Modunite Managing Director, Michael, caught up with Owen Setter, Head of New Homes at Greenslade Taylor Hunt (GTH), for a Q & A to discuss the key to successfully marketing off-plan and new-build homes. Having worked to provide GTH with CGI imagery for their off-plan marketing strategy, we decided to pick Owen’s brain on what he thinks the magic ingredient is in growing leads and converting off-plan sales.
Obviously CGI is an important part of any pre-completion marketing, but CGI visuals must play their part in a greater marketing strategy to be used to their full potential and get complete success.
Q. Owen, what are the other key aspects that developers should consider to make up a rounded off-plan marketing strategy?
Firstly, I think real clarity in terms of what a buyer can expect. You’re entering into a situation in which there’ll be a lot of questions, you’re not taking the buyer into the finished product so they’re not able to see all of the potential pitfalls or issues for themselves.
Being able to answer the smaller questions like ‘can I fit 2 cars on the driveway?’ goes a long way to building consumer confidence in the product. It’s crucial to be prepared with the smaller details, and being able to confidently tell a potential customer how the garden will look and if they’ll have turf etc can genuinely make all the difference, a house is a substantial purchase so it’s important to have glanced a critical eye over the property from the perspective of a home buyer before you go to market.
Q. I love that. The saying is that a confused customer never buys, and I guess when it’s something of this magnitude these things can play an important role in decision making?
Absolutely. Depending on what the market conditions are like at any one time can affect the impact that has. So if we’re talking two years ago, we’re at a point where houses were selling super quick, without being on the market for more than a couple of minutes. We’re not in that situation anymore. There’s far more choice out there. And so as a result of that, if you have that little bit of doubt on your products you could lose out when there’s probably three or four other products that that buyer is considering. So I think it’s important to have that foundation in place to increase customer confidence from the outset.
Q. So we’ve covered the key to growing that confidence, but what would you say is the number one challenge to be aware of? What would you say is the main thing that developers might get wrong in their plan that could have a big impact on the sales process?
There’s a phrase that we use, which is going too early. Ultimately, it comes back to what I was saying about not being prepared enough at that early stage. If you are going to go early in commerce, you need to do so with either the knowledge that there’s real pent up interest in that location for that type of product. That means that it almost doesn’t matter what you’re listing as you know there’s going to be buyers for it.
If you don’t have that level of competence, then you need to make sure that you are being selective about what you offer to make sure that it is meeting a level of demand at the right time. There’s almost no point in putting a house to the open market if it hasn’t started being built and you don’t anticipate it being completed within the next six months regardless of how well marketed it may be. With all the will in the world unless you find an incredibly patient cash buyer it’s going to be sat on the market for six months before you’re able to really get any traction on it, at which point it starts to look stale and people start to ask questions about why it hasn’t sold yet. But the reality is it may be because it’s been serving the market with the same CGI for the last six months with no real world progression, which is crucial to make the CGI stage of sales as effective as possible.
Some great advice and answers from Owen there really emphasising the importance of having a well thought out sales and marketing strategy, putting particular weight against getting into the buyers head to understand the small details that may raise questions and being able to answer those seamlessly.
The timing of when you start your marketing activity, or the contents at different phases, is critical as well in order to keep the listing fresh and enticing for potential buyers. Just because your off-plan property isn’t built doesn’t mean you can’t market it, it just means that you need to plan each phase cleverly over the period building to completion. This is where different types of CGI can play their part to keep engagement throughout the process, starting with static Property CGI and progressing to VR walkthroughs and 360 Virtual Tours which can complement early stage real life imagery too.
To find out more about how Modunite can help improve your off-plan strategy, get in touch today!
