Real Estate Development Marketing

Marketing a real estate development requires more time and effort than marketing a single property. But many of the same concepts apply. In both cases, the goal is bring as many potential buyers to the property or development as possible.

Let's take a closer look at the concepts, strategies and best practices you can apply to your real estate development marketing program.

Steps to Marketing a Development

The process of promoting a new development will vary from one project to the next. Variables include your marketing budget, the type of real estate market you are in, the number of people involved in the process, and other factors.

With that being said, there are certain steps to real estate development marketing that most developers go through. Those steps are outlined below:

  1. Market Research - This is a step that many developers gloss over or skip entirely. But it's a key step in the path to marketing success. Market research involves population research, media and news channel research, and a thorough review of other developments in the area and what they're doing in terms of pricing and promotion.
  2. Creating a Marketing Plan - Once you have a solid understanding of your market, you'll have a much easier time creating your marketing plan. Among other things, this plan should include (A) your initial sales goals, (B) other primary objectives, (C) the types of marketing you plan to use, and (D) your initial budget.
  3. Choosing the Techniques - You have a lot of options when marketing a development to your target audience. Which ones you choose will depend on your market research from above, and your budgetary limits discussed below. Common techniques used to promote new developments include direct mail (postcards and letters), signs and billboards, public relations, search engine marketing, as well as local radio, TV and newspaper channels.
  4. Setting the Budget - Once you have chosen the techniques you'll use to promote your development (previous step), you can start to develop your marketing budget. Early on there will be some guesswork involved, because you won't yet know which techniques will bring the best results. Over time, however, you can measuer the success you get from each marketing channel and adjust your budget as needed.
  5. Outsource to Marketing Firm - Many of the steps involved with marketing a real estate development are best left to the professionals. For example, if you've decided to create a website for the development, and to use search engine marketing techniques to drive traffic to the site, it's probably something you should outsource to an Internet marketing firm. Be realisitic here. If it's not something you can handle yourself, pass it off to the pros.
  6. Executing the Strategy - So, you've done your research, chosen your preferred marketing techniques, and outsourced where necessary. What's next? It's time to execute! Put your development marketing plan into action. If you've taken the recommended steps preceding this one, there should nothing stopping you from charging forward.
  7. Tracking Results - The only way to know which techniques and channels are bring the best results is to track everything. For example, if you send out direct mail pieces as part of your overall marketing strategy, you need to be determine how many responses or visits you get from each mailing. Otherwise, you won't know what your return on investment (ROI) is. If this is all Greek to you, hire a firm who knows how to measure ROI.
  8. Making Improvements - Based on what you learn from your tracking and analysis (previous step), you will no doubt have to make adjustments here or there. Some things will not work as well as you hoped. Other things will work even better. If you can improve a marketing technique, then do so. Otherwise, scrap it entirely and focus on your top performers. Strive for constant improvement and optimization.

When you get into the nuts and bolts of your own marketing campaign, you may find that is has more steps than those listed above. That's to be expected. As mentioned earlier, this is a simplified overview of the development marketing process. Yours may be simpler or more complex than what we have outlined here, depending on the type of market you are in.

The Tools for Success

Up to this point, we have focused on the steps involved in a real estate development marketing program. Now let's shift gears and talk about item #3 from the list above — let's discuss some of the marketing techniques and methods available to you.

  • Direct Mail - If you are promoting a residential development, you could use direct mail postcards to get the word out to local homeowners. This can bring business in two ways — the homeowners could upgrade to your development or recommend it to people they know who want to live in the area.
  • Search Engine Marketing - There are two ways to drive traffic to your website through Google, Yahoo and the other search engines. You can use the long-term strategy of search engine optimization (SEO). Or you can use sponsored search / pay-per-click marketing, which can produce results immediately. I recommend using both.
  • Signs and Billboards - This is one of the most popular types of real estate marketing among developers, and for good reason. It can literally steer people to your development just by telling them it's there. If your project is near a high-traffic roadway, so much the better!
  • Newspaper - Even with the growth of the Internet as a news and communication tool, newspaper are still widely read. Home buyers pay particular attention to the weekend edition, because they know that's when the "Homes" section is usually beefed up. So this is another good channel to use for your development marketing campaign.