I constantly see condo developers making the same old mistake: using one brand statement to try and reach a vast array of different people. In the old marketing days we called that tactic "Spray and Pray" because it involved blanketing everyone with the same message, then hoping and praying it would stick to somebody. There may have been a time when that was the best you could do, but that era is definitely over and the project marketing world is better for it. One size has never fit all, and you will rarely find a product that appeals to all people in exactly the same way. The new age of Digital Marketing provides the tools you need to appeal to different people in optimal ways. Here are the facts.
- Different buyers have different needs. A first-time condo buyer has different wants, needs and desires than an empty nester or international buyer. A Canadian buyer has different needs (not to mention different prices) than an American buyer. And realtors don't want a brochure designed to appeal to a single mother buying her first family home. If you try to appeal to them all with one message, you are likely to appeal to one of them and leave the others disinterested.
- There are usually three different buyers in real estate. There are investors, first-timers and empty nesters. Those are three different real estate buyer segments requiring vastly different appeals, which is an improvement from trying to use one message. Thanks to new technology, it's inexpensive to create multiple appeals.
- Today N5R creates a different landing page for every online ad we run. Each page focuses on the unique experience that best fits each buyer segment. Investors get the story of the rental market and commissions, contracts and closings. First-timers get to see how hip and new the home can be. Empty nesters will get the story of the floor space and storage that they want.
- With the right software, landing pages are easy to create. Landing pages are where customers are brought after clicking an online ad or entering the URL that you put on a traditional ad, or scanning a QR code, for three examples.
One last bit of advice about landing pages is that they need to match their online ads with text, visuals, colour and format. If your landing page does not match the ad, prospective buyers will instinctively treat the page like a scam and you will lose their interest. You can find more advice about how you can most effectively market to different buyer segments in my book It's Not The Market, It's Your Marketing. It's on Amazon. Why not treat yourself to a free sample in the meantime?
