After all this you mean we can finally launch our development? The launch can be key to your sales and marketing strategy. Like advertising, agents can receive significant profile on your ticket when launching a development, so make sure they don’t over-embellish the opportunity. You may decide to have more than one launch as you target different buyer groups or if you are offering different products (like a new stage). Launching the development is both an exciting and nervous time and the options to best present your project to the market are only limited by your imagination. Here are some examples:
- Registration of Interest. You advertise limited information about your project in order to collect a database of interested buyers and feedback before you formally launch. Sometimes used to test the market, the feedback may influence your development and how you subsequently launch.
- Soft Launch. This is where you sell homes or sections without any formal or advertised launch. It may be to your database of buyers, your social media network, repeat customers, friends and family or direct selling from the agent. A soft launch may be accompanied by something more formal later.
- Traditional Launch. You take out the best advertising your budget allows and with website operational and an open home time you invite buyers to your display suite the following weekend. This is when all your marketing collateral is complete and you have everything in order to close sales.
- Formal Function. Typically a few days before public release you hold a formal function onsite or at your display suite. This could be an evening wine and cheese or hors d’oeuvres formal event with noted signatories like the local mayor or politician giving a speech.[1] Invite consultants and contractors to be part of the audience. The event may double as a party to congratulate them on their efforts on the development to date. The key for sales is to have your agent bring as many VIP potential buyers along to this event.
- Associated Launch. This is where you dovetail the launch of your development with some other unrelated event to entice potential buyers to attend. Of course you will need to find some loosely related link to your development. It could be a ‘learn how to cook’ event from a local celebrity chef, ‘how to make drinks’ from a barista or mixologist, or a new furniture brand launch — all in your display suite.
- Special Cause Event. This is where you launch your development under the guise of, or in combination with, a special cause. It may be a large charity donation, providing affordable housing, providing community amenities such as a new playground or clubrooms or opening a farmers’ market. This can be made all the more attractive with the pulling power of a local celebrity.
- Big Carrot Launch. Think timeshare, where you win a holiday to some exotic location for attending (only to find out airfares are not thrown in) or any other sales gimmick. Attendees to the event have a chance to win a car, a furniture package or some other prize to go with the house they are about to buy. You could offer ‘attendees only early bird pricing’ for your sections and homes. If you are this way inclined, try to make the carrot as tasteful and related to your development as possible, rather than some type of used car promotion.
- Investment Seminar. Typically held in the ballroom of a central city upmarket hotel, your development is promoted as an investment opportunity to attendees — either on its own or in conjunction with other investments touted by the organisers. Choose your promoter partners carefully as this space is rife with sharks and charlatans.
- Milestone Launch. One of the most well-known examples is the breaking of ground, with the obligatory photo of the developer and a politician pretending to turn the first sod of dirt with a golden shovel. Another is the cutting of the ribbon by developer and proud home owner to indicate the first home in the project is complete.
- Media Launch. Housing is always in the news and if you are creative enough or just lucky enough to be on the right side of something topical you could get your project’s launch into radio, television or print as an item of news. Having a politician or celebrity attend also gives you a better chance of making the news.
- Auction. This is when you kick off your development with an event that surrounds an auction to draw interest and an immediate call to action. In a really hot market, where you know you are going to have oversubscribed interest (multiple bidders per property) this can work really well.
- Influencer. Either using someone with some sort of celebrity status or a staged event to essentially advertise your development through the influencers social media networks. The ‘subtle’ influencer endorsement creates a call to action to buy. Or the staged event gets so much attention, your development reaps in the publicity. Either way the goal[dream] here is for a post to go viral, and garner attention that builds upon itself, until that post itself is reported in the mainstream media. Early days for selling developments in this ‘influencer’ space, although sporting personalities have always been tapped in real estate.
The primary goal for your launch
is to create enough buzz to make sales quickly and propel the project forward —
profitably! To maintain sales momentum and profile in your market you may
consider using a regular combination of the above during your sales programme.
[1] To secure the attendance of the mayor to give the opening speech I once held a launch event in the middle of the day, in a marquee on the vacant development site — it received local newspaper and television coverage.
Andrew Crosby
+64 21 982 444
andrew@xpectproperty.com
