The newly merged business of Zoopla and Digital Property Group is to be called Zoopla Property Group.
However, it will continue to operate the three brands – Zoopla, PrimeLocation and FindaProperty – albeit from a single technology platform.
A spokesman said: “We will continue to operate all our brands for the time being and are investing even more in them. We have just launched our biggest ever marketing campaign for Zoopla and will also be launching a big new campaign for PrimeLocation over the next few weeks.
“With all the brands on a single technology platform, agents will get better results with the benefit of only dealing with one company.”
Consolidating the brands on to the platform is expected to be completed by the end of the month.
The merger, which went ahead just before summer and whose major stakeholder is the Daily Mail, was done to mount a credible challenge to Rightmove.
Alex Chesterman, founder and CEO of Zoopla Property Group, said: “The driving force behind our recent merger was the desire to create an online property marketing platform with an unrivalled audience, brands, products and partnerships, and to deliver a market-leading proposition to our members and users across the UK.
“The new Zoopla Property Group platform, which will be launched in the next few weeks, is another significant step towards our goal of becoming the UK’s most useful online resource for property consumers and most effective online marketing partner for property advertisers.”
Meanwhile, the former boss of PrimeLocation and FindaProperty has landed a new job. See next story.
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Comments
Building a brand, lol. A business doesn't build a brand buy having stupid logos plastered all over the place.
A business builds its brand by providing an excellent service and exceeding customer expectations.
Sorry, I forgot that just because you're old and spend all day on these boards, your opinion is the right one.
Wardy and FBA not coming out to play so you are trying to bait Ray Evans?
Good luck, he might be old but will out think you in an instant!
Thats not a right move.
Ray please dont mix a professional organisation the RICS, with the paid for pretend profession the NAEA. Thats a worse con than putting those initials after you name.
What is "your area" let the investigtors on her do search on "your area" to assess just how strong their (your?) offering is.
We have had umpteen "credible" Rightmove alternatives over the years;...... bigger, better, more advanced blah blah blah. yet it soon becomes apparent that 2 properties in Cornwall and half a dozen in Nottingham doesn't in Reality (pun intended) stack up to the RM beater that everyone is looking for.
Please could you let us know if you have analysed the figures anyfurther than how much each enquiry costs?
The cost of enquiry actually means very little it is the enquiry sale ratio that is the important one.
I can send you 200 enquiries per day for less than £1/day or I can send you 3; 1 enquiry from a House to sell local applicant and 1 or 2 First ime buyer mortgage approved applicants for £2.46 per day. Would you prefer the staff cost of sifting through my spam applicants in order to save £1.46 or would you prefer my quality applcant offering?
Please don't fall for the hits page views argument that all the portals are using to convince you to trust their superior expertise. If you are a genuine agent I am frankly surprised at your willingness to trust anyone but yourself and your own intuition with probably your largest agency spend. The fact that you have stopped short of the enquiry sale ratio is suggests to me that you are a patsy promoting the myth of the mega portals. If you are not, I mean no offence, but you really need to talk to someone who understands Agency Advertising.
I know Allagents are renowned for being a review website, however they have now launched a free property portal that is on par with rightmoves.
Its certainly getting lot of interest from agents in our area and I really do believe that this has got the potential to become a more credible alternative to rightmove and zoopla
I do enjoy reading the posts from some of my fellow agents on here, if for no other reason than having a decent giggle.
Time and again, someone suggests that agents should boycott portals and run/promote their own free one. WHY? I am an estate agent, not a portal guru. I do what I am good at and sell houses. My business (like any other in this industry or most others) has some costs - rent I pay to my landlord for my office, wages I pay to my staff and marketing to promote my business.
I do wish that my landlord didn't charge me rent, that my staff would work for nothing and that all marketing was free - but that is not how the world works. The idea that agents should develop/own/run a portal is no more sensible than them setting up a national newspaper or creating a TV station. I am very hapy for someone else who knows a lot more about it than me to operate and invest in a portal and me to pay them a relatviely small fee.
A portal provides a service. In my opinion and experience so far, a very valuable one. Our results and analysis shows the following costs per enquiry:
* Branch walkins - £44
* Local print press - £36
* Rightmove - £5.30
* Zoopla - £2.60
So I will close my office and pull all my money from the local paper before I even think about cancelling one of the big portals. And by the way, we are on PropertyLive which has no response so is irrelevant.
I am amazed at why some on here see portals as the enemy when they deliver mass response, mass exposure and are the lowest cost. Perhaps you would prefer to return to the days of newspaper dominance where you have to waste money on local print ads?
Try walkscore, I think findaproperty link to it, but not sure who owns it. I prefer it to the old up my street reports I used to get.
@Added by on 2012-09-05 14:43:58
Your rudeness and anonymity means your views are worthless. Broaden your mind and learn something about building a brand - think harder!
"The only true way we can hit them hard is for agents to form a FREE PORTAL and everyone equally market it within their areas. "
I mentioned this on another thread a few weeks ago:
Try looking at your local papers website. Our's is part of News Quest and they list our properties for free and charge a nominal monthly fee (and I mean nominal) to enhance the listing and to add our properties to their App (which is actually rather good). And, we get responses! They are fortunate enough not to need National TV campaigns to promote their site so the cost is and I'm assured will always be, a fraction of RM and Z.
Keep it local is my maxim at present - less waste and better value.
My own website has a button for general information in the area immediately surrounding it, a link to upmystreet.com but a new client today complained that far from giving any info, it now says that Zoopla has taken over upmystreet & re-directs them to the main zoopla website ... so now I can't inform buyers about the local area and instead send them to my competitors properties (as I don't yet use Zoopla). Great. I'm having the link re-worked to Google Maps as an OK tool but its a shame that upmystreet seems to have gone.
What did you do before portals?.
Some of you make out that its some sort of racket like someone comes around every month and forces you to pay. I know in London and major cities that RM and Zoopla is a great way for overseas buyers/ rentals to make contact but locally I dont see the point. If you are marketing yourself correctly in your local area you should stand out and at least have the chance of an invite for an inspection. I know some agents in North Essex have already pulled out of RM and have not suffered any dips in instructions or sales saving around £800pm. The only way to take a stand on the RM front is to pull out but then again would you all pull together in the same fight...no is probaly the answer to that one. I see a lot of agents with massive Rightmove stickers in their windows and only a small one with their own www. address. Why push it to a shared portal where you could be over looked. It's a shame that a stance could not be taken but I also understand why it could prove difficult, the term between a rock and a hard place comes to mind.
Oh yes, adding NAEA/ARLA/RICS would add so much crediblity.
Please, get with the times. The general public has no idea about these alphabet organisations. Kudos?? You sound like an old man trying to fit in with the young'ns
@rebel now before its too late on 2012-09-05 11:27:43
There is an up and running "free" portal, PropertyLive, but it is only for NFoPP members who are directors or 'partners of their firm?
To have an alternative, I suggest thought is given to opening it up to firms that are RICS, NALS etc. with an annual fee of a few hundred pounds..
A degree of additional worth and kudos could be maintained by adding the NAEA/ARLA/RICS members logo to their individual ads?
Just a suggestion. Or are there too many closed minds!!
If anyone thought for one second that the DPG and Zoopla merge was going to make things a more competitive market, then they are going to have their eyes open come next year.
This merger will only mean higher fees with everyone. RM will keep their fees the same, so in essense we will be paying double the costs for leads from the same enquiries. YES, please dont think that Zoopla and RM have got completely different customers
The only true way we can hit them hard is for agents to form a FREE PORTAL and everyone equally market it within their areas.
Then and only then can we kiss good bye to these crazy fees
Exactly, well done to all the idiots that have yet again created another monster.
So now instead of one, we have two. No wonder so many agents are going out of business.
been talking to zoopla and findaproperty and they will not offer or commitment it seems beyond the end of this year with regard to charges and products - getting the feeling after this cosildation will are going to get hit with a repackaging come next year which i expect in turn will lead then to a big jump in ££s
Zoopla will be included free of charge if you sign up before the their new 'higher' rate card comes in next month
@ Bert T
yep- spend spend spend...become arguably more inexpendible....charge agents.
Look at the amount of money these two major stakeholders have already spent...both the Daily Mail and the hitherto Zoopla...easily £100million isn't it (Prime sold for effectively around £60million back in the mad old dot com days , right?)
still, comeptition is healthy...lets see how rthey get on.
we are on findaproperty and primelocation but not zoopla, will we get a good deal for zoopla?
Quite right thecrux, and that's the problem the only way they can chase Right Move is by spending, spending means increasing subscriptions from members. So everyone hoping they're the RM killer is merely creating another in its place, or more accurately two portals that are needed rather than one, which to be fair what the whole deal here was about anyway.
They were never going to catch RM merely stay in touch as the next best option.
I don't have a problem with that as clearly RM deliver but i'm not sure everyone 'gets it'
so goodbye findaproperty then? makes sense. one big general consumer brand - zoopla- and a high end add on...if they return primelocation to that end of the market which you kind of have to with a name like that.
still a long way to go to catch rightmove though and cash required to get there.