The world lives online. If it could eat, sleep, and breathe online it would. The amount of time we spend online is mind-boggling. According to research from globalwebindex:
- Millennials spend more than three hours online on their mobile every day
- Six in ten millennials shop via mobile
- 93% visit YouTube
According to Ofcom’s Media Use and Attitudes 2015 Report, the average adult spends more than 20 hours a week online. Nine in ten people use the Internet, accessing via computers, tablets and smartphones. Online is rapidly becoming the number one resource for research, news, shopping, entertainment, and social connections.
The point is this: if you’re a property developer and not online, you’re missing out on a huge number of potential sales. But being online isn’t enough. Successful digital marketing requires planning and constant maintenance.
In this article, you’ll find 14 digital marketing tips that will help you create a knockout online off-plan property sales model.
1. Create a breathtaking website
If there’s one industry that’s been transformed by the Internet, it’s real estate. Home buyers and property investors are avid online surfers. They use Google Maps to discover the layout of the land. They conduct research online to find evidence of new business, infrastructure build, and regeneration projects. They post questions on Quora and discuss education, local councils, and market fundamentals on property investment forums.
Your website should help property investors to access all of the information they need and want. It also has to be visually appealing but needs to be much more, too.
2. Ensure your website is easy to navigate
If your site is a maze with a mass of false turns and dead ends, users will soon become bored with the experience. A well-designed website leads the visitor from their point of entry to the exit in a route you want them to take. Think of how modern stores encourage people to browse in a logical way as they are steered to the cash desk. That’s the job you want your website to do for you.
3. Don’t forget mobile!
Think about how you access the Internet, and where. The world isn’t just online. It’s online and mobile. Make certain that your website is mobile friendly.
4. Create killer content
Your website is your online salesperson. It has to have the charisma and gusto to amuse, inform, and entertain. It has to connect with your target audience of property investors. An off-plan property is not an easy sale, yet the best salesperson makes it look easy. Your website has the power to be your best salesperson.
Think about the content your audience wants, the language that will connect with them, and the imagery that will sell to them. Your content must be irresistible, consistent, and constant. And it has to be found by the people who you want to find it.
5. Be an active blogger
A blog is one of the most powerful tools in cyberspace. It increases your visibility, keeps you front, and centre on search engines gives an ideal location to direct social media contacts and provides a starting point for your online conversations.
Your blog enables you to reach out to the property investment community, raising awareness of new property developments, and updating them on market and company news. Your blog allows you to educate and inform, and demonstrate your experience, expertise and knowledge. Including a call-to-action (CTA) gives the opportunity to capture leads.
6. Maintain a company news section
Including press releases and company updates help to build trust and inform people that your new build property company is growing.
7. Create lead-capturing content
People love freebies. They also love convenience. When you give them something that adds value to their lives or helps them invest in property, you’re adding another building block to the relationship that you’re creating.
Offering a free download of an eBook that divulges “X reasons that property here is about to skyrocket in value”, or “The new build features that propel rental income” in exchange for an email address is a great lead capture strategy. With the email address on your contact list, you now have the opportunity for an agent to make contact or to set in motion an email marketing campaign.
8. Let visitors sign up to a newsletter
Newsletters are a perfect way to reach out to potential property buyers and keep your company name at the forefront of their thinking. You can include content from your blog and business news section (perhaps the ‘most popular blog this month’) as well as featuring your latest off-plan property opportunities. If you plan to run a webinar, you can include details of this, too.
An excellent way to get visitors to sign up to your newsletter is to include one of your CTAs on every blog and as a sidebar addition on your website.
9. Publish property investment reports
Investors want to know what’s happening in their target markets (and to discover new locations for investment). Publish reports compiled with meaningful data – average rents, selling prices, local property price history, economic background, and reviews of local schools, retail, recreation, and business amenities. Create a section on your website to highlight these reports – and how about providing a clipped piece of content with a call-to-action to download the full report (in exchange for an email address, of course)?
10. Improve your SEO
People use search engines to find the content they are looking for. The biggest of these is Google. Get found on Google, and you could see your online traffic explode. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is how you keep your website front and centre on search engines. Across all your content, you’ll need to use the keywords that property investors and home buyers are searching for. You’ll also need to use other techniques that optimise your content and your website. Get a content marketer or SEO specialist on board to help you.
11. Provide virtual tours for visitors to view your off-plan development
Virtual tours of off-plan properties are a relative innovation. They let visitors ‘see’ the finished product before a brick is laid. It saves them time and expense and draws them into the investment potential of your property development.
12. Host a webinar
Webinars are highly visual, interactive tools to encourage sales. You can offer education, property investment news, and allow people to answer questions. It’s like a property investment seminar that gives the world the opportunity to participate. You’ll capture emails for marketing purposes and can record the webinar for online promotion purposes (‘selling’ in exchange for email addresses time and again).
13. Put in place targeted email campaigns
The whole reason that you’ve been aggressive with your content and capturing emails are to increase traffic to your website and build a list for marketing purposes.
Your contact lists can be segregated, and autoresponder email marketing can be designed and instigated. This uses the sales funnel approach, leading potential buyers through to the final decision to contact or purchase.
You’ll be able to market appropriate materials to only those who are most likely to respond; and once you have set up an email campaign, it can operate automatically and without intervention until the crucial moment. The best email campaigns react to different user actions – one email sent to those who open the previous email, a different one forwarded to those that don’t.
14. Track your results, iterate, and improve
Track all your results – numbers of website visitors, leads created, and positive email responses – on a regular and continual basis. Some blog posts will have more visitors than others. Examine and understand why to evolve and upgrade underperforming blogs.
To increase off-plan property sales, it’s imperative that you understand what digital marketing content is working and why it’s working. Results don’t happen overnight, but as you monitor results and make tweaks to content, SEO, landing pages and CTAs, you’ll discover what resonates with the property investment community, what keeps them returning, and what encourages sharing your digital marketing content with others.
Like a snowball rolling down a hill, digital marketing begins slowly. Once on the move, it grows and gathers pace organically. And that leads to rising off-plan property sales numbers.
At Castlereach we are committed to helping property developers reach property investors and maximise sales. We’ll bring investors who are ready to buy property across the UK, while you do what you’re great at – creating incredible residential properties. Our track record of UK off-plan property sales made off-market and discreetly, speaks for itself.
To connect with us and get the ball rolling − call my team direct on +44 207 923 5680.
Live with passion and fun,
Brett