Ambition
Semetrical have been working with OnTheMarket since their initial launch in 2015 and through careful management and optimisation of their paid search and display campaigns, we have been instrumental in supporting their transition from a new business start-up to a PLC in the first 3 years. In 2019, PPC and Display channels had grown to play a wider role in OnTheMarket’s business, and Semetrical were requested to improve data visibility and tailor an approach to become more efficient and offer added value to specific client partners. OnTheMarket features hundreds of thousands of UK properties listed by over 12,500 estate agent offices. The estate agent market is highly fragmented, with firms typically having between one and three offices operating competitively on a hyper-local basis. To achieve our objectives, the highly localised campaigns needed to be analysed closely in terms of value delivered to agents on both a national and local basis. All activity required powerful integration within the overall multi-channel brand marketing and advertising campaign. At the start of 2019, we set out to achieve the following:
Objectives:
- Expand campaign structure to include locations managed by new partner estate agents
- Cross reference our results with third-party technology, Adthena, to plan against competitors
- Seamless integration with wider business: SEO, in-house tech, analytics
- Test Display activity to further to expand brand reach
- Increase media spend through the “Sale” category to drive higher value leads
- Push visibility of high priority partner agents to drive increased lead volumes for specific developments
Targets:
- Reduce cost per view for high spending months by 35%
- Increase overall leads whilst reducing cost per acquisition by a monthly average of 33%
We have worked very closely with an integrated Semetrical team since before the launch of OnTheMarket.com in 2015. From the very beginning they highlighted the full potential of investing in cross-device search marketing channels to attract the most valuable audience of active property-seekers. They outlined the potential of PPC to deliver cost-effective traffic and leads to our diverse estate and letting agent membership all over the UK.
Strategy
To inform our precise targeting structure, we worked collaboratively with the OnTheMarket team to extract a wealth of information on estate agents by locality and where people were more likely to convert.
Semetrical built the foundation of OnTheMarket’s localised PPC and Display strategy on the various target audience segments which included the following:
- Property buyers looking for new build developments by our key estate agents
- Prospective renters of high value properties
- Home buyers across the UK wide market
We recognised that building such strong relationships on these grounds is imperative and represented a significant area where we could provide value as an agency.
Our macro strategy focused on:
- Finding the best combination of keywords and landing pages
- Leveraging client and publisher data for optimisation
- Operating as an extension of OnTheMarket’s in-house teams
- Moving past last click attribution
Finding the best combination of keywords and landing pages:
- We collaborated with OnTheMarket’s in-house team to determine how best we can leverage their website and identify additional opportunities and gaps
- Once those gaps were identified, we initiated projects to improve the website navigation for specific properties which helped to not only optimise for PPC but also for SEO
- It was important for us to provide timely and regular updates via our bespoke reporting interface throughout
Leveraging client data in optimisation:
- Using third party technologies including Adthena we were able to determine how various advertisers behaved in the SERP and how we could best plan around this
- This third party data was integrated with the client’s data, which helped us map primary targets to a postcode area for prioritisation in bidding, based on the ROI
Operating as an extension of OnTheMarket’s in-house teams:
- We built our advertising campaigns according to a coding system that aligned to micro-locations across the entirety of the UK. This meant we had a unique key for every property location we wanted to target, as well as any future locations too
- New partner agents were able to be added quickly and efficiently, allowing us to be reactive to changing client priorities on a monthly basis
- Similarly any changes we made could be easily linked to changes seen at a business level and this increased our ability to plan spends efficiently month on month and to effectively communicate how the changes we made impacted business performance
Moving past last click attribution:
- Year on year we have seen a growing disparity between publisher and Google Analytics conversion metrics. When analysing this, we were able to see the changing role of search through the user journey
- Although we may not be driving the highest volume of last click conversions, we are confidently able to communicate the role and importance of paid media channels in supporting those conversions
- Paid Search is often used as the stepping stone of introducing new users to the business. Taking this into account we can drive cross channel uplift as well as grow the reach of the paid media channels
Achievements
Our achievements with OnTheMarket demonstrate a high level of growth brought about by a sophisticated approach to PPC and Display campaign management. We ended the year generating a +62% YOY increase in additional leads, whilst reducing cost per acquisition by -54% YOY. By improving alignment, planning and use of data, we managed to achieve the following results against our set targets:
Targets:
- Reduce Cost-per-Visit for high spending months by 35%
- Increase overall leads whilst reducing CPA by a monthly average of 33%.
We achieved:
- A 27% higher volume of traffic at 38.6M clicks
- Additional leads equal to +62% YOY
- A 54% lower cost per acquisition
- Reduced Cost-per-View by 35% in our last high spending month.
62%YOY increase in leads
27%Higher volume of traffic
33%Increase overall leads while reducing CPA
After just 12 months, OnTheMarket was already established as one of the top 3 property search portal businesses in the UK. We are focused on creating the agent-backed alternative to the market leader and continue to work closely with Semetrical to grow our traffic, our leads and our agent base.
