Marketing tips to help off-plan property sales fly
In these difficult times, we’re receiving more calls than ever from developers who want to boost their sales. Some have already started the process of marketing. They’ve produced stylised brochures, an appealing website, and persuasive advertising. Others haven’t yet started putting together a marketing package.
With competition for off-plan property sales heating up, developers need to target their marketing efforts to reduce costs and increase sales success. We’ve put together these seven tips to ensure off-plan sales success, however early you want to sell your development even before the ground has been broken.
1. Brand the development
Branding the development is essential. Naming a property gives it life, a vision in the eyes of property investors and home buyers. Let the name tell a story, perhaps of a previous life or shape of development – how about ‘The Potteries’ or ‘The Crescent’? A clear, crisp name gives your development personality. And personality sells.
2. Emphasise lifestyle benefits
Home buyers want lifestyle benefits from their new home. So, too, the buy-to-let investors – it’s easier to find tenants when you are letting a lifestyle property. Emphasise locational benefits of your development. “Five minutes’ walk to the mainline station, and only 20 minutes from the city”; “In the heart of the city, where residents and businesses are benefiting from a massive regeneration programme.” Find the reason for people to want to live in a property in your development, and market to this desire.
3. Go 3D with your floor plans
Standard 2D floor plans mean little to most people. They are simply lines on a piece of paper. Producing 3D floor plans turns a concept into something more real – especially important when there are no show homes to view.
A 3D floor plan, presented room by room and including furniture, fixtures and fittings, allows investors to visualise what it is they are buying, and space they are investing in.
4. Build on locational benefits
Investors buy where property fundamentals are strongest. They want property near shops, schools, transport links, major employers and major investment. Trumpet the locational benefits of your development. We do.
We produce comprehensive area guides for investors, highlighting the reasons why investors should buy where you are developing. It is a powerful marketing tool on its own. When combined with your marketing resource, it becomes irresistible.
5. Make an offer that investors can’t refuse
It takes courage for a property investor to buy a property that hasn’t yet been built. By the time we’re at the stage of marketing your development to investors, we have spent years developing trust and getting to know our property investor clients. To cement this trust and seal the deal, what better than a price point that savvy investors cannot refuse?
Your marketing brochure has done its job. Our area research has provided further impetus to the marketing message. The hook has been baited. A sensible pricing policy will reel in the investor. Switch down the price slightly, and switch up the investment opportunity from great to irresistible.
6. Provide exclusivity
Early-stage off-plan success could be accelerated when you make an exclusive offer. Off-market marketing, to a targeted and already identified investor base. Properties that people will want to buy, in an area in which people want to invest, at a price that makes sense on all levels. And offered exclusively to a select group of investors. Suddenly, the irresistibility of your off-plan property sales is ratcheted up even higher.
The developers that do these three things will find their developments sell out, while others remain unsold.
7. Good marketing sells off-plan property
When we work with developers, selling to our investor clients at home and abroad, we concentrate on marketing. The quality of our marketing materials helps sell your off-plan property. It provides a focal point to concentrate our face-to-face discussions.
Like you, we employ highly experienced and professional researchers, writers, copywriters, photographers and designers. We make certain our marketing materials echo the opportunity that your development offers.
Contact us today on + 44 207 923 5680. Together we’ll work to achieve your sales targets, and excel where other developers fail.
Live with passion,
Brett Alegre-Wood