Zoopla Marketing Strategy: Competitive Analysis and Recommendations

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Zoopla's marketing strategy within the UK property market. It begins with an introduction to Zoopla, its history, and its position as a leading property portal. The report examines Zoopla's competitive environment, including key competitors like Rightmove and On The Market, and analyzes the company's strategies for brand awareness, customer engagement, and product differentiation. It delves into Zoopla's use of mergers and acquisitions to gain a competitive edge, as well as the impact of economic and socio-cultural factors on its marketing efforts. The report also explores Zoopla's marketing mix, including product, pricing, place, and promotion strategies, and analyzes Porter's Five Forces. It concludes with recommendations for Zoopla to maintain its market position and adapt to the evolving online property search landscape. This analysis provides a detailed understanding of Zoopla's marketing approach and its effectiveness in the competitive real estate market.

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ZOOPLA MARKETING STRATEGY
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Zoopla marketing strategy
Introduction
Zoopla is a British company co-owned by Daily Mail, General Trust and Countrywide, a
real estate agent. Zoopla PLC was founded in 2007, and its website started being operational in
January 2008 (Yoruk 2018). Alex Chesterman and Simon Kain established the company. The
company offers work-flow tools to more than 40000 and letting agents across the United
Kingdom. Since its initiation, the company has grown tremendously becoming the best property
portal in 2011 and the Best Brand in 2013 (Yoruk 2018). The company target UK national
adults who are settling down and looking for houses (Field 2014). In 2016, Zoopla was ranked
the second among the best performing property search engines commanding about 38% of the
market share. However, Zoopla faces a stiff competition from Rightmove who are top among all
companies as well as On The Market which was launched in January 2015 (Fraser 2017).
Zoopla has continued to create and grow brand awareness and constant customer
engagement as well as investing heavily in advertising and marketing (Brown 2016, pp. 18).
Subsequently, Zoopla brand awareness had increased among adults from 26% in 2010 to 80% in
2014 (Hilary 2015). To counter competition, Zoopla Company has also invested heavily in
product differentiation to stand out, maintain uniqueness and help in staying ahead of the
competitors. For instance, unlike other competitors such as On The Market only offering the
listing of the property alone due to its limited search tools, Zoopla will help its customers to be
aware of when the property was first listed and the history of how the price of the same property
was reduced. The above aspects are critical for buyers to consider when considering the price
offer for a particular property (Collinson and Monaghan 2017).

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Zoopla Company has also proved to be among the best among the property search
companies in the UK due to its strategy of cornering a fledging market commonly referred to as
merger and acquisition to ensure that it gain a competitive edge. By 2016, Zoopla had purchased
nearly all of its competitors totalling to 13 as well as several mergers (Yoruk 2018). The
strategy has given Zoopla an added advantage of accumulation of more revenue and income
which as results makes it one of the most performing properties and real estate Company in the
UK. For instance, in 2016, Zoopla got ahead of its rivals by acquiring software company,
Property Software Group for 75 million pounds thus giving it direct access to more than 8000
estate agents across the UK (Yoruk 2018). In 2015, it acquired Comparison Services from
Uswitch. The process helped Zoopla Property Group to grow its revenue to 96.4 million pounds
by March 2016 (Fletcher 2016).
Zoopla has also derived its unmatched success from improving the customer experience
by providing more services which are helpful to their clients. The company has focused entirely
on its mission of continuous innovation aiming at enhancing the consumer experience. Zoopla
has strived to transform its professional expertise by delivering more exceptional value at a lower
cost to its consumer making them a leading player in the market (Verbeke 2013, pp. 30). Thus,
Zoopla existence and success in the property market has been felt across the UK following its
well-crafted branding. The position ensures that they offer the best customer experience brought
by continued product differentiation, merger and acquisition as well as providing their clients
with tools which give more exposure to help in making decisions.
A business strategy is an action plan developed to achieve a specific goal (Johnson 2016,
pp. 39). It is also the scope and direction of a business over a long time which gives an
organisation a competitive advantage while using its resources within the changing business

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environment, and at the same time striving to meet the market needs and the needs of its various
shareholders (Montgomery 2011, pp. 12). Zoopla has adopted strategies such as merger and
acquisition, product differentiation as well as value creation which have helped it grow revenue
by 130 % up to 96.4 million pounds in between 2015 and 2016 (Yoruk 2018). Zoopla Property
Group is striving to obtain more information from the market to be able to adjust to the changing
conditions and needs of the changing environment.
Currently, UK’s government has policies which are supporting technological
advancements within its state. Being an online search engine, Zoopla has capitalised on the
process to grow massively and tremendously. Zoopla has been able to maintain its position at the
forefront through the launch of various mobile and other digital platforms to enable its customers
to access their services quickly and easily. Through their continued innovation and acquisition of
different software companies, Zoopla has grown to reach up to 54 million visitors on their sites
per month in 2017 (Fletcher 2016).
In 2017, the British economy was ranked the sixth largest economy in the world growing
at 1.7%. The household consumption stood at 1.5% in the same year (Yoruk 2018). The British
government is also striving to reduce the unemployment rate and also reduce the taxation rate to
enable various investors ready to invest more in the housing sector (Field 2014). With this
decreasing rate of unemployment in the UK, more adults are earning a good salary and have
access to mortgages which increase the demand and need to own homes. Consequently, it means
that more people in the UK are using Zoopla to search for various properties to buy thus
increasing revenue (Pannell and Blood 2014, pp. 56).
Economic growth is directly related to consumer spending levels in the UK. Many
residents in the UK seeking to own a home are highly motivated by the quality of the property

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being offered as well as the pricing (Tallon 2013, pp. 6). Thus, when buying a property, the UK
citizens have behaviour of looking at that area which provides a higher value at a much lower
cost. In the UK, the government profoundly controls planning of housing; it encourages the
house builders to offer a small costing housing accompanied with more affordable and lavish
properties (Field 2014). Therefore it has helped Zoopla grow its customer number since it
provides all the information on affordable and quality housing as encouraged by the government.
Many socio-cultural factors in the UK influence the residents’ investment on property
buying (Tallon 2013, pp. 7). Due to increase economic growths in Britain, houses are erected
around educational centres, retail and leisure facilities with the aim of avoiding future social
problems. The UK government has heavily invested in social amenities such as security,
hospitals and schools (Tallon 2013, pp. 8). Hence, many estates and other properties are located
in areas with such facilities which most home buyers in the UK deem important when
considering where to buy home. Thus, with such amenities being found around most areas, the
residents will have an urge to buy a house in any place across the country (Field 2014). It has
forced many people to choose Zoopla as the avenue to search for various properties since Zoopla
has stood out to offer such necessary information to its clients (Pannell and Blood 2014, pp. 56).
Zoopla has been operating in a very competitive environment from companies such as
Rightmove and On The Market (Fraser 2017). However, since it launched its services, Zoopla
has grown and right now the services are at the maturity level of the service lifecycle.
Characterized by massive merger and acquisition, Zoopla is ranked second after Rightmove
Property Company. Throughout its growth stage, Zoopla had the opportunity to merge and buy
other companies like Uswitch and Property Software Group which helped it continue to grow
and maintain competition (Fletcher 2016).

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With the fact that 90% of the property enquiries are now digital, Zoopla has invested 50%
of its marketing budget on digital marketing; social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and
other percentage has been dedicated to other forms of advertising including print, Television and
radio advertising (Proctor 2014, pp. 8). The marketing strategy has helped Zoopla grow its brand
awareness every year with up to 76% of the adults being aware of Zoopla by 2014 (Yoruk
2018).
According to Porter’s five forces of analysis, threats from new entrants and threats from
substitute products like from Rightmove and On The Market are giving Zoopla a stiff
competition which poses a significant threat to the organisation (Fraser 2017). Zoopla has been
able to use this feature as its strength to edge out its competitors, which has worked very well.
The element becomes relevant since most customers prefer the site which gives them enough
information they need before investing in any property. However, the company faces stiff threats
from On The Market Property Company who are striving to overtake Zoopla and become the
second-ranked company in the UK. Since it was launched in January 2015, On The Market is
Zoopla a stiff competition, and at times it lists more properties that Zoopla (Fraser 2017).
Zoopla marketing strategy allows the company to be more diverse in the market. The
policy marks a right approach in the development and execution of its plans to re-position itself
in the market and be on the competitive edge of the property search segment (Stamova 2016, pp.
8). With the plan in play, the following section highlights Zoopla marketing mix. A more
sustainable marketing mix gives the company an opportunity to improve its marketing strategy
thus improving organisation’s level of sustainability (Johnson 2016, pp. 41).
Product/Service: The service offered by Zoopla forms its essential part, and it defines the
company, and which promotes the company’s brand. However, place positioning strategy and

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new segmentation, Zoopla need to continue improving its services and launching more platforms
for its clients to counter the competition from its competitors (Hilary 2015).
Pricing: According to Zoopla CEO Alex Chesterman, Zoopla motive is to transform
consumer experience by offering more services to its customers and also transform their
professional expertise by providing more excellent value at a lower cost thus creating more
marketing share and becoming ahead of competitors (Proctor 2014, pp. 9).
Place: Since most of Zoopla services are accessed online, the company should ensure that
it launches more platforms for the customers to be able to access more services. It has been made
possible by the acquisition of more software platform like Property Software Group (Fletcher
2016). However, Zoopla has continued to invest more in acquiring other subsidiary property sites
to ensure that it takes control of the online property search engines.
Promotion: To keep up with the competition, Zoopla has used its brand awareness
strategy throughout the UK to ensure it reaches a massive number of the UK adult population
which is their target clients (Tallon 2013, pp. 9). It has continued to use both offline and online
advertising avenues to boost its brand awareness. Until 2014, the company was able to increase
its brand awareness up to 76% of the population (Hilary 2015).
Zoopla improving and renewing marketing mix would allow it to have a better and
stronger market position in the market and also develop the organisation’s theme from a
developmental point of view (Whitehead et al. 2015, pp.12). An important part of any marketing
tactic is connected to how well the company promotes itself in the market (Proctor 2014, pp. 10).
A combination of a market mix with well-organised and viable promotions would improve
Zoopla position in the market.

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Recommendations and conclusion
The company has positioned itself in the market as an intermediary between the home
buyers and the real estate, and property sellers. Many companies have emerged, with the recent
case being that of On The Market posing a significant threat to the company. Thus, Zoopla
should come up with new services which are distinctive to remain unique and competitive in the
market. As the online shopping rise due to advanced technology, more opportunities are based
around optimising and expanding services to fit the growing digital marketing (Proctor 2014, pp.
10). Zoopla should use the data gathered from customer feedback to improve the listing.
Additionally, the company should list the properties that are popular and most preferred by the
property buyers. The buying behaviour of the home buyers in the UK is influenced by several
factors which Zoopla should take into consideration when listing; which will bring a positive
client reaction since whatever they want is explicitly contained in the website and readily
available.
From the information gathered, Zoopla should ensure that it capitalises on strong brand
awareness through adverting and that they narrow the market and be more specific and target the
customer specifications. The tactic will maintain the number of clients who visit the website to
search for properties and consequently increase traffic. Zoopla can also benefit from the
investment in big promotions by seeking brand ambassadors who will ensure that brand
awareness is heightened (Brown 2016, pp. 20). With the effects of Brexit in 2016 already
creeping in, UK’s economy might go down, and Zoopla should ensure that they factor in the
effects when evaluating the strategies for any changes in the marketplace. By doing so, the
company will ensure that it is ahead of the game and the changes will not affect its operations to
a large extent.

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References
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Collinson,P. and Monaghan, A. (Dec 2017). Desperate UK homeowners are cutting prices, says
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guardian.com/business/2017/dec/18/desperate-uk-homeowners-are-cutting-prices-warns-
zoopla>[accessed on 30 March 2018].
Field, M. (2014). CBC Housing and Homelessness Strategy 2014-19, pp.41-49.
Fletcher, N. (Apr 2016). Zoopla jumps 2% after £75m software deal. The Guardian. [Online].
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Montgomery, C.A. ed. (2011). Resource-based and evolutionary theories of the firm: towards a
synthesis. Springer Science & Business Media, pp. 12-17.

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Pannell, J. and Blood, I. (2014). Quality and choice for older people’s housing: what can a new
Private Rented Sector offer?, pp. 56-65.
Proctor, T. (2014). Strategic marketing: an introduction. Routledge, pp. 8-11.
Stamova, T. (2016). Integrating open data reuse into the business models of German
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Tallon, A. (2013). Urban Regeneration in the UK. Routledge, pp. 6-9.
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Whitehead, C.M., Sagor, E., Edge, A. and Walker, B. (2015). Understanding the local impact of
new residential development: a pilot study, pp. 11-18.
Yoruk, B. (JAN 2018).UK retailers slump but Zoopla kicks off high-yield issuance. Reuters.
[Online]. Available from:< https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-retailers-slump-but-zoopla-kicks-
off/uk-retailers-slump-but-zoopla-kicks-off-high-yield-issuance-idUKL8N1P34V8>[accessed on
30 March 2018].
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marketing-director/> [accessed on 30 March 2018].

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