Facebook Finds: TrueSite Socials Support $25m Record Sale

A three-bedroom Bondi penthouse with the uninterrupted views of the world’s most famous beach had been on the market for about a year when the real estate agents approached the TrueSite digital marketing team.

The apartment in Notts Avenue, perched above the Bondi baths, sold within a month.

Such is the power of social media marketing, says TrueSite director Chris Omeissah, who surprised even himself with what they found.

“Agents had been trying to sell it for up to 12 months but had struggled to get traction with new prospects once existing contacts had been exhausted,” said Omeissah. “And they were dealing with a vendor who wanted $25 million, or about $100,000 a square metre, which was a premium at the time during Covid.”

TrueSite’s involvement with the luxury apartment began when the vendor wanted 3D visuals [immersive content, walkthroughs, images and flythroughs] for the sales campaign. Since then, TrueSite had moved on from the days when their graphic artists created 3D walk-throughs, purely for use in project display suites.

“It was a real light bulb moment,” Omeissah said. “We realised we had to focus not just on getting the content to a wider audience but serving it to the right audience. Someone who was going to spend $25 million on a trophy asset.”

TrueSite’s approach was a simple one. They designed a social media marketing campaign through Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and shifted their dynamic content on to those platforms.

“Just in terms of the pure results, we had 40 leads come through in the four weeks that we ran the campaign,” Omeissah said. “And of those 40 leads about 80 per cent of them were valid leads, from serious, well-qualified buyers.”

Ten inspections followed early in the month, with most of them coming from Facebook and Instagram. They doubled down on their ad spend with the two social networking giants.

Heavy research followed on the type of buyer they were looking for, in what became an audience-targeting approach. They imported their own contact list from the platforms, matched it with the geography of Sydney and wealthy neighbourhoods, then went after that, eventually creating two campaigns aimed at different demographics.

“We were essentially headhunting our ideal buyers,” Omeissah recalls.

TrueSite had one campaign for a buyer group of between 35 to 49 years, mainly from the eastern suburbs. A second campaign was aimed at a slightly older demographic—50 to 60 years. Together, the campaigns created an almost bespoke audience which would accelerate the deal.

“It became a case study for us. And because we were across everything, from distribution, creating the immersive content, running the campaigns and extracting the data, we were able to create momentum which significantly supported the role of the real estate agent.”

The eventual buyer was a man in his 50s—perhaps not surprisingly a rich-lister procured by the agent.

Notwithstanding, what TrueSite did find surprising, was the number of high net-worth individuals who spent their evenings scrolling through Facebook and Instagram. Analytics showed all the inquiries for the Bondi Beach penthouse came from the platforms between 6pm and 9pm, and typically from Thursday to Sunday.

“It was insightful,” says Omeissah. “And it was interesting to see 
how a property could be reconciled with its ideal buyer through 
behavioural and demographic data on social media.”

“We run a lot of dashboarding, reporting and analytics for our clients. Because we’ve been in and around the property and real estate market for a while, we’ve been able to really shape the insights on the audience.”

Omeissah says the attitude towards technology within the industry is changing quickly. The real estate sector, he believes, is on board with new ways of working.

“We’re not trying to sell every high-end penthouse with social media, but we are trying to show the property industry that social media is a great tool to define and directly connect with the right buyer audience when selling property.” 

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