Launch marketing for PropTech and marketplace products
A marketplace or data product can be finished and still have no commercial story. Launch marketing here is a sequencing problem: which side you build first, which market you concede, and what someone gets for free before they will ever pay.
How do you launch a PropTech product or two-sided marketplace?
Solve the cold start in one market before widening. Build density on the side that is harder to attract, give the other side an immediate reason to look, and use a free tier to prove value before the paid tier asks for money. One city with real supply beats national coverage with none.
At a glance
- Sector
- PropTech and marketplaces
- Featured work
- HausMart, Logical Planning, FootyGrounds
- Services used
- Launch go-to-market, Pricing and offer design, SEO and content architecture, Proposition and positioning
- Based
- Cheshire, working with clients across the UK
What keeps blocking growth in proptech and marketplaces
Three problems recur in almost every engagement in this sector. None of them are solved by spending more.
The cold-start problem is a marketing decision
Two-sided products fail when both sides are courted at once. Choosing which side to over-serve first, and in which single market, is the highest-leverage decision available.
Free tier as the acquisition engine
In data products the free result is the advert. It has to be genuinely useful, and it has to end at exactly the point where the paid answer starts.
Programmatic structure, not programmatic filler
Large datasets can generate thousands of legitimately useful pages — or thousands of thin ones. The difference is whether each page answers a question someone actually asks.
The services this sector actually needs
Each link goes to the service page that explains the scope, the deliverables and how it is priced.
Launch go-to-market
Sequence the launch: one audience, one market, one reason to act, then widen.
Pricing and offer design
Build the ladder from free to paid so the first sale is easy and the second is bigger.
SEO and content architecture
Structure the site around how people actually search, not how the business is organised.
Proposition and positioning
Decide what the business claims and who it claims it for, before a penny goes into a channel.
Featured proptech and marketplaces engagements
What I was asked to do, what I decided, and what shipped. Every link goes to the client's live site.
- The situation
- A two-sided property marketplace launching against Rightmove and Zoopla. Free listings alone are not a reason to switch, and a marketplace with no supply cannot demonstrate demand.
- What I did
- Anchored the launch to one town — Crewe — so the beta had real stock and real swipe data instead of empty search results. Positioned the product on speed of sale and buyer-led matching, tied to the government's Home Buying and Selling Reform Roadmap, and used a waitlist plus saved-search alerts to build demand before national rollout.
- What shipped
- Launched in beta with live local stock, a clear reason to choose it over a portal, and swipe-level demand data that gives sellers something the portals cannot show them.
“We were about to launch nationally with nothing on the map. Concentrating the beta on one town was Sam's call and it was the right one — we could finally show sellers genuine buyer demand rather than a promise.”
Logical Planning
3-stepfree search to subscription ladder
logical-planning.com- The situation
- A planning-data product with genuinely useful output — a Planning Potential Score for any UK site — and no commercial story. Landowners, developers and agents all wanted different things from it, and the pricing model had not been decided.
- What I did
- Named one primary audience and one job to be done, rewrote the proposition around 'what could my land be worth', then built the acquisition path: a free first search, a £29 single Site Check and a monthly subscription for repeat users, with search content mapped to how people actually ask about planning potential.
- What shipped
- Launched with a clear ladder from free search to subscription, and a content structure that targets planning, Green Belt, change-of-use and permitted development questions rather than competing on the word 'planning consultant'.
“We had the data and the technology. What we did not have was a way of explaining it that made someone reach for their card. Sam turned it into an offer, decided the pricing with us and built the route people take to get there.”
- The situation
- A consumer football platform with an enormous data set and no acquisition model. Every ground guide, pub and fixture was a page nobody would ever search for by name.
- What I did
- Gave the product one ownable metric — the FootyGrounds Away Day Score — so every ground page has a reason to exist and a reason to be linked to. Then built the search structure around what fans actually type: 'football near me', 'away day', the ground name plus pubs and parking, with fixtures and rankings as the return-visit hooks.
- What shipped
- A launch with thousands of indexable, genuinely useful pages tied to real search demand, and a proprietary score that gives the brand something to be quoted on.
“We had the data for every ground in the country and no idea how anyone would find it. The Away Day Score gave us a hook the football press understood and gave every page a reason to be indexed.”
PropTech and marketplaces: common questions
Other sectors I work in
The sequence is the same everywhere, but the pattern that blocks growth is not. Each hub sets out the recurring problem in that sector, what I do about it, and which engagements prove it.
Working in proptech and marketplaces? Start with the diagnosis.
Book a one-hour discovery call. I will tell you which of these problems yours actually is — proposition, pricing, demand or visibility — before you spend anything.