After initial confusion in the industry with agents asking, ‘Will it be just Zoopla now – are the brand names going to disappear?’, Zoopla has today told Jungledrum that their strategy is intended “to maximise the value and opportunity for our agent members.”
Zoopla says that all their other brands will remain but they will be focusing all marketing efforts around the Zoopla.co.uk brand. The brands will become “powered by the Zoopla technology platform” and the websites will carry all the features and content currently on Zoopla.
Zoopla will be the lead brand going forward and will power Propertyfinder, Hotproperty and Thinkproperty as well as third party property search partnerships like MSN, Yahoo, etc.
Although the brand names will survive (for now?) they will be, for example, Thinkproperty powered by Zoopla and it seems that the brand designs will disappear, with all sites having the same layout and design as the Zoopla site.
Alex Chesterman (left), CEO of Zoopla Ltd, commented, “The driving force behind our recent acquisitions was a desire to combine the expertise in the businesses and to create a unique, market-leading proposition for our member agents and the millions of home-movers using our websites every month.
“We plan to continue to transform the online property landscape in the UK and partner with our member agents to deliver more leads, more viewings, more services and help them to win more instructions and business. It is our intent to be the most efficient marketing partner for UK estate agents and provide them the widest possible exposure and best value online marketing services.”
Zoopla recently won the ‘Best UK Property Portal’ category at the 2009 Daily Mail UK Residential Property Awards, which is just as well if they are going to be as dominant as Alex Chesterman’s ambitions suggest.
There will be no change to fees for existing members but, says Zoopla, they will now offer a new dual pricing structure allowing agents to choose between a fixed monthly fee for ‘unlimited’ leads or a ‘pay per lead’ deal. Agents may ask – and time will tell – whether they are paying several times for the same platform if they all look the same, or, perhaps, how long will the brand names of Thinkproperty and Propertyfinder exist?
