When developing campaigns, we always strive for maximum compliance between the creative and the business and communication objectives. To do this, you often have to dive deep into the client's industry and move towards a lending solution directly from his product. And at this moment you begin to understand how different marketing opportunities (and limitations, whatever) are for different product categories.
Therefore, every quarter we began to conduct research on different product categories. Communicate with audiences, experts and find new solutions. We have already examined products such as a car, a bank card and a smartphone inside and out. It’s time for something more significant, so today’s material is about real estate.
When you first begin to dive into the process of real estate marketing, you almost immediately realize that you are faced with a product of a different nature. In cost, use, selection and acquisition process, drivers and barriers - in almost every respect, real estate products differ from all other types of products.
1. Price is a lie
Let's start with one of the fundamental properties of any product - its cost.
I'm used to the fact that the cost of products is known. For example, I know that a Big Mac costs 130 rubles, an iPhone XS starts at $999, and B.Yu. Alexandrov - three pots of gold and half a kingdom.
But already in the first conversation with an expert, it turns out that the real estate market has one of the most opaque pricing processes. And the cost of an object is not a predetermined amount for which the realtor was able to sell it.
This same idea can be read in another way: “The real estate market has some of the greatest opportunities to influence margins.” And this already sounds like a challenge for any marketer.
As you know, there are two ways to increase margins: reducing costs and increasing “willing-to-pay”. In the case of the real estate industry, I recommend immediately forgetting about the first one - it’s already difficult for them during the transition to project financing. All that remains is to increase “willing-to-pay”. And there is only one way to do this - to create and increase the emotional value of the product.
It turns out that to increase margins it is enough to allocate part of the marketing budget to building a brand of a residential complex among the target audience?
Yes, but not really.
2. Frivolity and courage
My friend named Vasya really loves the BMW brand. When Vasya had saved up 2 million rubles by the age of 26, he immediately ran to the salon and bought a BMW 3 Series. He didn’t think for a moment that for the same amount he could buy a fairly large Korean crossover. Because the BMW brand has a very high emotional value in Vasya’s head.
Vasya has known BMW for 20 years. The average time spent by users choosing real estate is 3.2 months. Is it possible to build a brand during this time, to increase that very emotional value?
On the one hand, no: the density of information noise is off the charts. The loudest news channels last only a few days, and the weakest ones don’t even have a chance to break into the agenda.
On the other hand, you can try, and for the same reasons. The lifespan of trends becomes indecently short, and we begin to live in small “hype-like” leaps. Does this mean that society is ready to quickly fall in love with brands more than ever?
3. Create a brand in 90 days
Today, almost all large developers, in parallel with a lead generation campaign, launch an image campaign. As a rule, they are designed for a wide audience and work well for coverage. But they are not able to build a brand and increase emotional value in just a few contacts with users.
Let's remember how BMW increased its emotional value in Vasya's eyes. For 20 years, he has seen the brand in magazines, newspapers, video advertisements and films. And also in chewing gum stickers, on billboards and in car racing. And, of course, live on the city streets. During this time, a huge number of different contacts were made with Vasya.
Are there precedents for building a strong emotional connection with a consumer in 3 months? Yes, such that it could influence the decision to purchase an expensive product?
Eat. For example, TV series. If a housewife starts watching a well-filmed and well-acted series for housewives every day, then within two or three weeks its characters will acquire greater emotional value for her than her favorite bag or even the British cat Benjamin.
It turns out that if any type of campaign is capable of increasing emotional value in a short time, then it has the following properties:
1) Consecutive contacts create a coherent story
2) Targeted / not designed for a wide audience
3) Involves a large number of contacts with each representative of the target audience
4. Focus Campaigns
For FMCG segment products, the cost-effective cost of an attracted customer will rarely exceed several tens of rubles; for CE and automotive products, it will rarely exceed several hundred. But the average cost of one attracted buyer of an apartment in a new building exceeded 40 thousand rubles 3 years ago.
It turns out that if we talk about narrowly targeted campaigns, then an amount of several tens of thousands of rubles per client is easily profitable, and builders/developers are the only ones who are able to launch focused campaigns.
What is this? A focus campaign is a communication activity aimed at creating emotional value among target groups with the highest predictive conversion. As a rule, it is designed for periods from 1 to 3 months.
To integrate focal promotional activities into the overall advertising strategy, the audience should be segmented in detail at the stage of its development. Next, identify and profile the segments with the highest predictive conversion (regardless of their volume), and estimate the cost-effectiveness of focus leads.
It is important to integrate into the process before developing the main creative concept, because the highest predictive conversion can identify groups that are not at all similar to the core of the target audience.
If everything is done correctly, you will end up with a campaign that, in a limited time, consistently interacts with each of the key representatives of the target audience, building a residential complex brand in their minds.
Such a campaign will not work for coverage, but it will be able to “physically” support lead generation, increasing response, the cost of closing a deal and reducing the average cost of leads across the entire advertising campaign.
Denis Komissarov / Managing Director deep crative digital agency
