Zoopla’s new “Size Me” campaign launched nationally this week.
It allows sellers and landlords to submit their property online via the Zoopla website for a chance to make their property the most seen in the UK.
From the properties submitted online each month, one will be chosen and featured across large-scale media and online advertising spaces, from national billboards to newspapers and to Facebook and Twitter.
Carly Grigglestone from Sowerbys in Norfolk said: “This is a fantastic initiative from Zoopla and we are delighted that one of our clients’ properties was the first chosen to front this campaign.
“The concept clearly highlights the scale of the Zoopla audience and importance of acting in the best interest of our clients to get their property seen by everyone.”
Alex Chesterman, Zoopla CEO, said: “This campaign clearly shows consumers the power of Zoopla as a marketing platform.
“At the same time it will help our members win instructions as consumers understand the benefit of being listed on Zoopla and insist their agent markets their property on Zoopla or chooses an agent who can.”
The first home to be chosen for the new Zoopla Size Me campaign is pictured below.
Comments (18)
There are several quotes from the above story that I could choose to make this point – Mr Chesterman as usual sticks his ‘nads so far out as to almost DEMAND them to be kicked… but he is pretty much a lost cause – so unluckily for Ms Carly Grigglestone I have picked hers (quote, that is – not ‘nads).
“The concept clearly highlights the scale of the Zoopla audience…”
Hmmm… Ms Grigglestone has been out of Agency for a few years from what I see but is now back as a “Marketing Manager”. Well – we all know what we think of certain people who share such a title, knowing bot-all about property or people but who are apparently unafraid to spurt out billshut (they have swallowed so much of the stuff it has to eject from somewhere…) to the masses – and this lady seems to have put aside all she learned about REAL Estate Agency during her pre-internet years in the industry and joined the ranks as a fully paid-up member.
Petal – Google have stuck one of your properties ON BILLBOARDS. They are an INTERNET company. They say the 161% of searches START ON the internet – not by ‘traditional’ methods of advertising – people just go there.
Think about it. When penny drops – no doubt we will ALL hear it.
Are there any agents out there that will speak with either they’re current clients or they’re prospective clients about this product? Is this an instruction winner that Alex Chesterman thinks it will be?
It never ceases to make me chuckle how agents claim to be experts at “marketing” yet know so little about the marketing mix (or what it is even).
“Real portal advertising… like a TV campaign”… really ? Red Bull, Go Pro, Moet, Rolls Royce, Costco, Zara, Google, Facebook etc. no Tv ads from them.
Then again, when I see listings with sloping walls, over/under exposed photographs, lime green lawns, illegible floor plans, innately boring copy, tedious template brochures I’m not surprised.
Ok, so tell me(as you are a marketing expert?)……..would you expect to see a huge spike in visits on a web site that advertises relentlessly on tv or would you expect to see greater growth in visitor numbers as a direct result of a poster campaign from the same web site?.
I appreciate brand awareness, long, short and medium term but it’s a simple question-which would provide greater traffic to the website for the advertisers that pay to advertise their client stock on ?
Zara? Should they be in your list? I will have to rummage4 them!
Seems like Zara will be getting about £16,000,000 worth of free publicity for failing to deal with employment abuses in its supply chain.
Damn good job agents are only guilty of rubbish photos and details.
The concept clearly highlights the scale of the Zoopla audience and importance of acting in the best interest of our clients to get their property seen by everyone.”
So does every property get this at the very point that all important buyer is searching? Its just I would have a fair few hundred clients NOT feeling as loved as the chosen one!
It is a bit like a “featured property” or “Property of the Week” (remember them)…. all this creates/achieves or all this is intended to create and achieve (in my opinion) is the next vendor wanting that “special space” and once they have drummed up enough “end user demand” ie the homeowner saying “I want that” they will introduce it as a “product” to buy as an agent or indeed an excuse to up your fees as “vendors want it”.
Nice touch, can’t blame em, but give over it helps sellers! It MIGHT help the chosen property but nothing more.
“So does every property get this …”…………Agreed and more importantly would most property owners want their house plastered on billboards, buses and the sides of buildings……I personally wouldn’t and I’m not sure many of our sellers wouldn’t either.
Isn’t every property special to someone? Doesn’t every property have a feature or a benefit that makes it stand out to potential purchasers? Isn’t that what Agency is all about?
This is brilliant for Jake and the individual vendors that follow but how does it help the other vendors all hoping to find a buyer? Do they sit there hoping next month it is their turn to be in the spotlight or do they rely on more traditional methods such as employing an agent who has a database of applicants?
Why isn’t there a comment from Abbots, William H brown and Case and Dewing all saying how marvellous this feature is? Sorry for pointing out the obvious those other 3 Zoopla customers in Dereham lucked out this month. The Countrywide agents are OK there is every chance the next chosen property will be one of theirs, but Case and Dewing will be wondering how long it will be before Dereham gets another go. T
The bit that possibly worries me more; this particular billboard promotes Zoopla, but doesn’t mention Sowerbys, Carly did the work, Alex gets the benefit. That isn’t the way a supplier /customer relationship ought to work. This is Zoopla poaching trade away from ,in this case, Sowerbys .com.
If this is the extent of Zoopla’s attempts to curry favour with agents I think the time has come for them to stick underpants on their heads, pencils up their nose and shout wibble.
Of course it is not about Jake or his house or the agent, it is about customer awareness.
A publicly listed company protecting their own interest? Whatever next!
This is a gimmick directed at agents and not the consumer.
Zoopla should be doing some proper advertising/marketing instead this is being done just to protect their own interest.
Haven’t you been banging on for 6 months about how us agents are zooplas customers , the they go and advertise to you and your not impressed !!
“Advertising to me” is all they’ve done this year….
Come on let’s be honest who’s gonna try and win instructions today on the back of advising their clients that by instructing you they stand a 1 in 200,000 chance of having their property splashed on a billboard 300 miles away ? Genius!
Ah Danny, thought I might see you on this article!…..Would have been nice to hear your views on some non Zoopla/otm stories but, as you always say, your choice.
So today you are straight at the heels of the first comment which rightly points out that this is a Zoopla gimmick(fact, not opinion) They have done it as a very cheap alternative to real portal advertising.
So can you just confirm that you think this this gimmick is more effective than a comprehensive tv advertising campaign aimed to get more of the public looking at your clients’ properties on Zoopla??
Which would you have preffered them to do if you had the choice?
Ahh Wilko, the nemesis returns! Firstly writing fact in front of something doesn’t make it a fact… Fact . Secondly if Zoopla decide rom spend money doing this then so be it . OTM need a tv as campaign as no one has heard of them . They would have probably been better off doing billboards in this manner where they have penetration instead of splashing out loads of cash in places they have property listed… The irony ! Springett can advertise where he wants though, it’s not his money he’s wasting and he’s not getting sacked anytime soon
Should ready haven’t got property listed …
Sorry Danny…” OTM need a tv as campaign as no one has heard of them ”
I am not sure if that post was a result of drink [the timing ties up with traditional last orders] whether you are a bit not up to speed or whether you are one of the digital experts who doesn’t really understand agency.
In 5000 branches of OTM roughly 350,000 vendors have heard of OTM and their member agents, that is over 1/3rd of all the present home movers. Invariably each of those vendors will sell to purchasers, that is by very simple maths another 1/3rd of all those who will move. That might not be the full 2/3rd of everyone who is going to move, it is an un-known percentage somewhere between 33.33% and 66.66%, but still that alone is not ‘no-one’.
With the vendor side of ‘no-one has heard of them’ taken care of let’s look at 5000 applicant registers of probably 250 applicants. That is another 1.25 million ‘no-ones’
A significant number of those moving have heard of OTM.