Creative Digital Marketing
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In this plan, we will dive into the stages of an effective marketing strategy you can use as a guide and implement in any development project. If you tick the input boxes and fill out the text fields, we will create a free strategy summary for you..
As a developer, you understand the importance of planning more than most professions do. Unfortunately, many developers only start considering and planning their marketing strategy mid-project, if they consider implementing a marketing strategy at all. How important is it to know your target demographic from the outset and that there is demand for your product at the proposed price point? Building this data will allow you to react in real time if you need to adjust your planning permission, modify specifications up or down, or divide the development into phases. Putting in place a strategy gives you brand awareness and a lead database full of potential buyers that you can keep updated through the process but will reveal WHO you are selling to and WHAT the perfect product is. Before we get into it (although I am sure many of you already know much of this), we have detailed why a strategy like this is necessary for every construction project.
Testing the market and defining your demographic helps you to understand and gather information about the demand for your product and ensures that your investment is financially viable. You can gauge the level of interest from potential buyers, tenants, or investors, allowing you to adjust your plans accordingly. It helps you avoid the risk of investing in a project that may not sell or rent well and gauge its marketability and the appropriate pricing, which will help determine your entire investment strategy.
Generating a buzz and establishing a project with marketing early on will give you brand recognition and credibility over a more extended period, helping you build a waiting list of interested buyers all looking to find out more information soon as it becomes available. It will give you a competitive advantage over competitors with other developments in the same area. It also allows you to penetrate the minds of people who may not be in the market yet but will be by the time your development is ready. Creating interest early on will make it easier to promote and sell later on.
As soon as a site can generate interest, it can start securing early sales or off-plan sales, which could help fund the rest of the project. It can also be challenging to secure funding or investment before a project begins, whether from stakeholders, shareholders, or lenders. Showing them the finished vision, the concept, and the demand can make financing much more effortless.
A database of potential buyers is gold dust to any developer, allowing you to nurture, reach and keep updated throughout construction. How great would it be to have hundreds and, if not thousands, of names, numbers, and emails to contact as soon as you are ready to make a sale? Using this database, you can also gather essential information about your demographic for defined effective target messaging and marketing campaigns through social media, essentially building a pool of your perfect audience to market to.
Firstly, it is essential to find out details about your project, your product, and what stage you are in. This will determine how the strategy is structured.
You will undoubtedly have an idea of who your perfect buyer is for the properties you are about to build or the property type based on your outlined planning, which is the ideal place to start. It is essential to be as specific as possible and not too broad; you can target different demographics in different campaigns. This will determine the initial messaging, the marketing content, and which social media platforms should target this demographic to gauge if the response confirms this. Even if the age range comes back 5 to 10 years older or younger, that could change what you build and how you build it. You now won't add those Silestone worktops in as standard, or will you? Defining these details can influence your project and your direction.
We understand this may be hard to figure out, as everyone has different interests or hobbies. Here are a couple of examples of where this can be applied. If you are looking for tenants for some apartments you are building, and located a mile away is a performing arts institute or university, you can target people interested in performing arts. If you are developing a gym either as a commercial project or as a feature within a residential development, putting your marketing in front of keen runners and gymgoers is ideal for creating interest, this could also influence your messaging and content type.
Creating a strong brand is crucial, not only for a development company but for the development itself. A solid brand identity differentiates you from others in the market and helps you establish recognition over time, building long-term value. You can align your product with the target customer you are going for. You should design cohesion into your branding, marketing materials, visual content, and website/landing page so everything feels consistent.
Creating visual marketing assets is essential to a marketing strategy, especially a property marketing strategy. How can you sell your vision without visuals? Many people don't have much of an imagination, so you can't leave it up to potential buyers to picture what the end product will be, and you shouldn't; this will probably be the most significant investment you and they will ever make. With so much competition, how can you make your project stand out from the rest, and the answer is visual marketing.
Before you start construction or in the early stages, you will have minimal marketing assets. If you are lucky, perhaps some architectural drawings or an architect's impression, some aerial photos of the land? Is that selling the dream? Is that going to do your vision justice? Below we have listed all the ways to align their dream and your vision.
CGI is a powerful tool for visualising, marketing, designing, and planning properties before they are built and are a trendy choice within the property industry for this very reason. They can help buyers and investors better understand a property's layout, design, and potential. This type of visual marketing content can build interest and excitement around a construction project before you even break ground and can assist through the planning stages, getting local councils and communities on board with specific schemes and even identifying potential issues, areas of improvement and communicating a clear visualisation of the end product for the architect, builder and everyone else involved in the project. While Computer Generated Imagery is nothing new, the hardware & software are constantly evolving. It is crucial to ensure the quality evolves too. Too many images look like they have been built with Lego and animations generated in Minecraft (a videogame), which can be more detrimental to a marketing campaign than using the architect's impression we mentioned earlier. Keeping up with the latest technology and software and learning the latest techniques allows you to create up-to-date, engaging, hyper-realistic CGI.
CGI Stills is a great way to showcase a property and allow buyers to visualise the end product, which can be added to digital and printed brochures, email marketing campaigns, hoarding/signage, websites, and property sites like Rightmove and estate agencies' websites. Here are some examples of High Quality CGI Stills
Take CGI to the next level, creating an engaging and immersive experience that can instantly build a connection with the buyer and the property. Highlight all the details, benefits, and features. Showcase full interior designs before walls are built or landscaped gardens before a shovel touches the earth. There is complete creative freedom with no limitations on what can be produced, such as build-up sequences, time-lapses, introducing people, children, animals, and even characters for new builds, renovations, and regeneration projects. Generate excitement for the buyer, whether building a single property or regenerating a city street.
Combining CGI with real-life photographs lets you portray exactly where your development is situated and its realistic surroundings, which helps manage clients' expectations. To achieve this, we take an aerial photograph and overlay it with a CGI model of the development, creating a genuinely realistic composite image and a thorough overview of the surrounding landscape.
Using the same principles as photo montages/composites, we layer CGI models over video instead of still imagery. While this is an intricate process, the results can speak for themselves, with many people not realise that CGI exists in the sequence.
The dream team for pre-construction visual marketing. With over 85% of people who use the internet in the UK consuming video content each month, there is no other medium like it. Combining CGI & Video allows you to reach, engage, and define your target audience and demographic. Using CGI to highlight all the key features of your build, video can then highlight all the benefits, the local area, the amenities, the community, the connectivity, and so much more. Over 60% of UK consumers say they have been influenced by video before making a purchase decision. It engages, captures attention, builds trust and credibility, and, most importantly, helps conversions. A must to include in your marketing strategy. (Source: Statista) (Source: Wyzowl)
Give a complete overview of the site's layout with a CGI Aerial or a 3D/2D site map, giving buyers a real sense of direction and allowing them to know precisely where the property they have their eye on or purchased will be placed.
Floor plans need no introduction. However, they have evolved from 2D into 3D, giving them much more of a visually capturing aesthetic..
