In the blink of an eye, it’s time to start preparing for FY22/23.

The new financial year is the perfect time to reflect on the financial year that’s been, assess areas for improvement and implement innovative initiatives to drive further success and growth for the months ahead.

If you want to continue delivering a great customer experience and achieving your sales goals in FY22/23, here are some effective resolutions we suggest you implement:

1. Refine your value proposition

What value do you offer for customers? What pains do you solve and what gains do you offer? Why would customers choose your project or product over your competitors’? And why wouldn’t they? Answering these questions and establishing a clear value proposition that’s understood by all members of your business is crucial in order to implement an effective marketing plan. For this reason, there’s no better time to solidify your value proposition than at the start of the new financial year. It will help you to clearly identify what strategies you can implement to really add value for your customer segments.

If your project could do with a Value Proposition or a revival to kick off FY22/23, Property Republic has put together a workshop that involves the whole project team, so you are sure to achieve alignment and buy in. Get in touch here.

2. Embrace and enhance your digital presence

Digital solutions are non-negotiable, and their importance supersedes the end of Coronavirus restrictions. After relying on digital platforms heavily for the past few years, you can bet your customers will expect a great digital presence and experience from your brand from here on out. If you’re digital presence needs work, it’s time to prioritise it now.

3. Put your customers first

If the customer isn’t already positioned at the forefront of all your initiatives, they seriously need to be. In a market where customer expectations are rising exponentially (and rightly so when they’re making the biggest purchase decision of their lives), it’s essential that you develop an effective customer experience strategy that covers every touchpoint.

Sales people: you need to make capturing customer data a priority. Ask questions and record information that will help the marketing team make great marketing decisions.

Marketers: you need to own the customer experience in the project lifecycle and utilise external experts to help you deliver market-leading strategies – above, through and below the line as well as at the front line.

4. Deliver clear and consistent communication

Whether internally, or between brand and customer, lines of communication need to remain transparent. Communicating openly, honestly and as often as possible with your customer is the key to establishing relationships based on trust. This is especially crucial when it comes to delivering bad news. For some ideas on how to best communicate bad news – such as title delays – to your customers, read our blog.

Effective communication works both ways, so embracing and responding to feedback from your customer is just as important as delivering information to them. This financial year, ensure that you’re providing your customers with an opportunity to provide feedback on your product or service; and be open to criticism. The insights you receive from your customers hold all the answers as to how you can make changes that will enhance the sales process. You can gather this feedback through incentivised questionnaires or surveys that are sent out to your database via email. Communicating with your customers requires minimal investment but reaps wonderful rewards, so it’s definitely worth implementing.

Opening the lines of communication within your internal team is also essential to ensure each staff member is working towards a common objective and that your sales and marketing personnel are aligned. If team alignment is something you’d like to achieve in FY22/23, we have the perfect workshop – so get in touch!

We all know that following through with new year’s resolutions becomes a challenge as we sink back into our usual habits. To ensure your new financial year resolutions stick and maximise growth, productivity and success for your property business, be sure to reflect, reassess and refine your goals regularly.

Customer Experience, Strategy

Six ways to mobilise your audience when things get quiet

By Judi Carr on

8 June, 2022

- Customer Experience, Strategy

Recent events may be impacting property buyers’ decisions and ability to purchase.

First, interest rates increased two months in a row, making it more challenging for buyers (especially first home buyers) to commit to and get approval for home loans.

Additionally, a national election recently took place, instating a new government, which can leave buyers wondering how and when incentives and policies will change – and if they’ll change for the better.

Plus, material shortages and supply chain disruptions continue to impact the building industry, pushing out delivery timeframes and increasing costs. According to ABC News, the issues are likely to continue well into 2023.

And that’s not to mention the rising price of petrol, produce, utilities and the general cost of living.

Such events have the potential to affect purchase decisions, and therefore impact your lead generation and conversion results – so if your property business has noticed a downward shift in engagement or conversions, know this is completely normal. However, there are things your sales and marketing teams can do to maintain loyalty, encourage interaction and stay top-of-mind.

With uncertainty swirling the market, here are six things your property business can do to mobilise your audience:

1. Communicate with transparency and honesty

Your customers don’t expect you to work miracles, but they do expect you to be honest when it comes to pricing, construction delays and other matters affecting their home or their purchase. Set up a lead-nurture and purchaser-nurture strategy to ensure your prospects and customers feel informed and confident.

2. Identify pain points and help solve them with content

What challenges are your customers currently facing? What jobs are they trying to complete? What problems are they trying to solve? We believe the best way to tackle these questions is to get your sales and marketing teams together to brainstorm ideas. Once you have a solid understanding of your customer’s pain points, your marketing team can begin creating content that responds to them. Here are some ideas:

Write a blog about tips for saving money around the home
Reach out to a financial expert to provide tips for saving up for a home deposit
Update your FAQs on your website
Send out regular emails to your database that link to these problem-solving content pieces

The Property Republic team can host a workshop that will get the best responses out of our marketing and sales teams. Learn more here.

3. Optimise your customer experience (mystery shopping)

The current prevalence of ‘consumer caution’ means your customer experience needs to be at its best – both online and offline. It’s crucial that you know how effectively your prospects are nurtured, and how well your on-site team represents the brand. A great strategy to determine these interpersonal factors is mystery shopping. The mystery shopping process can be used to evaluate the performance of a variety of services, from the online experience of customers and follow up, to the presentation of the sales office and the helpfulness of sales staff.

If your property business requires a mystery shopping service to identify areas for customer experience improvement, we’re here to help! We’re experienced in performing mystery shopping exercises and have done so for a range of leading property brands, including AV Jennings and MAB. Get in touch today to discover how we can help you refine your customer experience.

4. Make sure your project presentation is pristine

Take a road trip with the project team and review the brand, directional, entry and on-site signage, the standard of landscaping, the cleanliness of your sales centre, the state of the project in general. Most importantly, ask yourself – would you buy there?

5. Re-charge your sales team by reinforcing the basics of follow up (why, how and when)

Marketers – it’s time to work with your sales team to devise a phone conversation that will get you customer data that provides valuable insights.

6. Take a drive around your project and ensure your signage objectives are clear

It’s important to understand the hierarchy for signage positioning on your site. Within 10km of the development, place signage that features brand building messages; closer to the project’s location, provide wayfinding signs to direct potential customers; within your site you can station signs that serve to sell the benefits of living in the development and outline the specifics on what is for sale.

Reviewing your signage involves a few different steps:

When it comes to your highway billboard, remember that most people are driving above 80km an hour past it and can only take in one message. Review the layout of the sign and ensure the call to action (such as the web address) is dominant.
Drive through your project as though you’re seeing it for the first time. Is your signage clear and doing its job? Ensure the signs are both visible and at a reasonable distance from each other. If directional signage is misleading or confusing, it’s not going to provide an acceptable customer experience.

The Property Republic team are highly experienced in helping property businesses mobilise their audience through tailored customer experience, project marketing and lead nurture strategies. If you’d like to chat about how we can help you achieve great results, get in touch today.

Strategy, Workshops

Case Study: Strategic Review of Lyndarum North by AV Jennings

By Michelle Rendaje on

23 April, 2022

- Strategy, Workshops

The Property Republic team are often approached to conduct strategic reviews for property developments. Most recently, we were engaged to conduct a strategic review of AV Jennings’ development Lyndarum North to provide a framework for sales success through evaluating the market position, impact of COVID-19 and competition.

Utilising workshops, online surveys, desktop research, mystery shopping and builder reviews, we were able to gather highly valuable insights for our client.

Here’s a breakdown of the process and outcomes:

Context

AV Jennings approached Judi Carr, Director of Property Republic, to conduct a strategic review and provide recommendations for future opportunities while taking into consideration the current and future market conditions with the impact of COVID-19 as the backdrop.

AV Jennings is a trusted, community-driven developer with 85 years of demonstrated experience. Located in Melbourne’s highly competitive northern corridor, this masterplanned community has been designed to provide affordable and high-quality housing to meet the needs of a wide range of buyers.

As Wollert faces competing developments in the broader development corridor with differing price points and amenities, it’s important for the Lyndarum North team to understand where they currently sit within the market, where they can improve and identify gaps in the market.

Challenges

Lyndarum North has the potential to establish itself as the most sought-after residential community in Melbourne’s highly competitive northern corridor. Many aspects of creating a great community have been considered, with varying levels of success and expertise.

The AV Jennings brand in the north had some equity at the former Lyndarum project but it has been overshadowed by the competitive nature of the corridor and other prominent developers.

Primary Goal

The primary goal of the strategic review was to provide Lyndarum North with a framework to achieve sales success through evaluating the market position, impact of COVID-19 and competition.

Other Goals

Obtain market knowledge that will help solidify Lyndarum North’s brand reputation and awareness.
Achieve price growth aligned with preferred price points
Gain valuable insights to capitalise on opportunities, allowing Lyndarum North to realise its potential as one of most sought-after residential communities in the Wollert corridor.

Process

Market Position

1. Workshops

Property Republic conducted two workshops with prospective and current purchasers, aiming to establish some key points, including:

Perception of Lyndarum North in the marketplace and current value proposition and positioning
The value placed on the product offering
Product requirements
Household sizes
Jobs, pains and gains
Motivations, driver constraints
Needs in terms of amenity, community and developer
Impact of COVID-19 on income, work location, attending sales office, life in general
Thoughts on competitors

2. Online Surveys

Two online surveys were designed and supervised by Dr. Marzena Baker, PhD, MBus (Research). A large number of prospective and current purchasers were invited to take part, with participants given an opportunity to win an overall prize plus nominate one of three local charities, to which AV Jennings donated $5 for every survey completed.

The survey questions sought to provide insight into:

Demographics including local and ex-pat purchasers
Product requirements
Jobs, pains and gains
Motivations, driver constraints
Needs in terms of amenity, community and developer
Impact of COVID-19 on income, work location, life in general
Competitor purchase considerations

3. Desktop Research

Property Republic conducted desktop research and gathered information, including data that’s publicly available through organisations such as the City of Whittlesea.

4. Builder Review

Property Republic also reviewed the current builder product, conducted discussions with local builder consultants, major builder principals and sales managers to gain insight into their future product planning as well as any research they had conducted.

Impact of COVID-19

Property Republic conducted a thorough desktop review of COVID-19 related forecasts and opinions and the provision of Government stimulus and support. It also included information from organisations such as:

Department of Treasury and Finance
Victorian Government
University of Melbourne
Reserve Bank of Australia

Questions relating to COVID-19’s impact were also asked in the customer deep dive workshops and online surveys.

Builder partners’ senior personnel were interviewed to garner their views on the northern corridor market in 2021 and beyond.

Competition

Property Republic conducted an online mystery shopping and competitor analysis of the Wollert, Craigieburn, Mernda and Donnybrook corridors. This was aimed to highlight Lyndarum North’s current and potential points of difference and competitive edge. Some of the things that were reviewed include:

Social media footprint
Initial customer experience and prospect management
Value proposition, positioning, product, pricing, and promotion
Builder relationships
Current and future amenity
Sustainability and similar initiatives
Project presentation

Final report

Property Republic provided Lyndarum North with a detailed report that presented outcomes from the prospect and purchaser workshops, online surveys, major builder interviews, site inspections and online mystery shopping.

Property Republic highlighted important observations and provided recommendations to help the Lyndarum North Team understand where they sit in the market, develop and refine their strategies and drive successful sales outcomes.

Judi Carr was also invited to present the report’s methodology and key findings to senior personnel within AV Jennings and their joint venture partner.

Customer Experience, Strategy

How to capture Gen Z homebuyers

By Michelle Rendaje on

17 March, 2022

- Customer Experience, Strategy

With the oldest members of Generation Z now in their mid-20s, they’re entering the world of employment and home ownership. This opens up opportunities for property brands to capture this generation for the first time. But first, property businesses need to have a solid understanding of their habits, expectations, behaviours and motivators.

The Property Republic team recently read and unpacked GWI’s Generation Z report, which dives into the latest trends among this generation.

Unsurprisingly, some of the most noticeable trends involve social media, sustainability, video and audio streaming, and brand authenticity.

Here are six important considerations for property businesses wanting to capture Gen Z homebuyers.

1. Focus on social media

As the first generation to grow up with smart phones and social media at their fingertips, it’s no surprise that harnessing these platforms is a must for brands looking to engage Gen Z buyers. In fact, when it comes to discovering new brands and products, social media is the go-to platform.

“Gen Z are more likely to discover products on social than search engines. Social media has become something of a “one-stop-shop” for Gen Z; a place they can discover and buy products without ever having to leave the app. It’s a reminder for brands that haven’t already to strengthen their social media presence on Gen Z’s favourite platforms and take advantage of shopping features where they can.”