Real Estate Marketing in 2010: Hitting the Right Mix

Over the past seven years BASIK has designed and built over fifty websites and online marketing campaigns for luxury real estate developments. Our clients in these projects are both developers and sales teams.

I was recently in a meeting where I heard someone say that the investors behind the project didn’t want to, “waste money on print”. I thought this was significant. We are finally seeing that investors are no longer willing to blindly spend money on print media and are demanding better return on their marketing dollars.

It has taken a long time for institutional real estate investors to realize the transformation that digital technology has brought to marketing. We have been on the front line and witnessed many other changes. We wanted to share some tips. This is the first article in a three-part series.

THE MARKETING MIX

Everyone knows it is important to build a mix of marketing materials. But what are the proper allocations now?

To answer this question, we first look at the project’s attributes and then build a custom-tailored marketing program to take advantage of its strengths. We then use conversions as the key metric to evaluate and adjust the marketing mix.

We recently finished a project that is well located in an up-and-coming neighborhood. The building gets decent amounts of foot and auto traffic. On the website we found the following rough breakdown for how users had heard about the project:

40% – Location Based Marketing (signage, lived in the neighborhood, or walked by)
30% – Online Marketing (web-based ads, real estate blog coverage, or email marketing)
15% – Personal Relationships (referral or broker/agent)
15% – No Data (didn’t fill out the form)

These users represent “conversions”, in that they signed up for more information on the website. The goal of online marketing is to drive conversions. We found this data to be quite revealing.

1. No significant print marketing efforts (magazine ads or brochures) were attributed to driving people to convert.
2. Location based marketing was a key driver. For a property with a great location, you can’t do better than clear and compelling signage.
3. Online marketing was vital in driving traffic. This shows the importance of fostering relationships with key bloggers and developing effective digital advertising and search marketing.
4. Personal relationships were a solid proportion of conversions. This reflects the importance of an effective social media strategy as well as including events and community involvement in the marketing mix.

This data is certainly influenced by project specifics (location, market conditions, and value proposition) but the broader implications are significant. The effectiveness of print marketing is waning, but it can still be used to support baseline branding goals. Location-based efforts, online marketing, and personal relationships/social media are all key drivers for converting targets. Adjust budgets and the mix of marketing components accordingly.

Next week we will explore the lifecycle of a website and close the series focused on measurement.