Since launching six months ago, On The Market has been making a steady headway in the online property sector despite receiving plenty of backlash and negative press, particularly from their competitors Zoopla.

Three months ago, Zoopla commented on the launch of On The Market by claiming that sellers are at serious risk of losing out by going with an agent who lists their property on On The Market.

In addition, Alex Chesterman, founder of Zoopla, commented;

Consumers should be outraged at On The Market with its restrictive and regressive practises. Why should a seller be happy to exclude potential buyers?

Agents and sellers who use On The Market are required to use the portal exclusively before listing their properties on either Rightmove or Zoopla. Sellers are also prevented from listing on both portals at the same time, meaning members can only use Rightmove or Zoopla while using On The Market. While this saves the agent listing fees, it can potentially mean less exposure across websites.

With this limited exposure in mind, it’s important for On The Market to get traffic from search users in the property search market to prevent agents from missing out on sales.

Organic traffic

Zoopla warned sellers that On The Market’s traffic is a staggering 44 million less than themselves per month. While organic traffic is on the rise for On The Market, the comparison to the duopoly Zoopla and Rightmove is bleak. On The Market does not generate anywhere near as much as organic traffic, making the chance of a sale or letting from search queries far less likely than its competition.

Local search terms

This week, Guardian Money ran a test which showed On The Market is beginning to list more properties than Zoopla;

[in Harrogate] Zoopla was listing only 138 properties compared with 343 on On The Market, and 529 on Rightmove.

However, despite this, SEMRush data suggests that On The Market still have a long way to go from a local organic ranking perspective.

*data supplied by www.semrush.com. Ranking search phrases with “Harrogate”

One way in which On The Market are making up for this disparity and ensuring their agents and sellers get the coverage required through the use of PPC coverage on localised search terms. In fact, SEMRush data suggests that On The Market are dominating all PPC coverage in the property sector.

*PPC coverage for search phrases with “Harrogate”

This aggressive use of PPC backs up chief executive Ian Springett’s high ambitions,

OTM has the goal to become the #2 portal as quickly as possible and then to be a credible alternative to the number 1.

By investing heavily in PPC, On The Market are ensuring that searchers are exposed to their portal, despite not ranking organically.

Branded search terms

In order to move up in the property sector online, On The Market will need to focus on both SEO, PPC and brand recognition. Brand recognition leads to organic brand search; a much easier way of gaining organic traffic as there is no direct competition with other brands.

Both branded search terms and branded search volume are particularly low in comparison to Rightmove and Zoopla, however with only six months under its belt these figures are not particularly surprising.

Where does On The Market stand?

On The Market has without a doubt made one of the most ambitious moves in the digital world in 2015. The aggressive use of PPC and offline marketing certainly points out a potential for a top two spot in the future, but without a huge jump in organic search share and brand growth, we doubt this will be happening in 2015/2016.

We will be keeping an eye on the property sector closely over the next few months. Watch out for our updated digital market share reports we will be examining closely each month.