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Targeting Northern European buyers online
With the UK property market in its worst condition for some time, overseas buyers from other Northern European countries are in greater demand than ever. Exhibiting at one of the upcoming shows in
Scandinavia or
The Netherlands is a good way to test the water, but you can also reach these buyers online.
A recent Global Search Report breaks down search engine penetration in fifteen countries.
The report doesn’t cover Germany, Sweden or Norway but it gives an idea of internet penetration and Google’s market share in Denmark, Holland and Iceland. A summary of the results is below:
Internet penetration is slightly higher than in the UK in these countries and Google is the dominant search engine by some distance. The exception is Iceland, where local engine Leit.is provides some competition, taking a 42% of the market. Search engine optimisation and advertising on Google Adwords is an obvious way to reach these buyers but there is an easier one: property portals.
Overseas Property Portals
Listing on country specific portals is not always easy as they don’t necessarily have dedicated overseas property sections and if they do, you need to get your property details translated before uploading them. Fair Media however have recently launched a number of sites dedicated to overseas property and offer translation services into
Swedish (boutland.com), Finnish (
kotiulkomailla.com) and Norwegian (
Boutland.net).
There are also a number of English-language overseas property sites that provide an audience of Northern European buyers. For agents and developers selling in Spain,
Kyero is a good choice. It automatically translates the architecture of its site and the title of your property listing into Dutch, French, German and Danish. This allows it to have a presence on Google in these countries.
Another option is Properazzi, which aggregates over 4 million property listings across the globe. Properties are scraped from property websites automatically and their listings click back to the agents’ sites. The service is free and they make their money from enhanced listings. Their site architecture is translated in 32 languages. Yannick Laclau, CEO of Properazzi says they “have a truly international audience with no one country accounting for more than 15% of visitors”. You can add your properties to their site by visiting
this page.
Medhead, which launched in Spring 2007, has a unique approach to targeting non-English speaking buyers. They ask agents to complete multiple choice questions when uploading property. The answers to these questions are then translated into English, French, Italian, German, Russian and Danish. Managing Director Kim Jamilly says: “It’s like having six different sites…It’s actually hardest to rank [on search engines] on English language property terms because the market is so competitive. We do very well on Google in the other languages, particularly Russian”. Medhead is looking for agents and developers selling property in Cyprus, Spain, France & Italy. It is offering a limited number of complimentary listings on a first-come, first-served basis.
Targeting European buyers on Google
Your normal search engine optimisation efforts should help you pick up European buyers searching Google in English and you can always extend the regional focus of your
Adwords campaigns to further increase traffic. However, if you are serious about targeting this group via search, you will need to invest in translation and in creating the website architecture to list property in different languages. This will not only help your natural search rankings in your chosen countries but will also significantly increase your conversion rates. If you already have commissions coming in from Northern European buyers, it may be worth investing some of the money on upgrading your website to cater for them.
User Comments
What is the point in investing time and money into translating your site into other languages to cater for them if you don't have any staff who can speak their language?
Luke,
www.propertyselect.com