Faced with the rising costs of advertising, which is impacting negatively on sales volumes in the property market, Tonaton.com, Ghana’s largest marketplace has urged property developers to move away from traditional marketing platforms and adopt new techniques to stand out and woo homebuyers. From print, radio and television through personalized selling to staging special fairs, property developers seem to be trying out all possibilities to raise their visibility in a cluttered marketplace as well as drum up consumer interest. This seems to have created a deep hole in the marketing budgets of property developers across the country.

"The real estate market has been inundated by different marketing and customer trends, particularly in the wake of globalization, which has not only spawned many new lifestyle trends, but has also made today's homebuyers smarter and more informed. This explains why developers must see the need to seriously start going beyond the obvious tools of marketing, with its transience and geographical limitations” says Estelle Westling, Head of  Tonaton.com at a special event to interact with real estate developers at the Paloma Hotel in Accra.

Talking on the issue of varying the tools of marketing to effectively connect with a global clientele, Millicent Ofori-Boateng, Marketing Manager, Day Spring Real Estate remarked that online advertising has exposed her properties to clients outside of Ghana. “Gone are the days when only people from this vicinity would be the ones calling to enquire about the houses. Thanks to Tonaton.com, I now receive calls from London, Tamale, Kumasi and Takoradi”.

In his contribution, Mr. Sammy Amegayibor, Acting Executive Secretary of the Ghana Real Estate Developers Association (GREDA) stated that property developers have been benefiting hugely since Tonaton.com launched her operations in Ghana last year. He admonished property developers and housing agents to list their properties on Ghana’s largest marketplace. “Tonaton.com is a highly effective platform which complements our sales and marketing effort at no cost. Additionally they have Account Executives who visit our premises to help us upload our ads, which makes it easy for those of us whose computer skills are sub-optimal. Tonaton.com, Ghana’s largest marketplace, is an effective platform to reach out to plenty of customers at a time.” He concluded.

Since entering the Ghana market,  Tonaton.com  has been at the forefront of innovations and are continuously looking for novel strategies with which the outfit can help property developers reach their customers in a more cost-effective way. Besides the normal posting of ads; one of the most recent and out-of-the box initiatives, for instance, has been the introduction of 'Top Ads', which offers developers the opportunity of paying only GHc21.00 per week to have their ad constantly remain at the top of their search pages. This is in addition to online banner ads, which improves branding and traffic to the websites of the real estate developers who use this option.

Tyrone Adu, Digital Marketing Manager, Devtraco Limited briefly commented on the improvements in branding and traffic figures for his company after putting up a banner ad on Tonaton.com. “I have been running a banner ad on Tonaton.com in the last 7 months and the results are very impressive. Because Tonaton.com is categorized, our banner on the properties section is relevant to the clients we are targeting who click on the banner to see what we also have on our website. Visitors tend to spend more time looking for what they intend buying on Tonaton.com compared to the other websites we advertise with which is very good for our kind of business”, he concluded.  

Some of the notable property developers who attended the event included Regimanuel Grey, Devtraco, Top Kings, Speed and Regency View Estates among others. They commended Tonaton.com for step-changing the online classifieds market with their continuous innovations. They were unanimous when it came to the functionality of the website in terms of how it has been simply categorized, the clean pages and a lower rate of visitors who navigate way from site after viewing only one page.  

Tonaton.com currently has over 19,000 properties listed for rent or sale by businesses and individuals. The website has over 650,000 unique visitors per month and is now ranked as the second most visited local website in Ghana according to Alexa.com. Property developers and other advertisers can therefore take advantage of these high numbers to drive sales for their products.  Interested buyers or tenants from all over the world can now find a room to rent on Tonaton.com from GHc50 per month at Ashaiman or buying a beautiful home in East Legon at GHc770, 000.