Rent.com.au planning $2.5m digital and TV marketing push after listing on ASX
Newly-listed rental company Rent.com.au (ASX: RNT) is poised to splash $2.5m on a national sales and marketing push with the appointment of brand and digital agencies next in line for the ambitious firm.
The business raised $5m through a public offering last week, half of which will be used to bolster its marketing presence as it enters what founder and chief executive Mark Woschnak described as a “commercialisation phase”.
The seven years since the company was born have been spent building IT, infrastructure and product service platforms, Woschnak said, with the listing paving the way for commercial growth and, ultimately, profit.
At the heart of the company’s plans, in which Woschnak holds a 7.35 per cent share, is a major online assault to raise its profile with the key 18 to 35-year-old rental demographic with a TV led marketing push likely to begin in the first quarter of 2016 geared towards landlords.
Rent.com.au has been been compared in the financial press to the likes of Seek, Carsales and Realestate.com.au which endured several years of graft before rapid growth, largely to the detriment of newspapers.
Woschnak said the private landlord rental market, in which Rent.com.au will specialise, has been underserved in Australia and will be the next service to migrate from print to online.
“There are existing players of course with REA and Domain but they do not have a focus on the rental market, and only list agency managed rentals. But 46 per cent of rentals are managed by non-agents and that is where we will stand out,” he said. “We do not really have a direct competitor.”
Most private rentals are found in newspapers “and on the notice boards of supermarkets” but there is demand for a central online offering, he insisted.
Woschnak said the business, in which he holds a 7.35 per cent stake, has trialled several marketing channels to assess the best route to market, with separate campaigns run through radio, TV, and online.
What became clear, he said, was that online achieved the cheapest and broadest reach but TV, while driving fewer unique visitors to its website, delivered higher quality customers. Radio sat “somewhere in the middle”.
The result will see a combination of marketing channels used, Woschnak explained, with an initial digital focus designed to attract the younger rental market before a TV push early next year to raise awareness among property managers and landlords.
“We are tendering for maybe four agencies specialising in SEM, SEO, social and digital marketing and in the second phase will look for a brand agency,” he said.
“We have 230,000 unique monthy visitors and have a target to reach 500,000 within 12 months.”
Steve Jones
