5 Ways to Improve Project Listings on PropertyGuru
(5 min read)
After creating a project listing on PropertyGuru, the real work of marketing your property begins. While your active listing will be displayed to approximately 2.5 million active property seekers that visit PropertyGuru each month across Southeast Asia, you still need to take steps to improve your property’s visibility.
Some listings will inevitably do better than others due to factors like price, location, and inherent project features. But you can still improve the quality of your listings, and get more views and enquiries in the process by implementing best practices and targeted marketing tactics.
For example, did you know that many PropertyGuru users browse our listings on their mobile phones?
This should come as no surprise as Southeast Asia has a large concentration of mobile-first users. These are people whose initial access to the Internet occurred through a mobile device. According to a recent InMobi report titled Marketing in the era of Mobile, Southeast Asia saw 40 million new Internet users during the height of the pandemic and accounted for 11% of global app downloads as of the third quarter of 2020.
These findings are consistent with our metrics at PropertyGuru. With 70% of our traffic coming from mobile devices, it’s important to leverage as many mobile-friendly digital touchpoints as you can, whether it’s social media channels like Facebook or messaging apps like WhatsApp or WeChat.
Here are five best practices to improve your project listings on PropertyGuru:
- Complete listing with updated content
- Use rich media such as virtual tours
- Take advantage of Premium Placement
- Reduce lead times
- Entice buyers with timely offers
1. Complete your project listing with updated content
As the largest project listing marketplace in Southeast Asia, matching properties with buyers is about being in the right place at the right time. Our algorithm uses listing completeness as a key ranking factor for showing listings by relevance.
Many developers only reveal partial information about their listings in an effort to get users to call and get more information. However, our research shows that PropertyGuru listings with complete data get more interactions. And the more information a listing has, the higher the quality of leads it gets.
Listing completeness is directly tied to the quality of your project listing; the more content and information your listing has, the higher the likelihood of attracting and converting property seekers into buyers/investors.
We recommend starting with the basic details:
- Price
- Location and distance to public transport links
- Specific property type
- The developer’s brand, background and history
- Floor size and land size
- Tenure (leasehold or freehold)
- Furnishing
- Amenities and facilities
- Floor level
- Number of rooms
- Nearby sights and restaurants
- Nearby schools
- Timely information relating to the pandemic, such as dual keys for work-from-home purposes
In addition to the completeness, it’s also important to have the latest updated information about the project on your listing at all times. The last thing you want to happen is to have an interested buyer who’s ready to contact you, only to reach an old number that’s no longer in use.
Examples of listing information that may need to be updated regularly include:
- Date of completion
- Eligibility for discounts
- Promotions
- Contact information
2. Use rich media such as images and virtual tours
PropertyGuru allows you to upload photos and videos of your project listing, giving you the freedom to decide what kind of rich media to share.
For new launches / projects under construction
If the project is still under construction, you have two options for showing renders of your project:
- Static renders
- Virtual tours
Static renders, as the name suggests, are static 3D images of your project. They are perhaps the most common way to show visual representations of projects that have yet to break ground or are still being constructed, largely due to their affordability and ease of production.
Virtual tours, on the other hand, are interactive representations that let users see every angle of the property by using a mouse, touchpad or screen. Virtual tours offer more detailed views of your project but can be costly and time-consuming to produce.
For completed projects
If you’re listing a completed property, it’s a good idea to hire a professional photographer or videographer to take images and record a video tour of the property’s interior spaces and exteriors.
Think about the project’s key features and use them as your focal points. For example, if your property has plenty of green spaces, highlight these areas in your rich media content. You can also include commentary in your video tour to add context to your listings best features.
Whatever type of rich media you use, remember to focus on being as helpful as possible to potential buyers or inventors.
3. Take advantage of Premium Placement
Premium Project Listing is a new marketing platform by PropertyGuru that allows developer listings to secure the top spot of the property search results on PropertyGuru.
Properties listed on Premium Project Listing are guaranteed the best visibility by district level—even above agent featured listings. Our internal data reveals that projects that use our premium placement platform receive up to 40% uplift in listing exposure compared to projects in the organic results.
But as mentioned earlier, better visibility doesn’t necessarily guarantee more sales. To take full advantage of your top position on our search results, your listing must follow through with complete, updated information and plenty of rich media.
4. Reduce lead times by making contact easy
One of the benefits of PropertyGuru’s newly redesigned user interface (UI) for project listings is the inclusion of WhatsApp Direct. This feature allows property seekers to contact a phone number via WhatsApp without first saving it to their contacts.
Our research shows more than 30% of property seekers and customers on PropertyGuru enquire directly through WhatsApp, making it a must-have on all your listings.
Be sure to use a WhatsApp-enabled phone number. This feature will not work if you use a general office contact number.
You can also use tools to nurture leads directly to your sales team. At PropertyGuru, we have FastKey, our marketing and sales platform that automates the full project sales cycle from launch to close of sale. FastKey helps developers leverage real-time data and unique insights to improve sales efficiency.
Projects across Southeast Asia like Phoenix Residences have used Fastkey to expedite their launch and digitise the entire sales and booking process, eliminating the need for slow and error-prone paperwork.
5. Entice buyers with timely offers
Finally, you can maximise your project listing’s attractiveness by deploying timely property deals to create a sense of urgency and tap into FOMO (fear of missing out).
Because premium placement gives you a shortcut to the top of PropertyGuru’s search results, we recommend using it alongside special promotions, such as a new project you want to hype up or a limited-time offer. This ensures that any special offer you have gets the best possible visibility, even if it’s just for a limited time only.
Bringing it all together
By listing your project on PropertyGuru, you’re taking advantage of an established portal that attracts high-intent property seekers—buyers and investors who are interested in purchasing all kinds of different properties. Your job is to ensure your project listing meets their expectations, which means providing the information property seekers need to make an informed purchase decision.
As the leading property website in Southeast Asia, PropertyGuru focuses on continuous product innovation, data-driven decisions to enhance consumers’ search experience. Contact us to know more about listing your project and extending its reach across Southeast Asia!