Property portal Home has created some new statistic pages on its site which we reckon will

Six in ten mortgages are now for house purchase
2 comments
The proportion of mortgages being taken out for purchases, as opposed to remortgages, is at its

News Story

Google service for property adverts launches

Monday 10th November 2008

A new service is launching which will build online advertising campaigns for each property on the top two search engines in the UK.

movingADvantage would, for example, display on Google a specific property in, say Canterbury, for an approximate £15 outlay.

The firm can build custom campaigns on both Google and Yahoo, using keyword search technology. Cost per lead is around 15p with traffic being driven direct to the agent’s own site, with campaigns lasting up to six weeks.

Sales manager Ian Fairbairn said: “These leads are highly targeted and therefore very cost-effective as they have self-selected themselves by typing in the relevant keyword phrase for your properties. We use our sophisticated software, taking the basic details of each property and automatically generating hundreds of keyword phrases based on analysis of the most popular property search phrases used.

“A particular property will spring up – on the right hand side under sponsored links – for all property related searches, both general and more specific. This not only assists the sale of that property but gives the agent the added benefit of raised brand awareness and association with a cutting-edge, industry leading approach.

“We genuinely feel this service is of real use to all agents and that ours is a new approach.”

He added: “All estate agents face significant challenges in this difficult market. Only those that adapt successfully to a rapidly evolving new landscape will survive. Early adopters of effective new ways to reach buyers, win new instructions, retain existing clients and build brand recognition will be much better placed.”

movingADvantage is a spin-off of Jane Earl, an online agent and HIP provider.

www.movingadvantage.com/howwedoitAgents.htm

Send to a Friend Today's other headlines

View Comments 13 comments

Report Abuse

Posted By Ian Fairbairn on Wednesday 12th November 2008 10:29:02

Get Profile

Oh forgot just one little thing – our fee structure (agent pays for us to build each campaign) gives us an incentive to create cost-effective campaigns so that the agent keeps adding properties – the alternative PPC agency fee model (taking a percentage of advertising spent) leaves an agent wondering what's in it for the PPC agency to keep my costs down?

Reply to this comment

Posted By Ian Fairbairn on Wednesday 12th November 2008 10:08:39

Get Profile

In response to Mike's (from Zoomf) comments/observations. Yes, absolutely we are a company offering an agency service for PPC. However, unlike the companies you mention we are focused exclusively on property – not PPC generalists. We know property and IT (including search engine PPC). We know we can save agents time & money through our expertise and experience. We can keep their cost per click lower by knowing how to build an optimised campaign from the bottom up and specific to this sector. It really can be done – page one - for around 15p per click, or less, with a well optimised campaign as there is little competition right now for property related keywords in most locations as next to no agents are doing this at the moment (Mike is right to guess that this will change as time passes). Try Googling “property for sale YOUR LOCATION” - very probably no individual property adverts in sponsored links. As for the quality of leads (eg emails, calls, website traffic) – all that simply happens here is that the call or email needs to be easy to make after the visitor arrives at the agent's website. An agent can reasonably quickly make a judgement about a campaign based on traffic sent and conversion rates. Plus, don't forget the strengths of this approach are also “standing out from the crowd”, brand enhancement, client retention, instruction winning and perhaps reduced costs.

Reply to this comment

Posted By MikeAtZoomf on Tuesday 11th November 2008 12:11:29

Get Profile

This sounds like an agency service for PPC. So instead of an agent doing it themselves (signing up to adwords directly), this company is hoping that agents will 'outsource' to them. There are already two companies who do this, namely Starberry and Minute Steak.

Most agencies in the digital space charge a standard 15% of monthly spend to their clients. So if you spent 100 pounds, you'd be giving 15 pounds to the agency and 85 pounds would be spent buying clicks. I'm not sure how they will be able to keep clicks at 15p. Google is an auction model (as is Yahoo) and 15p sounds very low to me. Maybe for "cottage for sale east cornwall 2 bedroom with view" costs 15p but much more popular terms which have volume are going to cost a lot more than 15p. This will only increase as time goes on and more agents come to search engines to buy targeted traffic.

But of course, the biggest issue with direct traffic to agent websites is that the vast majority do not track to the conversion which should be set as calls and inbound emails as a result of the click. If you do that, you're in the clever 10% of the market. If not, you're in the dark. 1000 clicks? What does that mean? It's the biggest issue within the industry.

It's why I talk about it all the time on Zoomf's blog. Tracking = ROI. Why do you think most portals and now Globrix (with it's analytics package) are keen to promote their data. Data and reporting. My rant is done :-)

Reply to this comment

Posted By Ian Fairbairn on Tuesday 11th November 2008 10:24:25

Get Profile

For those who asked to see it in action - we have a campaign running now for a detached property in Macclesfield - feel free to go Google!

Reply to this comment

Posted By Ian Fairbairn on Tuesday 11th November 2008 09:35:44

Get Profile

Just to address a couple of comments – John is absolutely right – Globrix is a breath of fresh air (sending free clicks through to agents) and with time may well seriously damage RM – however, right now click through rates are typically quite low for all portals (even by this depressed markets standards). Also, there are major benefits to the keyword approach over this – properties “stand out” from the crowd – so does your brand – sellers love these custom adverts (instruction winner/client retention). As for how qualified the traffic is – this depends to a large extent on the keywords used and then ultimately on the design of your website (is it sticky – can you harvest visitor contact details readily etc..). agent007 comments have been echoed by other agents – low lead levels – big fees from the major portals. Support Globrix – of course – but why not add keyword search to give you the edge.

Reply to this comment

Posted By Ian Fairbairn on Monday 10th November 2008 12:45:38

Get Profile

Just to clarify - re. Clive's post - we at movingADvantage supply the service on both Google & Yahoo (UK's No1 & 2 search engines) – it isn't something new that Google have introduced as such. It is entirely plausible that an agent can replace their expensive portal fees with this much more cost-effective approach. Most sellers simply want to know that their property will “be on the Internet” and via this approach they certainly are – and very prominently too.

Reply to this comment

Posted By Clive Gregory on Monday 10th November 2008 12:04:15

Get Profile

This is about time. Small agencies like mine therefore, do not have to pay ridiculous amounts of money per month only to receive average of 2 leads per month. There is only one good portal at the moment, which I think everyone knows what that is. So, google to do this is very welcome.

Reply to this comment

Posted By John Francis on Monday 10th November 2008 11:49:32

Get Profile

Globrix sends us free traffic to our website, which we monitor. This is producing more leads currently than the portals for us which is excellent news. Buying keywords on google can be hit and miss, as the click source isn't as qualified.

Reply to this comment

Posted By John Francis on Monday 10th November 2008 11:46:58

Get Profile

Globrix sends us free traffic to our website, which we monitor. The number of free leads we get through this is now comparable to Rightmove and the other portals. I think supporting them rather than buying keywords on google is the way forward as the traffic is more qualified.

Reply to this comment

Posted By Max Price on Monday 10th November 2008 06:07:29

Get Profile

Interesting. Can you give us some search terms we can try to see how well you've done?

Reply to this comment

Posted By TopDog on Monday 10th November 2008 04:57:26

Get Profile

We have been on google's adwords for a while now and have signed up to yahoo. Can't say I have noticed more enquiries but we have more traffic to our web site.

Reply to this comment

Posted By agent007 on Monday 10th November 2008 02:04:19

Get Profile

“work out more expensive than RightMove” - well we list 55 properties on RM and last month had 8 email “leads” - 6 of these were the “MORE DETAILS” please time wasters and two wanted to view properties – so we paid RM £350 for two leads – sounds like pretty good value compared to that and if I have understood it right then you are only paying for the interest it drives your way – I for one will be ringing to find out more

Reply to this comment

Posted By Richard on Monday 10th November 2008 01:40:42

Get Profile

Not 100% on this yet, I'd like to see it in action.

It's a nice idea its just:
a) Will the leads be as qualified as vertical search engines such as Globrix, Property Owl, Nestoria, etc.

b) The ppc rate of the above is a lot less than 15p

c) 15p lead would actually work out more expensive than RighMove from my last calculations based on an agents stats.

Reply to this comment

Post Comments

Please login to post comments:

Post Comments without login

DISCLAIMER: The views contained in these user comments are not endorsed by Estate Agent Today (nor its associates and advertisers) in any way and are provided by users who wish to publish their independent opinions on our news. Whilst every effort is made to moderate these comments, due to the instant nature of the posting not all offensive material can be removed instantly. Please help us keep the comments areas tidy by reporting details of any infringements to team@estateagenttoday.co.uk

Most Read News Stories:

Three quarters of agents threaten to quit Rightmove
Friday 10th October 2008

EPCs on all properties for sale: VERY LATEST UPDATE
Monday 8th September 2008

HIPs abolition order is signed and ready
Monday 17th May 2010

NEWS FLASH – HIPs suspended
Thursday 20th May 2010

NEWS FLASH:HIPs face certain death
Wednesday 12th May 2010

RSS Feed

Share this article:

Digg it

Del.icio.us

Newsvine

Nowpublic

Facebook

Feedback:

If you have any questions or suggestions about this article or our news section, please don't hesitate to contact us.

Editorial Contact Details - Rosalind Renshaw | rosalind.renshaw@estateagenttoday.co.uk | 01252 843 566.