Words: Ashley Rigg
Published: 7th February 2008
Marketing to property investors: six useful websites
Property investors are a difficult group to define. Rational considerations like yield and capital growth potential certainly matter more to investors but latent motivations such as “telling your mates down the pub” still play a part.
At the top of the market, deals are done primarily through personal relationships, word of mouth and recommendation. Wealthy expats will often rely on the counsel of experts such as
ShelterOffshore, for example.
However investors, like the majority of property buyers, research online. If you can persuade them to part with their contact details during their research, you can begin building a relationship and hopefully become their trusted adviser for overseas property purchases.
We speak to a number of industry figures to canvass their opinion on the best websites to use to generate investor leads:
Google
“Portals have had their day,” proclaims David Cox, Director of Property Frontiers, a man who employed a good in-house SEO. Although he concedes that he does use The Move Channel and a few other portals he says: “we get 80 to 90 percent of our leads from Google….exhibitions and print advertising are peripheral”. The lesson is clear: invest in search, it’s a proven way to reach property investors.
The Move Channel
Pay-per-performance portal
The Move Channel has a dedicated investment sub-domain and investors can sign up to email alerts using criteria such as “high rental yield” and “100% financed”. Emerging market specialist Someplace Else started using property portals in December and are trialing a large number of sites. Marketing Manager Charlotte Williams says: “It’s early days but the most effective portal so far has been The Move Channel, generating over 90 leads.”
Escape Artist
Although not strictly an investment portal, US lifestyle and property site,
Escape Artist achieves some excellent natural search positions on Google for phrases investors might search for, such as “real estate in Panama”. Escape Artist is an editorially rich and powerful site - it’s the only PR7 property portal we’ve come across. It is particularly strong in South and Central America as well as in the US and Canada. With an estimated database of 350,000 people, a subset of this will no doubt be professional investors. Being US-centric, it should also provide access to a different audience than the other sites in the list.
Nubricks
Overseas property news blog
Nubricks has built up a large investor following since launch two years ago. According to director Adam Samuel, it has a database of “over 12,000 investors”. Nubricks offers solus email shots on a limited basis and advertorials like
this one, which are distributed to their database. Nubricks has an editorial influence over investors that property portals do not, which suggests response should be good. It’s an interesting business model.
Property Showrooms
Although not as high profile as some other portals,
Property Showrooms has a strong investor proposition. It runs IPIN (International Property Investment Network) inside the Property Showrooms portal which provides investors with detailed investment reports if they register their details. It’s used this model to good effect to build a large investor database. Although competitive rivalry (IPIN is essentially an estate agent) may put some agents off, its audience and commission-share business model will persuade just as many to list.
Primelocation
Owned by the Daily Mail Group Trust (DMGT),
Primelocation.com is well established in the UK as “the upmarket property portal”. Although it has become more mass market since the takeover by DMGT, its marketing activity is still biased towards higher income groups. This includes branding in some of the biggest top-end estate agent offices, such as Hamptons and Savills. If you are looking to target cash-rich buyers, running a test campaign on Primelocation may be a good place to start.
User Comments
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Steve Smit
Property Consultant
steve@hartproperties.co.za
Steve Smit,
Platinum Hart