The Decline of Traditional Advertising

Digital channels play an increasingly important role in influencing home-buyer decisions, but should be used in tandem with traditional property marketing and advertising tactics such as brochures and signage. Agents are still a vital part of the marketing and sales drive, and as valuable as their service is for the sale of property, developers cannot afford to ignore the opportunity to develop, alongside the agents, their own digital strategy. Your strategy can in fact run in parallel with and in perfect harmony to the agents, with all leads being passed over to allow the agents to do what they do best, which is sell. Developers should be involved and take control at a strategic level of their marketing to ensure all marketing channels and digital activities are working together effectively.

The Digital Opportunity for Property Developers

The shift is undeniable, and the opportunities presented to developers who invest in their own platforms and forge connections with buyers will create significant competitive advantages in the near future.

Building a sustainable competitive advantage

Fast-forward Five years, and think about your nearest competitor. Imagine they have spent the past five years building their own marketing channels (email database, social media, search engine rankings) – capturing buyer information, and engaging with buyers on a range of platforms. Imagine they now reach a highly targeted network of several thousand, or even tens of thousands of people, and have geographic, purchase & demographic information on them to use to inform future marketing and business decision making. Now imagine that your only marketing channels are still the traditional channels of agents and advertising.

The NEW Home Buyers Journey

The way customers buy homes has changed. Search engines, YouTube, social networks, forums, mobile apps, maps – these are the new tools that have changed the face of buying homes. Not only is the range of channels used to conduct research becoming more complex, buyers hop around like crazy between channels, using multiple devices simultaneously to piece together their knowledge of potential areas, agents, developers, prices and financing options. Today’s home-buyers are the most well informed in history.

The implications are clear.  Developers and agents must adapt their marketing strategies to reach where the potential customer is, at each stage of the buyer journey.