Top 5 Off The Plan Property Project Marketing Tips

Let’s be honest, if you are a property project developer or sales agent who couldn’t sell a property in the last couple of years you were probably doing something wrong.  But as Bob Dylan sang ‘the times they are a-changin’.  With inflation recently hitting a 20-year high, rising interest rates and slowing sales and enquiries, it’s time to invest in marketing again.

Here are my top 5 marketing tips to sell your project off the plan:

Tip 1: Target Your Marketing

Purchasers want to see themselves reflected in marketing. The way you market to a first home buyer is very different to how you target a rightsizer or investor.  They have different needs, behaviours and buyer journeys.  A first home buyer might care about finance options, a rightsizer or downsizer might prioritise storage while an investor is focused on return.

When you begin marketing a project, one of the first steps you should take is to work out, and understand, your target market. You can then tailor your brand strategy and marketing, including your messaging, to your primary audience.

Building a detailed persona of your ideal purchaser (age, location, interests etc) can also help target your digital media for better lead generation and qualification.

Tip 2: Brand Your Project

Branding is so much more than a logo.  It’s reflected in the project name, the messaging surrounding your project, the visual language, as well as the quality of your renders and photography. The way your sales team dresses and behaves when dealing with interested buyers is also a reflection of your brand. Your project brand should be unique to your project. If it’s not, what sets it apart from every other project?  Why should a buyer purchase your townhome over a similar looking project two streets away?

Before Algo Más starts marketing a new project, we visit the site and get a feel for the area and place to help discover what the brand is.

It’s the branding that often makes the difference.  Remember you’re not selling four walls and a roof, you’re selling a dream.

Tip 3: Promote Your Team

With recent media reports of some builders and developers going into administration, it’s understandable that interested buyers are seeking reassurance. They want to be confident your company isn’t going to be the next one making headlines for all the wrong reasons.  It’s critical developers talk about their past projects and successes to reassure buyers; especially for larger projects where purchasers may be waiting years from contract signing to settlement.

If you’re a new developer, leverage off the experience of your project partners: your architect, planner, project manager, builder (if you’re not delivering the building yourself), sales agent and even interior designer.

Tip 4: Nurture Existing Purchasers

I will never stop stressing the importance of this! Supply chain and labour challenges mean built form projects may take longer than anticipated.  It’s much more cost effective to retain an existing contract than to find a new one so give consideration to your existing purchasers and how you are engaging with them throughout the selling and construction period. Sharing lifestyle and project updates on social media, and regularly engaging buyers though EDMs and events, is a great start.

Tip 5: Sales and Marketing Should Collaborate

I love it when sales agents collaborate with us on marketing our clients’ projects. Great things can happen when sales and marketing are aligned.  The more feedback a sales agent can provide to the marketing team about the source, quality and number of leads, the better the marketing team can refine messaging and delivery to provide more top tier leads.  This includes working together to set up, populate and manage the developer’s customer relationship management (CRM) software system.

Bonus tip:

When it comes to sales agents, don’t be afraid to ‘mystery shop’ your appointed agent.  We often do this when engaged to work on a project already in market.  For example, keep track of how long it takes for your agent to respond to an online enquiry from a buyer. Follow how they respond: do they call or do they email? For the record: they should be picking up that phone in the first instance. How do they then follow up the prospective buyer after that initial contact? A specialist project sales agent, who understands project sales and marketing, will know exactly how, and when, to communicate with a purchaser.

Want something more? Contact me to discuss your next project on 0418 856 875 or [email protected].