Case Study

Abel Projects WA

Partnering with one of Perth’s leading development project marketing companies to create digital marketing campaigns that attract and sell quality clients into apartments.


Abel Projects WA logo

The Client

Abel Projects WA works with some of the state’s leading property developers to market and sell projects. Directors Steve and Nicole Jones’ understanding of the property development process is second-to-none. They stay ahead of the market by providing their clients with a smooth end-to-end solution that maximises the returns from development projects.

The breadth of experience across the Abel Projects WA team includes project sales, feasibility, development site identification, helping to raise capital, floor plan configurations, pre-sale requirements, contracts and legal documentation, and more.

Abel Projects WA has an exceptional understanding of project marketing. The company is equipped with an experienced in-house sales and marketing team that thoroughly understands the intricacies of target market identification, market conditions and buyer sentiment when it comes to off-the-plan purchasing in Perth.

The Challenge

Abel Projects WA delivers successful sales and marketing campaigns for project developers across WA. Buyer journeys, however, have become longer as competition is more prominent, and the WA market more saturated and slower. COVID-19 restrictions forced a lot of buyers out of the market, compounding the problem. With these challenges, it has become increasingly difficult to cut through the property market to attract quality leads and create urgency for buyers.

Abel Projects WA had been working with another Perth digital marketing agency and throughout that partnership, were faced with the following problems:

  • A high focus on generating quantity over quality enquiry with most leads not worth pursuing, creating a time-consuming lead follow-up process resulting in few to no sales.
  • The buyer journey becoming longer for property transactions making it difficult to convert sales from the existing leads.
  • As competition increased, it became more challenging to ‘traditionally’ position the brand and attract the right type of buyer demographic.
  • WA property market conditions were stagnant, creating less urgency to buy and an increasing need to compete on price point.

For the new digital marketing campaigns to be effective, regardless of the market conditions and increasing competition, they would need to focus on buyer intent. This included solution-focused messaging designed to build relationships with the key target markets, at each phase of the buyer journey.

Objectives

  • Carry out a full target market audit of all projects to identify the right markets for each project. This would enable better marketing messaging and sales hooks for the prospect, at every stage of their buying journey.
  • Create a multi-channel marketing campaign using relevant digital marketing services, based on behavioural response indicators to generate high-value leads that will create a better sales conversion opportunity.
  • Build an integrated follow-up marketing system to nurture top-funnel prospects to better support the sales follow-up process.
  • Create a unique value proposition for each project development, tailored to the buyer demographic. This would enhance the brand position and relationship with the marketplace, removing the need to compete on price point.

The Solution

The WA market has been sitting at the bottom for quite some time, making it hard to generate solid lead and sale opportunities. This in turn creates a challenge to focus on quality over quantity and ensure that the projects hit their targets for pre-sales and the start of construction.

To maximise lead quality, we needed to better understand the buyer demographics. Then we would be able to provide valuable content and messaging to each target audience, attracting new leads at the top, middle and bottom of the conversion funnel.

To implement this results-driven approach, Abel Projects partnered with Living Online’s experienced property digital marketing consultants, to drive strategic marketing campaigns focused on business objectives and KPIs.

Living Online created a multi-channel digital marketing strategy to effectively target the right markets. This had to build a strong brand position in the marketplace and generate quality bottom-funnel leads while being able to effectively nurture top-funnel leads into warmer prospects.

Following the first project development, we created a formulaic approach that could be executed across multiple projects in the client’s development portfolio. This advanced system would allow us to scale the campaigns in such a way that would turn cold audiences into engaged prospects, and highly qualified prospects into buyers.

Property Marketing Strategy

What we did: Digital Marketing Strategy, Market Research

For each project, we worked with the Abel Projects WA team to identify the project-specific objectives and market position before launching the marketing campaigns. This gave us a clear direction on how to develop a conversion funnel strategy to generate the best quality leads for each project’s sales team.

We gave careful consideration to the project specifications, local buyer demographic, investment position and construction timeline and how this may impact the buyer journey.

Paradiso Apartment Render

Attracting the Right Target Markets

What we did: Market Research, Insight Gathering

With a portfolio of projects, each with their own set of unique selling propositions and buyer demographics, it was important to determine the exact type of target markets suited to each development. That way, we could understand their needs and how to offer value.

For each project, we carried out a thorough market research process with the Abel Projects WA team to identify the prime target markets. We drilled down to specific buyer demographics including motivations to buy or invest, product needs, location needs, researching processes, objections and desired solutions.

We could then develop a buying cycle based on key response indicators to help us move people down the conversion funnel.

  • Identify the problems, needs and solutions.
  • Identify the steps people take before making an enquiry, financing, budgets, property type, location etc.
  • Identify the information people need to go from a researcher to an interested prospect.
  • Identify hooks to help create urgency while facilitating an easier purchase commitment.
  • Identify the information people need to stay engaged with the project throughout the construction.

Enhancing the Brand Position

What we did: Branding with Intent, Content Marketing, Follow-Up Marketing

With a lot of competition, in a recovering WA market, each project needed a strong brand position in the marketplace to build a bond and relationship with the right target markets. It also had to demonstrate value to attract buyers that know, like, and trust the project.

The branding position for each project development was driven by the target market needs and desired solutions. By carrying out the market research, we were able to determine the selling solutions to each buyer demographic and develop content and offers to provide the most value to our ideal target markets.

This branding process focuses on building the Abel Projects agents into the project brand, creating a personal relationship with the relevant target markets. It also needed to demonstrate an intention to help them with their buying journey, create a warmer market that is easier to sell to, and position the projects for the greatest response.

Outcomes

By building the brand around the Abel Projects agents, we were able to develop personal relationships with the marketplace, leads. and the clients. People develop relationships with people, and by giving each project a personable brand, we were able to lead and facilitate people through their buyer journey.

  • Resources such as guides, blogs, and videos presented by the Abel Projects agents allowed people to put a face behind the valuable advice and support.
  • Email follow-up strategies addressing prospects personally, written by the Abel Projects agents improved our open, click through and opt-in engagement.
  • Beyond the conversion and engagement tracking we had visibility over, the agents reported a high response rate to the email follow-ups and the content being distributed. In particular, the selling agent for Paradiso (see the Paradiso development case study here) has personally received a lot of positive direct responses for the content being shared, leading to sales opportunities for this project.

Designing a Lead Conversion Funnel

What we did: Website Design, Content Marketing, Conversion Rate Optimisation, Sales Hook Development, Database Integration and Management.

Before launching the advertising campaigns, we had to optimise the sales funnel to maximise the conversion rates, lead volume, and lead quality.

By identifying the specific buyer demographics suited to each project, we optimised the website to improve the buyer experience. We provided valuable content and offers tailored to the right target market, based on their buying behaviours.

To improve the website conversion rates for quality leads, we used the target market research to implement segmentation and built dedicated landing pages offering promotions designed around their specific needs, wants, and values.

We also added qualifiers to contact forms to help the sales team focus on higher-value leads, and not tire out softer leads with aggressive sales tactics.

This process involved:

  • creating unique, buyer profile specific landing pages with strong calls-to-action
  • developing contact forms that would segment buyer types and determine when prospects are ready to make a purchase
  • unique developer incentive promotions to facilitate the buying process based on specific audience segmentation
  • a content marketing strategy across a website blog and resources designed to facilitate the buyer journey and enhance the buyer experience
  • follow-up marketing segmented by buyer types, engagement, and a lead qualifier pipeline, used across email marketing and remarketing campaigns.

Outcomes

By implementing a relevant and purposeful lead conversion funnel, the Abel Projects sales team have seen several improvements:

  • The agents have been able to better qualify the lead opportunities.
  • Better sales follow-up processes as the agents are provided with strategic insights about the enquirers upfront.
  • More confidence in the remarketing and nurture strategies as they are seeing this strategy effectively transition cold leads into warmer and hot prospects, which has improved their pipeline management process.
Paradiso Apartment Render
Paradiso Apartment Render

Generating Better Quality Lead & Sale Opportunities

What we did: Direct Response Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Paid Advertising, Email Marketing, Graphic Design, Video Production.

For each project, once we identified the target markets and optimised conversion funnels, we focused on improving the advertising messaging and targeting to enhance lead quality.

The main objectives for the project advertising campaigns are to achieve top-funnel leads, qualified bottom-funnel leads, and sales conversion opportunities. To maximise this, we set up segmented direct response advertising campaigns based on the behavioural response model.

We used several advertising platforms.

Facebook Advertising

To ensure high-quality lead conversions, we segmented Facebook advertising campaigns based on behavioural interests, resource downloading activity, and website engagement. This allowed us to develop targeted messaging for each segment, while also engaging warmer audiences already familiar with the project and brand.

We used multiple creatives, including renders, lifestyle photography, incentive graphics, and videos to enable targeted messaging for each buyer segment.

Using Facebook conversion tracking, we identified high-converting audiences, messages and creatives in order to optimise for better conversion rates, lead quality, return on ad spend (ROAS) and return on investment (ROI).

Google Ads

We used Google Advertising to target buyers that have a high search intent to buy an off-the-plan apartment. This drove traffic back to the project websites and avoided the heavy reliance on third-party property websites, such as realestate.com.au.

To accurately target the right buyers at the right time and avoid budget wastage, we set up campaign structures to target bottom of the funnel buying intent, specific to the development location, and restrict general searching traffic.

Google Ads conversion tracking allowed us to identify high-converting search terms and messages to ensure we could optimise for better conversion rates, lead quality, ROAS and ROI.

Email Marketing

To nurture the email database and take prospects further down the conversion funnel, we built email marketing campaigns into the nurture marketing strategy for each project. We used email marketing to promote offers, construction updates, resources, and videos. We segmented the audience so each project had specific messaging designed to support the buyer experience and define the conversion point to generate highly qualified leads.

Outcome

By creating an optimised website and highly targeted advertising campaigns, we were able to create a high-converting funnel, maximising traffic and increasing conversions for each click.

  • Website landing page optimisation allowed us to minimise lost traffic and increase the conversions. This resulted in better quality leads, while decreasing the cost per acquisition (CPA).
  • Due to focusing on better quality leads, we supported the Elizabeth Residences project by generating enquiries that converted into hot sales opportunities immediately. Properties were put on hold after the first engagement with the prospects, with no floor plans or renders to showcase.
Halcyon Apartment Render
Halcyon Apartments Render

Converting Top Funnel Enquiries into Warmer Prospects

What we did: Content Marketing, Email Marketing, Remarketing, Segmentation, Lead Magnet Resources.

The buyer journey for off-the-plan apartments, from researching to purchase, is a lengthy process. Prospect need nurturing to maintain a strong relationship with the project and move down the conversion funnel.

To develop a nurture strategy for each project, we researched target markets to identify specific buyer journeys for each buyer type. With this information, we developed a direct response content strategy for each project.

Top funnel lead generation – targeting quality prospects during their research phase

  • Lead magnets
  • Blog articles
  • Project specific resources ie brochures
  • Events

Bottom funnel lead generation – targeting buyers when they are ready to enquire on a product

  • Developer incentive offers
  • Project videos
  • Segmented email marketing and automations
  • Remarketing campaigns

We developed contact strategies to generate both top and bottom funnel leads based on specific behavioural segmentations including:

  • Buyer type – investor or owner-occupier
  • Response indicators – un-converted website traffic and resource downloads
  • Enquiry type – contact form, developer incentives or resource downloads
  • Lead status – cold, warm, hot, or purchased

Outcome

Feedback for the communication strategies implemented for the various project developments has been very positive, with Abel Project agents reporting the following results:

  • We were able to develop top-funnel conversion methods to increase soft enquiries during the COVID-19 uncertainty. This meant we could still capture those leads during a time of panic.
  • Soft lead generation and nurture strategies through email and remarketing campaigns were implemented, resulting in an increase in bottom-funnel lead generation as the uncertainty lifted. This has been incredibly prominent for the Fairlight project, with a 71% increase in top-funnel lead enquiries, supporting a 96% increase in bottom-funnel lead enquiries, while decreasing the cost per acquisition by 39%.
  • Thanks to a dynamic shift in our lead generation strategies, we didn’t lose any lead opportunities during the pandemic. The conversion funnels we implemented converted soft enquiries into warmer prospects. Thanks to the valuable email follow up content, we were able to support the Paradiso project by helping to convert 16 cold leads into warm and hot prospects for the sales team.

Could we do the same for you?

Want to know what we could do for your project?
Let’s have a chat and discuss your options.

Get In Touch

Abel Projects WA

Steve Jones

Abel Projects

On average the campaigns we run with Living Online generate 5 to 10 times the number of quality leads of any campaigns we are running with other clients, and of all the leads we receive for the projects we collaborate on, 90% come from Living Online and only 10% come from realestate.com.au.

The Result

With success on multiple projects.

We now have a long-term partnership with Abel Projects WA, developing and running successful marketing strategies for many apartment projects across Perth.

Learn more about how we increased the generation of high-quality leads for the Abel Project Paradiso Property Development.

If you want a multi-award-winning digital marketing agency to generate similar results for your company, contact us today.

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