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In an increasingly competitive market, smart property marketers and developers are seeking out new ways of marketing their properties, and those having the most success are using one strategy in particular: content marketing.
Justin Bourn from one of Australia’s most sought after 3D visual studios, Blank Canvas, sheds lights on how content marketing can be used to effectively market property and why this strategy has a big part to play in the future of property marketing.
What do you think the future of property marketing holds?
Have your say in the industry first survey presented by
Blank Canvas in partnership with The Urban Developer for your chance to win $1000.
Caption: 3d render produced by Blank Canvas[/caption]
Content marketing is defined as a type of marketing that involves the creation and sharing of online material (such as videos, blogs, and social media posts) that does not explicitly promote a brand but is intended to stimulate interest in its products or services.
For example, Crown Group has been investing in content marketing channels like social media and an informative blog. This content marketing strategy generates valuable conversations between the business and potential purchasers - building up a list of warm sales leads and creating a sense of hype around their projects.
It’s no surprise that in June, Crown Group’s newest project, Waterfall, secured $120 million in sales within the first hour of the project’s launch – a new Australian sales record.
Successes like these are part of the reason content marketing is worth consideration.
Another reason is that traditional marketing is seeing a decline in ROI. Over the past 10 years, there has been a marked decrease in the effectiveness of traditional marketing methods (things like direct mail, TV and radio advertising), and we’ve seen spending on traditional advertising in newspapers drop by 18% in the last year – indicating that businesses are no longer seeing the value in this traditional tactic and are turning toward other methods.
With returns on traditional marketing and advertising strategies plummeting, property developers and marketers turn toward digital marketing strategies to promote their projects. It is easy to see why when HubSpot research shows that digital marketing is producing statistics like this:
- Blogging makes marketers 13 times more likely to get positive return on investment
- 61 per cent of companies engaged in social selling reported a positive impact on revenue growth
- More than half of marketers who have been using social media for at least two years report that it has helped them improve sales
- 90 per cent of all marketers indicated that social media has generated more exposure for their business.
It is clear that businesses are seeing stronger ROI through digital channels, however those businesses that include regular content creation in their digital marketing strategies are on average obtaining 4.5 times the amount of sales leads compared with businesses that don’t actively use content marketing tactics - and these statistics can directly translate to property developers.
What Customers Really Want
These insights into the effectiveness of digital marketing represent a rapidly shifting market that is now more driven to purchase based on relationships and added value rather than the "hard sell".
Given the competitive nature of the market, the hard sell is no longer an effective marketing tool and instead customers are looking to purchase from businesses who can offer them the most value – before even attempting to make a sale.
In the current property market, potential purchasers can be overwhelmed by choice and the worry that they won’t get value for money – that is why smart property developers and marketers focus on building relationships, educating and fostering trust with buyers first, to help them feel at ease with their purchasing decision later.
Through effective storytelling and relationship building, developers should be now focussing on how they can empower their potential buyers while still offering a transparent and excellent customer-based service that builds trust between the brand and the customer.
How To Give Customers What They Want
According to the Digital in 2017 Report, Over 16 million Australians are now active on social media (that’s over 65 per cent of the entire Australian population), with over 75 per cent of users visiting Facebook at least once per day – this allows businesses a unique opportunity to connect directly with their market in a way that isn’t available through more traditional methods.
Working in tandem with blog content, social media connects businesses with a highly targeted group – people in your target age group, earning above a certain threshold, living in a certain area or interested in buying or selling property – where brands can begin building relationships and adding value to these specific people.
With buyers now searching for potential property purchases online (on sites like realestate.com.au and domain.com.au), it can be difficult for developers to make their project stand out – but through clever use of social media, developers can create helpful content that is directly aimed at their target market.
Topics like "how to properly navigate the property sales process" or "what to look for in an investment property’ will directly help the target market and make their lives easier. This is the first step in building a relationship with them and positioning your brand/project as transparent and trustworthy.
Through smart use of social media and blog content, businesses can more effectively nurture their potential customers through their sales funnel while still focusing on building relationships and adding value – resulting in more warm leads and a better ROI.
Caption: 3d render produced by Blank Canvas[/caption]
What Does Content Marketing Involve?
Going one step further than just using social media alone, businesses should also be creating interesting, educational and highly valuable content that appeals to their target market – or, more simply, they should be using content marketing.
The positive sales statistics referenced earlier in this article apply when a property developer or marketer promotes and engages with their content on all of these channels:
Other Social Media Platforms Suited To Your Target Audience
Blogs
Email Newsletters
Banner Ads
And More
Ideally, images and videos will be optimised for some or all of the above platforms. That means, doing effective content marketing requires a system for producing and maintaining all of this media.
While implementing a successful content marketing campaign may seem daunting, there are many tactics that businesses can use to minimise the amount of time spent on content marketing, while still maximising their returns.
Caption: Instagram post by @blankcanvas.studio[/caption]
How to do Content Marketing for Property Development
Through leveraging and repurposing existing content (both internally and externally), property developers can create regular content without spending hours taking photos, shooting videos or writing blogs.
It’s clear that property developers and marketers need to be using content marketing, but understanding how to use it can be complicated. From strategy through to content promotion, there’s a lot that goes into implementing a content marketing program – but once it’s done it has the power to create an extremely positive ROI.
While traditional marketing and advertising strategies aren’t completely dead, and still have their place in the overall marketing strategy, property marketers and developers need to be implementing newer digital strategies – especially content marketing – if they want to increase their marketing success in today’s highly competitive market.
What does the Future of Property Marketing Hold?
Have your say and help us find out. By taking part in the industry first survey presented by Blank Canvas in partnership with The Urban Developer, you’ll not only be assisting in the creation of better services and solutions but you’ll also go into the draw to win $1000!
We value your time and appreciate that nobody likes filling in these things, so we’re extremely grateful for your input. Take the survey now!
The Urban Developer is proud to partner with Blank Canvas to deliver this article to you. In doing so, we can continue to publish our free daily news, information, insights and opinion to you, our valued readers.
