June 2007

HIPs and more TV as Primelocation expand

PRIMELOCATION, who have been busy adding to their list of members so far this year, have announced they are offering their agents a Home Information Pack service.

It is notable that they are the only portal offering such a facility.

Ordering and follow-up queries for the HIP service can be handled either via accessing an online system or by simply telephoning Primelocation’s service centre where one of their trained staff will guide agents through the process.

Primelocation have integrated their systems and processes with those of their partner, MDA Information Products Ltd, to deliver what they claim will be a high quality product.

“We feel it is essential that we offer a service to independent agents which can deliver similar economies of scale to the larger agents,” said chief executive Ian Springett. “In addition, our HIPs should be very acceptable to vendors given the strength of our name in the market and the substantial backing we have.

“The name of the game will be to deliver quickly those elements of the HIP required to start marketing properties and to minimise the administration and liability burden on agents so they are free to concentrate on what they do best.

Meanwhile, Primelocation are extending their TV advertising presence. According to Mr Springett, a nationwide TV campaign this month will be followed with another push planned for the autumn.

Primelocation have so far run a national campaign through January and February and a London and Yorkshire campaign during April and May.

Since the turn of the year, Primelocation has added over 1,000 paying offices across the UK. Newcomers include Nock Deighton in Shropshire, Meller Braggins in Cheshire, Scargill Mann in Derbyshire and Richard Watkinson in Nottinghamshire.

“Primelocation is also spending heavily online and its long-established press and magazine advertising schedule is now supplemented by extensive coverage in the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and London Evening Standard,” said Mr Springett.

“This level of marketing support has helped Primelocation consolidate its position in its existing strongholds and has also helped it build coverage in new areas by attracting some of the best firms to list.”

A place to click on to...

RIGHTMOVE certainly do not stand still and they have now introduced their virtual mapping product, which is operational on their site giving the user the opportunity to click through to the new generation of informative maps.

The Virtual Earth platform is an integrated set of services that combines bird’s eye, aerial, and 3D imagery with mapping, location and search functionality.

Rightmove serves these maps from its www.aboutmyplace.co.uk site of which I am sure we will hear more as they develop the information it provides.

Other users are also starting to use Microsoft Virtual Earth mapping — HIP providers LMS are to use a tool they call ‘Navigator’ to highlight the property on which they are providing information.

Developer Stamford Homes are using it as a marketing tool and OfficeBrokers consultants claim they are reducing the time taken to deal with enquiries by some 50 per cent.

At present most sites are still catching up with the potential offered by Google mapping for which there is no charge but undoubtedly the decision of the big players like Rightmove to invest in this new technology, possibly at attractive rates, means that it has to be taken seriously — for the bigger players at least.

At present I have not been able to get an idea of the sort of cost that a typical agent website might face if utilising MS as opposed to Google but Rightmove see good reasons for paying for the technology.

Microsoft have worked with Rightmove to supply maps for users on slower connections; Rightmove feel the aerial images are superior and there is no risk of unwanted adverts appearing on the map surrounds.

Rightmove values being able to control the potential advertising and revenues streams. Watch this space for developments at www.aboutmyplace.co.uk.

...and thinkproperty are growing as well

THINK PROPERTY, under the guidance of Mark Goddard, have now awakened and at last are starting to put resources behind the concept launched this time last year by Vebra.

A dedicated thinkproperty.com development team is working solely on the thinkproperty.com consumer facing site and trade products associated with the site such as the online stock uploader tool and statistics package.

An eight-man thinkproperty.com field sales team that covers the whole of the UK has been introduced and they have started to recruit a telesales team. A dedicated marketing resource based at the Vebra office in Harpenden is concentrating on driving new traffic to the website and promoting the site to agents.

And it needed to improve if it is to become a serious player. In December it hardly registered on the Comscore traffic figures with some 36,000 unique users and that was after they had announced some big partnerships within their parent group — guardian.co.uk, autotrader.co.uk and adtrader.co.uk.

I am now informed that there are more high-profile partnerships around the corner which they hope will help to promote the thinkproperty.com brand as well as drive additional users to the site. They will be continuing a high-profile campaign across all the major search engines and launching a new online marketing campaign in the summer but there are no plans for a TV campaign to match that of Primelocation. Offline, they will be continuing a branding campaign across national and local papers and local radio stations to expose the brand further.

One of the issues has been providing a method for agents that do not have Vebra software to upload to the site. An upload tool has been developed and they can scrape agents’ sites with permission but the core of support at present is from Vebra agents. However, they are working on affiliation schemes and have already launched two with affinity networks movewithus and Team. These organisations recommend thinkproperty.com as their preferred portal of choice, allowing a trade in marketing materials and news press releases.

The partnerships also give thinkproperty.com the opportunity to present and speak at member meets and include items through the member newsletters. For this, member agents get a discount from the already low monthly charges — £59 per branch, per month or £49 per branch, per month for Vebra customers.

This charging structure perhaps illustrates a dichotomy that thinkproperty.com have — are they a service to Vebra agents or are they a genuine portal with ambitions to challenge the existing leaders?

Why should a Vebra agent get a preferred rate? Why are non-Vebra agents penalised?
At least they are moving in the right direction — the Comscore figures in April showed them to be now in the list of the main players with visits of 540,000 unique users and they are now the sixth-placed portal. The original pretenders for the next new portal — Look4aproperty are languishing in the 70s in the Comscore real estate April 2007 figures.