Marketing Tips for New Construction
As a real estate agent, at some point in your career you will be hired to sell new construction. While your work selling existing properties will have helped you develop skills you’ll rely on in this new venture, your new task also brings a novel set of challenges to master.
Today, we’re sharing our best marketing tips for new construction. With these tools in your pocket, you’ll be prepared to develop targeted marketing, help buyers visualize a home that may not yet exist, and leverage the best aspects of new construction to your benefit.
Conduct a Deep Analysis of Your Target Audience
New construction, no matter how well-built and flawlessly designed, isn’t right for all buyers. Clearly then, you must understand the buyer for whom new construction is a great fit. Those buyers are now your target audience.
Begin by reflecting on the new neighborhood as a whole. Given the type of homes, types of nearby amenities, and proximity to workplaces and schools, you will begin to develop a clear idea of who will be drawn to this neighborhood.
Two-bedroom homes near restaurants, clubs, concert venues, and tech jobs will attract single professionals. Five-bedroom homes surrounded by lush parks and trails located near the best schools and family-friendly restaurants will be ideal for families with children.
Now that you can envision your target audience clearly in your mind, you can create marketing selling the lifestyle this development offers. You may not have the home itself to walk a buyer through, but you can still sell the dream of the life they’ll be able to lead once they’ve moved into their brand-new home.
Develop Your Digital Marketing Strategies
It’s no secret that real estate marketing has shifted away from physical tools toward almost entirely digital campaigns. When you’re selling existing properties, though, you will be able to take copious high-quality photos and videos around which you can build your marketing blitz.
Marketing a home that doesn’t yet exist is an entirely different enterprise.
Your best case scenario is that the developer has first built a model home that closely resembles the homes you’ve been hired to sell. Still, that will mostly help with creating visual marketing of the home’s interior. Step outside, and you’ll see nothing but empty lots and bustling construction. So, how can you sell the dream of what the neighborhood will become?
First, draw an audience to the development by continually creating social media articles and blog posts describing the process of building the model homes, the individual homes, neighborhood development, and the builders who are hard at work bringing the spaces to life. If you have their permission, including photos of the builders can be a great way to help people feel connected to the process.
You may even choose to spotlight a “Builder of the Week” to introduce themselves and answer a few questions for your social media campaigns. The resulting footage will add a fresh dimension to your largely text-based updates.
Visual Hooks
As we’ve outlined above, the visual aspect of marketing new construction is uniquely challenging. If you don’t have a model home to assist you, there are still some steps you can take to develop strong visual hooks for your content.
In some cases, the developer will hire a digital artist to create models and tours of them. If your developer doesn’t, keep in mind that you can take this step yourself! Whether you work alone or in tandem with other realtors who are marketing this development, you can hire a digital designer to create appealing and accurate mock-ups of the available floor plans. Share these mock-ups anywhere you would normally share footage and photos of a property you’re selling.
This undertaking will require time to complete, and it will be costly to hire a skilled designer. Still, it will almost certainly deliver a robust ROI. People are strongly visual creatures, and we like to be able to imagine our lives taking place in any home we consider purchasing. With no images or video footage to rely on, a whopping percentage of your audience will simply not be able to begin that process.
Market New Construction with Its Strengths
As a real estate agent, you know first-hand how stressful it is for buyers to wait for inspection results. Based on the inspector’s findings, negotiations may be required to cover the huge cost of required repairs, and the buyer will normally not be able to move in until repairs have been made.
Clearly, new construction bypasses this entire fiasco, and the accompanying builder’s guarantee adds further peace of mind for buyers. Rather than worrying about expensive maintenance requirements, the buyer will be able to spend the next decade simply enjoying their turn-key home.
Additionally, new construction can be customized. Flooring, paint colors, fixture quality, and similar types of items can often be altered based on the buyer’s vision for their home.
SEO Tactics
For each of your social media campaigns, your blog posts, your articles, and every update you write, you would be wise to include SEO keywords that are trending regionally. Be highly specific and keep your target audience at the center of your efforts. The development’s location and amenities will be recurring throughout your pieces, so keep a list of SEO keywords around which you can write strong imagery.
Create a Development Website
In the event that you are the sole realtor marketing this brand-new community, we recommend creating a website ad hoc. Hire a website developer to create a high-quality site that reflects the character of the housing development. Maintain a blog that details the process of creating a community from the ground up and include photos.
Over time, this website will take on a life of its own, and it will help you market and sell to your desired buyers.
The Takeaway
While selling new construction is undeniably uniquely challenging, it’s also a thrilling process. By employing the skills we’ve detailed for you today, you can be confident in your ability to be highly successful in your endeavors.