Marketing New Construction Real Estate

In a soft market where the volume and velocity of sales have slowed down significantly, a lot of companies/people are cutting back on their marketing. Right now is the time to do more marketing! If we focus on marketing now, we can captures more market share because there’s less competition. Although we have less dollars to spend on marketing, the key is to spend those dollars effectively and understanding (not guessing) how those dollars are producing (ROI).

In developing a marketing budget and strategy, there are a few things that we should do.

1. Try new marketing avenues
2. Focus on attracting internet buyers/online shoppers
3. Track and quantify every effort/dollar (ROI)

Try New Marketing Avenues: If sales are sluggish and we are not receiving results; try something new! Using the same marketing avenues and efforts will produce the same results! We all understand this but for some reason, maybe because it’s comfortable, we continue the same marketing efforts but expect the results to be different. Get out of the usual routine.

Focus on attracting internet buyers/online shoppers: With 90% of real estate buyers already shop online for homes, we need to focus our marketing efforts to attract these online shoppers. We should allocate a larger percentage of our marketing efforts/budgets online.

In the real estate industry, online shoppers are our ideal clients/demographics (especially if we are looking to accelerate the velocity of our sales). Here are some interesting statistics (thanks to Dakno Marketing).

• The average internet buyer spends an only 2.2 weeks working with the Realtor to find their home. The traditional buyer spends almost 6 weeks!

• Internet Buyers only previewed an average of 6.65 homes while the Traditional Buyer previewed 21.7.

Buyers who use the web as an important part of their buying process are usually savvy and have already invested the time to educate themselves. We can spend less time educating and more time selling.

Track and quantify every effort/dollar (ROI): Unlike expensive traditional media (newspapers, magazines, billboards, painted busses, etc), online marketing is track able and quantitative. It’s tracked automatically (avoid the human error associated with asking “how did you hear about us”) so the data is accurate. Every online marketing effort (paid or free) is 100% track able. If set up correctly, we can use Google Analytics (which is a free service) to calculate our actual ROI. Understanding which marketing avenues and campaigns are effective is one of the most important factors of any marketing.

What online/marketing avenues have worked (or not worked) for you?

In today’s soft real estate market, developers are spending more time, money and resources to woo Realtors.  And rightfully so.  On a national average, according to NAR, Realtors account for 51% of new construction sales.  In some areas like South West Florida, realtors account for over 80% of the sales of new construction properties.  Developers want Realtors to expose their clientele to their new developments in search of a sale. 

Developers go through great lengths to woo Realtors with lavish parties, gifts and incentives.  I’ve seen multiple developers throwing excessive parties and events.  Others have given out  $150k+ private golf memberships.  The Realtors are wooed … now what?  How do Realtors promote these developments to their clientele?  Do they mail flyers about the developments to their prospects with their own contact information as the contact person?   Probably not.  Mailing are expensive and the Realtor may be cut out of the transaction.  Do Realtors send out a mass email to their database promoting the development?  Again,  probably not because they can be cut out of the transaction. 

Engaging the Realtor is the first step.  Providing them with an action item; something that they can tangibly do to promote the development while ensuring that they will be compensated for their efforts is needed to achieve a successful level of Realtor participation.  This action item needs to have two main components:

1. It has to be easy, requiring minimal time and effort. 
2. It has to ensure (provide a level of protection) that the Realtor will be compensated for their efforts.

Without a tangible action item to help the Realtor promote and sell,  the only thing that the developer is doing is throwing parties and giving away gifts. 

A developer once shared with me “We just spent $40k on this wine and cheese party.  At the end of the day, I don’t know which Realtors are interested in selling my development and which ones are here for the wine and cheese.”

A question for Realtors & developers. What action items, marketing tools and/or sales aids have developers provided to Realtors? Were they useful/successul?