News

Main article content

In late 2014 we made a few predictions about the marketing trends we thought would shape the real estate industry in 2015. Predicting the future is a tricky business, so before we make our marketing predictions for 2016 (stay tuned next week), we thought we’d revisit last year’s and check how they panned out.

So, here goes nothing:

Brand ‘refreshes’

We said: In 2014, several high-profile agencies tweaked and freshened their brands to generate more cut through in the marketplace. Other brands would follow suit in 2015.

What happened: Many agencies took the opportunity to overhaul their brands and boost the quality of their marketing in 2015. Some agencies were essentially forced to rethink their brand as their competitors upped the game with new drop and brochure designs and experimentation with high-end finishes like gold or silver foil. 

Chinese marketing material 

We said: Chinese brochures would take off, especially in the eastern suburbs where huge numbers of international buyers were dominating opens and auctions.

What happened: Chinese brochures have become the norm in areas popular with Asian buyers, with agencies who were late to adopt forced to play catch up. The trend goes far beyond brochures; it’s now the norm for agencies to have at least one Mandarin-speaking international buyer specialist and websites that can be fully translated with the click of a button. We’ve also seen auction guides and entire editions of 80-page property magazines translated into Chinese. In 2015, top agencies catered to international buyers in any way they could.

REA vs everyone

We said: REA would be forced to tone down its approach to pricing after outrage from agents.

What happened: Pricing has been stable, and the huge price increases REA wanted were scaled back. 

Embracing embellishments

We said: Agents would push the boundaries of print marketing with foiling, magnets, embossing and high quality paper in an effort to differentiate themselves. 

What happened: Real estate agents embraced high-end finishings, with many of our clients adopting foiled brochure designs this year. Again, those who were slow on the uptake are being forced to consider their options as their competitors create tactile, stand-out marketing pieces. In addition, new technologies and improved efficiencies continued to make options like foiling and embossing more cost-effective than ever. 

Blinged out brochures

We said: More and more agents were seeing the value in premium brochures, especially for the prestige market.

What happened: Brochures got a lot of love in 2015. Many of our clients updated their brochure designs, opted for thicker stock, embraced foiled details and are pushing 8, 12 and even 16 page brochures for top-tier properties. We’ve seen beautiful, high end papers used, non-standard sizes utilised and designs that look more like high-end fashion magazines or coffee table books than simple property brochures.

Custom content

We said: High-end content would become a bigger and bigger part of agency marketing strategies. 

What happened: Lots of our clients embraced content this year, whether it was polishing the copy on their drop cards or going to the effort of putting out regular newsletters filled with market analysis and local news. More agencies are using original content to elevate their brand and display their expertise to vendors and prospects.

Property management takes centre stage

We said: In 2015, more and more agencies would focus on building the rentals side of their business into a polished, highly professional entity in its own right. 

What happened: A late burst of enthusiasm for property management marketing tapered off quickly as the market reached new highs this year. Rentals often gets overlooked when times are good, and that was definitely the case for many of our clients in 2015. Several rentals projects we started late last year, including dedicated property management newsletters and just leased drops, went nowhere fast in 2015 (well, we can’t get it right all the time…)

Multi-channel marketing

We said: Multi-channel marketing was on the verge of an explosion in popularity. 

What happened: We have seen the future, and it’s multi-channel marketing. Print and digital are no longer thought of as separate, unrelated channels; agents are seeing the best results when both are used to complement and promote each other. We’ll have more to say about this one when we deliver our marketing predictions for 2016 next week.

Mobile goes mainstream

We said: 2014 officially marked the tipping point where those who hadn’t optimised their online offerings for smartphones found themselves left behind.

What happened: Mobile is all important, with close to half of all web searches now happening on smartphones. It’s now so crucial that some websites are being designed for mobiles first, with the ‘traditional’ desktop version following from that. 

The dangers of online reviews

We said: Savvy businesses would need to develop action plans to ensure prompt responses to any online fallout.

What happened: Bad word of mouth lives forever online, and we haven’t really seen an example of an agency with a perfect solution for dealing with it yet. Pretty much every agent in Melbourne has a less-than-stellar review lurking somewhere online, and it’s not always easy to have that information removed. 

Goodbye QR codes, hello augmented reality

We said: The QR code was dead and augmented reality was set to take off

What happened: QR codes are, inexplicably, still floating around on the odd board and magazine, while augmented reality is dead in the water. 

What were your predictions for real estate marketing trends in 2015? Did they pan out?