Winning the business is half the battle. Marketing the property with a comprehensive and precise marketing campaign therein lies a greater challenge. If positioned incorrectly, the property will not sell, the marketing methodology becomes diluted, a team loses credibility, and a long term relationship could be lost.
Sellers want to feel confident that their property will sell, quickly, and that they are working with a team that has proven their ability to properly position a property on the market.
Typically, marketers and teams will focus on external elements such as a property’s location, tenancy, and pricing metrics to formulate the overall marketing strategy and positioning. Our team tends to work the other way. Our analysis of the property goes deeper and into the minds of different buyer profiles. Our buyer becomes “ground zero” for all positioning and marketing methodologies.
The key to precision is positioning the buyer, not the property.
Understanding Your Buyer
The key to properly positioning a property is understanding the buyer and their corresponding risk categories. The higher the yield on a property; the higher the risk.
When our team is awarded a listing, we use the chart below to define the different categories of buyer profiles and their corresponding risk categories. We look at where the property would fall within this chart and begin from there.
What Next?
Once our buyer and risk category have been established, our marketing materials seamlessly fall into place.
Specific buyer profiles lend to specific styles. Let’s say a property falls within the Fund Adviser bucket and a trophy property (Q3). Our team would create a financially driven offering memorandum, with less imagery and more substance. In this case, we are speaking to industry professionals that are looking for exact information and specific terms. They are clear with their requirements and the marketing materials are then focused on messaging that resonates with those buyer profiles.
If we were catering to a profile in Q1, the offering memorandum and materials would be a little more vibrant and picturesque. We would include information that would emotionally drive a buyer in this quadrant to feel confident in the possible investment. At times these investors are also more drawn and sensitive to regional connections, tenants, and the inherent narrative and nuances of a property. Since these properties might pose higher risks than those found in other segments, our marketing materials would have to lend to those characteristics.
The Art of Positioning
The art of property positioning lies in the ability to translate the raw property data to our property positioning rubric. Decades of experiences have provided our team with the ability to analyze subtle nuances, analyze the projected yields, as well as the long term viability of the potential investment.
Of course there are outside factors that can also change the effectiveness of positioning the property based on a certain buyer profile. We have had instances where the market has shifted during a marketing campaign, changing not only the buyer profile but also the content of our marketing materials, and at times, creating a whole new set of marketing materials.
Above all, being artfully adaptable is the best way to complement experience. For more information on our proven process, or to find out where your property is on our chart, contact us here:
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