From writing advertising copy to getting the attention of the news media, to all the printing companies, budgets, brochures, signs, models and mailings - marketing has become a complicated field.
For some companies it has become so specialized and technical only someone with a university graduate degree in marketing can make it work.
It is moving the product to the consumer, in its crudest terms.
At its most sophisticated, it can be an almost "edible" model home, a coffee cup decorated with a company logo, or a press conference complete with television cameramen and reporters.
When professionals take a creative flair to marketing's modern theories, marketing becomes an art.
Liane E. Shupp, vice president of marketing and public relations firm S. Robert August & Co. Inc., helps a variety of businesses involved in real estate organize their marketing efforts. She was formerly the real estate editor at the Gazette Telegraph and has 12 years experience working with newspapers in Colorado Springs.
She stresses the use of press releases to give information about company products or services to the public - but whatever the topic, it has to be newsworthy, she said.
"To get the media's attention you have to present the news professionally, get to know the people you'll be working with on a week to week basis, and learn that each editor has his own policy's and personal idiosyncrasies.
"To ignore that is not showing responsibility to that relationship," she said.
"I always discourage a client from turning in a story with no news value," she added.
Shupp sets up marketing strategies using direct mail campaigns and newsletters and likes to push grand opening promotions associated with charities, she said. A gift of $500 to a favorite local charity will help get the media's attention, she said.
It also promotes the company as a responsible private enterprise that accepts its social responsibility, she said.
"For most clients we use the company's public relations functions to help plan marketing. Space advertising or full page stories - which is more credible?" she said.
Corporate image is important to business, she said.
"Your image is part of what sells your product or services.
"You need to get across financial strength in today's economy if you're coming into the market with a new product or presence, or it's hard to set up business relationships," she said.
Marketing firms such as S. Robert August & Co. also deal with individual clients who are Realtors. The kind of services a marketing firm can provide individuals are personal brochures, newsletters and letters, or think pieces and market updates for mailing to potential and existing clients.
Budgeting advertising and public relations dollars will maximize a company's potential, Shupp said.
"Frankly, in most of the industry, 5 percent is standard but people in this market won't spend 5 percent. They get away with it but they're not maximizing their potential, they're just doing the same things they've done before," she said.
For George Hess, president of Vantage Homes, the product is the key to marketing.
Vantage Homes sells semi-custom and custom homes from $135,000 and up, and currently runs five fully decorated model complexes in different areas around town.
In the five years the company has been in existence, it has sold 200 houses and spends about 1 percent of its budget on sales efforts, he said.
"Try to build for your marketplace. What do those folks want to purchase?"
"We ask - who we are going to sell houses to, where do they come from, how much do they make? Like we know they'll have kids but they'll be older," he said. "How many kids will they have, and what ages? What amenities do they want?"
Vantage Homes maintains communications with local Realtors by hand-delivered inventory sheets, one for every project, once a month, to keep agents current, Hess explained.
Grand opening parties for the Realtor community and other associated business people bring helpful people out to the project so they have first-hand experience of the product, he said.
Sometimes small cocktail parties are thrown for perspective buyers of luxury homes such as Pine Terrace, he said. Vantage also hosts an annual homeowners picnic for Pine Terrace, where the homeowners are invited to bring guests that might be interested in the $275,000 to $655,000 town homes.
Vantage publishes advertising in specialized relocation magazines and takes a direct approach to relocation people, Hess said.
"But what we're always looking for is good solid floor plans in good areas that will hold their value," he said. Their marketing approach is missing the "themey" flavor of some builders and developers, he said.
"We try to give the neighborhood the custom look by breaking it up, with a mix of tile and stucco looks. There's a builder in southern California named Jan Peters who breaks up neighborhoods with the use of heterogeneous materials. It works," Hess said.
Marketing successfully is not a function of how much money you spend but how you spend it, according to Hess.
"We're conservative in what we spend. Look, we could spend $4,000 for a full page color ad in the newspaper, or we could have a party and feed 600 people. We want them to get out there because there's things going on that people don't know about. But not some great big drunken bash. A nice little luncheon," he said.
Hess has spent 20 years in Colorado Springs and markets to local taste in homes that he says is contemporary and at the same time very traditional.
The contemporary look is sometimes Southwestern and emphasizes soft, Southwestern colors. The traditional look has darker, more traditional colors, such as a model Vantage opened recently in Peregrine Valley that showed a navy blue, burgundy and cream color scheme.
"It's like the curved staircase we use. It's become a trademark because it works, like an old pair of loafers," said Hess.
The decorator for Vantages' models is Sonnies Interior Design Inc., owned by Sonnie White, a residential and commercial designer and member of International Society of Interior Design.
Sonnies Interior Design offers no-cost consultations with Vantage buyers to help them pick out tile and carpet, cabinets, woodwork stain and brick colors and coordinate the color scheme - another part of Vantage's marketing plan.
To get each potential buyer's attention as he walks into a model home, she and her team of designers decorate the Vantage models to look "lived in", she said.
They also match the decorating to the area, and have created a more eclectic model for the luxury town homes at Pine Terrace, and more casual schemes for homes in Peregrine Valley, where the price range for Vantages models there is $150,000 and up. They plan to move the Pine Terrace models into a more "sophisticated, New York feel" when the models are redecorated this fall.
They avoid over scaled furniture, and also use the builder's standards for things like carpet and light fixtures, so the "client when he or she walks in the door is seeing what they actually get," she said.
"When we are merchandising we're selling the house, not selling the decorating. The interior decorating is only part of the merchandising," she said.
Working on the navy blue/burgundy/cream model for Vantage was "interesting and rewarding," she said. "We had to search for those colors, but the builder wanted that color scheme, which had been used in a very successful model some years before. It was the samples - those colors aren't being used now and we really had to search to find them" for wall coverings, window treatments, furniture and carpets.
White said she follows some advice she received years ago and never uses blue for counter tops and carpet when merchandising a model home.
Gray is considered to be a color of success and is frequently used in model homes, but browns are not fashionable today, she said. "Except for your beige's, creams and off-whites, because of course you always have to use them."
Mixing Southwestern, contemporary and contemporary French style furniture and accessories will lead to a lived-in look, she said.
"Because people are collectors. We all are," she said.
election results wiz khalifa taylor allderdice mixtape reggie wayne taylor allderdice vincent jackson vicki gunvalson pierre garcon
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.