If there’s one advantage MPCs have over traditional housing developments, it’s a buyer brand awareness that comes from sheer size alone.
Republic Property Group’s Walsh community in Fort Worth, Texas, eventually will feature 15,000 homes and is now completing phase one models from David Weekley Homes, Drees Custom Homes, HGC Residential, Highland Homes, Toll Brothers, and Village Homes. Total traditional advertising budget as the MPC launches into a decades-long sales effort? Zero dollars.
"At Walsh we’re taking a content-first approach with our website and distributing through email and social media marketing,” says Republic Property Group director of marketing and sales Travis Selcer. “We think there are much more effective ways to hit people digitally these days, and as a result we don’t see high value in doing any traditional media placements.”
Karen Becker is vice president of marketing for San Jose, Calif.–based Benchmark Communities. After a 12-year career with Autodesk that included roles in industry marketing and sales enablement, brand and web engagement, and digital and corporate marketing, she has likewise concluded that media buys have become passé.
“The market is way too smart to be advertised to,” Becker says. “Color TV and radio and print isn’t necessarily a bad investment per se, but it doesn’t build the brand loyalty and advocacy that results in your audience becoming influencers for you, and I believe that is where we have to be.”
Instead, Benchmark is focused on developing stories to engage potential buyers through blogging and social networks to drive website traffic and ultimately compel a community visit.
“Content marketing is really where the value is, and that means we are media companies as much as home builders,” Becker says. “At the end of the day, our buyers are smart people who are online looking for information, so our job as marketers is to give them information that is engaging and helpful.”
Indeed, the Walsh website looks less home builder and more NewYorkTimes.com, eschewing a transactional mindset for articles on the Maker movement, profiles on local high school football teams, and essays on the necessity of nature. Syndicated via Twitter and also distributed via the Walsh Weekly email newsletter, the content is geared toward creating conversations that also provide exclusive news related to construction at Walsh.
Feeding shopper appetites for engaging content while model homes are barely built has Walsh literally looking up for new multimedia ideas. “Our co-CEO is a self-proclaimed tech geek and pushed us to use drones for aerial video photography, which has morphed into having our GIS engineer also serve as an in-house pilot,” Selcer says. “But you can create incredible aerials and stitch those together to create an amazing time lapse of construction. It’s low cost, high tech, and has created flexibility in how we market.”
