TV Ads for primelocation.com, findaproperty.com

In July of this year The Digital Property Group, a division of Associated Northcliffe Digital, reaffirmed its “commitment to a multi-brand strategy for its property portals” which include primelocation.com and findaproperty.com as well as homesandproperty.co.uk and findanewhome.com.

Rather than merging any of the portals DPG said it would be even more tightly focussing them on different segments of the market.

As other companies tightened their belts, Mark Milner, CEO of The Digital Property Group, went on to say that in challenging market conditions, The Digital Property Group had made a multi-million pound investment in print and television advertising for both primelocation.com and findaproperty.com. Some estimates place it as high as £17 million.

TV advertisements for both portals have been running in the UK all through the month of October. So why have The Digital Property Group gone down this road?

This week Milner was quoted in Estate Agent Today as saying “television advertising has proven to be very successful in raising consumer brand recognition for our portals.”

Separating the four websites is a consumer-facing idea only. All of the portals in The Digital Property Group are offered to agents as one package through a single sales representative under a value based pricing model.

Milner commented in July that the group will continue to keep the four portals as differentiated brands in the eyes of the consumer but believe that “offering our portals as a single package will enable agents to market their properties to a broad spectrum of the market in a targeted and cost effective way.”

Further justifying this decision, The Digital Property Group wrote: “Each of the four portals has a distinctive brand with segregated target audiences, demonstrated by the fact that only 16% of users search for properties on both the main web sites findaproperty.com and primelocation.com (Source: comScore April 2008)”.

For example, The Digital Property Group say that the findaproperty.com audience is mainly those in early property life stages – renters and first to third time buyers. Whereas primelocation.com apparently attracts an older, more affluent audience centred on later life stages and top end rentals. This is clearly reflected in the two rather different TV advertisements:

The findaproperty.com advertisement (above) clearly markets itself at a younger, less established audience to the primelocation.com advertisement (below).

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