Johnston Press, which publishes local newspapers, has launched a new property platform across all of its 273 local websites courtesy of Zoopla.
Johnston Press publishes 18 daily newspapers, including the Yorkshire Evening Post, The Scotsman and Portsmouth News, as well as 237 weekly newspapers.
Johnston Press will be supporting the launch of the new property websites with both online and offline marketing activities across all of their titles and websites.
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Comments
This move made me really angry last week. We still use JP each month for a small half page ad every 4-weeks. Nothing special but it allows us to advertise any bungalows to the old folk, many of which have no internet access. One advantage was that they used to load up our properties onto a local website as well for free. We use Rightmove and have our own website, so this extra site helped us when discussing our marketing with pottential vendors, even though we would only get a handful of enquiries each year from it. It helped to win instructions!
I now know that they have switched off this service and now simply have a Zoopla link setup for people to start searching the local area, but only agents using Zoopla will have their properties displayed and as we don't use Zoopla, none of our properties can now be seen!
So now agents that don't even use the paper can get their properties seen on the JP website and agents like us that do use the paper, but not Zoopla, do not!!!!
Idiots. Now if they rip up their rate card, all the agents that have been paying to keep the JP alive suddenly find that anyone who hasn't, can take out pages for free!! Might as well stop spending money on the paper and join the others on Zoopla only to get free JP advertising soon anyway.
Similar move failed in Japan.
I heard a whisper that JP were soon going to drop their rate card prices for estate agents to prop up circulation.
They are breaking even at the mo, but are going use agents' listings as a loss leader. Should have done that in 2007 when we first told you....
JP faced the tactical challenge of both a move to portal listings and a downturn in agents' market, but did sod all in response. Shame.
@london agent
We are trying to get our properties other site, but Allagents are telling us that our feed provider (gmg) are holding them to ransom before they will release our feed!
London Agent -
allagents' portal may have functionality, but for my town, and the nearest major city to me, it has exactly Zero (0) listings.....
@ another rightmove in the making
Allagents have brought out a Smart free portal that could fit the bill.
http://www.allagents.co.uk/properties/
It's got all the functionality on it, though I wished they would tone the colours down a bit.
Johnston Press & Zoopla are a match made in Heaven - They will never be able to take on Rightmove [or anybody else] in a million years !
In fairness James - JP did ask for their customers opinion last year via a Market Research organization but predictably have completely ignored the responses they were given .
In our area the Property Today paper has a complete monopoly but rather than protect that position by responding to the challenge of the Internet & listening to the needs of their customers they have continued to milk the local agents dry for years to support the local rag they call a Newspaper !
Consequently, other than Countrywide and a couple of has-beens , the majorityof agents have left Property Today in droves and it is now all but dead
R.I.P. JP !
It’s a shame Johnson press didn’t ask their customers what they want..Wrong move!
I dont think agents really understand that if zoopla and /or the merger succeed, all its going to mean is more money for us agents to pay out every month!.
Zoopla is NOT trying to get a cut of rightmoves profits...No, zoopla is only trying to make the same profit margin that rightmove makes! So its not about rightmove having competition here which will in return reduce agents supscriptions.
What us agents need is a free or non profit making portal.
If all agents paid say £50pcm into a clients account that was used soley for advertising the site, then this will not only be a success, but will also force these portals to drop ttheir prices down.
Costs to support the portal could also be generated from addtional advertising opportunites that come with a busy portal.
Surely there must be a portal or people out there capable of doing this!
I dont care if it is just more PR for Zoopla, if it builds up their brand awareness to be on a par with rightmove then its going to benefit us financially!
why if propertytoday (the previous Johnston Press property platform) failed should this make any difference? isn't the issue that local newspaper sites have lost their audiences?
does anyone think this will do any good or is it just more PR for Zoopla?