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Portal marketing checklist
This article aims to help you identify the best overseas property portals for your business. You can also search our database of portals and read our editorial reviews to help you find suitable partners.
The only way to be totally sure if a property portal will generate leads is for you is to test it. If you are looking for more sales leads, we recommend you draw up a shortlist of potential partners and test a few of them. How many you test will depend on how many leads you need, your technical capabilities, your budget and your marketing objectives.
Golden rule
- Identify the sites that your target customer is likely to use
It sounds obvious but the key to a successful portal strategy is to list on partner sites that your customers are likely to use. This usually means sites that are visible on search engines for the kinds of phrases your customers might use. See
How property buyers use search engines.
Four criteria for your checklist
Each portal on our database is evaluated against four criteria to provide broad comparative information. As well as reading our profiles, we recommend that you apply these criteria to your own business and target customers.
- Consumer Marketing & Traffic
- Content
- Design & Navigation
- Business Model
Consumer Marketing & Traffic
Marketing and traffic levels are the most important things to consider when evaluating property portals. If they don’t generate enough traffic relevant to your business you won’t get many leads. However, comparing portals is difficult as there is currently no trusted independent source of information on relevant users.
In our opinion, the best way to evaluate whether a property portal will generate leads is to ask yourself what your potential buyers might search for on Google, search for the phrase and see which portals show up in the search results. Natural search results provide a better indicator than paid search in our opinion, as the results are generally clicked on more and do not disappear when budgets change or competitors outbid you.
The exception is when a portal has large paid search budgets and is willing to pay to appear all the time on competitive phrases. If a portal demonstrates they do this consistently in the areas where you are selling property, they should be taken seriously.
It is also important to consider offline marketing and a brand's consumer profile in the market. A better known property portal will get more clicks on their search engine listings and get more direct traffic from loyal customers. Some portals can compete effectively without spending huge amounts on offline marketing and brand building, but those that do have an advantage which you should take into account.
Content
Content is important. Without it, buyers have little to look at and will soon leave a website, perhaps never to return. Property listings are in our opinion more important than editorial content. Buyers want to search for property, compare houses, prices, locations and facilities. Check if portals have a good breadth of property content to give consumers choice.
Overseas buyers are often hungry for information. Editorial content (guides, podcasts, videos etc), if produced and presented well, can help build trust with users, which helps conversion rates and keeps people coming back. If a property portal does this well, it will help them generate leads.
Navigation & Design
On the internet, buyers are only one click away from the competition. If they get lost or frustrated, they will leave. Try to search for property in the areas where you are selling property. How difficult is it? If you find it difficult to find what you want, then your customers will too and this should raise a question mark about the portal's ability to deliver leads for you.
It is also worth considering the look and feel of a site. Does it look professional and slick, or cheap and amateurish? A cheap-looking design does not inspire confidence and will convert to lead for you at a lower rate.
Business Model
Price and payment terms are factors in any business decision. If a portal offers cost per lead or commission share, you should consider them more favourably. However, portals that charge monthly can have much more effective marketing so, in our opinion, the business model should always be a secondary factor in your analysis. If the product and the marketing are right for your customer profile, then you should definitely consider paying monthly. On the best sites you may also want to look at enhanced or high-traffic listings that put your properties and brand above your competitors, as this can be a very effective lead generation tactic.
Measuring Success
Once you have drawn up your shortlist and listed your properties with the appropriate portals, it is important to measure response.
The simplest and most common way to do this is to measure cost per lead. That is, the cost of advertising in one month divided by the number of leads generated in that month. Having a system to keep a note of costs and lead sources is really important. A period of three months is enough for an effective test, any less than this and it is not giving the advertiser a fair chance to deliver.
A better measure of success is the cost per “quality” lead. To do this you need to define “quality” and score your leads. For example, you might ask people if they are “actively” viewing property at the current time. If a portal delivers a small number of leads but most of them are from potentially serious buyers, it is good to have system that takes account of this.