Over the past 18 months or so we have seen many sectors of the retail, property and financial market drop, and still continuing to fall.

The property and housing market in particular has been hit hard by the GFC.
But is it really the global financial crisis to blame, or a global marketing crisis?

A few years back when the financial market was a blossom of buyers ready to throw their money into every new development and investment properties, marketers really didn’t have to push their marketing too hard..
A few billboards, good press advertising, nice glossy brochures, a few Television commercials in primetime spots and they had the sales rolling in.

But as the GFC kicked in sales started to slow down, and people weren’t as committed to hand over their hard earned cash, mainly concerned or scared of financial security.

So what has really changed.. the marketplace, the mindset of the consumer?

Are the marketing and advertising professionals adapting to this change and counteracting the situation?

Are property marketers still thinking inside their square and not looking at a bigger picture?

Many advertising professionals still look to the traditional methods of marketing because in the past it has proven to work for them.
Smart TVC marketing, elegant brochure designs worked a treat, and quality press advertising in premium publications. Maybe even a nice looking website to sell the product.

Apart from the website, the problem with these other traditional forms of marketing is they are not really trackable.
Does your ‘marketing guru’ know the age of every single person that saw your advert, can they tell you how many times that person read the magazine ad, or if they are english speaking or foreign?
And most important, did they capture that person’s details for future potential marketing?
The answer to most of the above is probably not.

If doesn’t really matter how glossy your brochure is, how ‘wow’ your TV ad is, or how nice your website is, if it doesn’t capture your target audience, and more importantly doesn’t capture your audience’s details for potential sales, you may as well sack your marketing and design team.

Traditional marketing is dead.

Here is a few helpful tips on how to enhance your traditional marketing and make spectacular sales through a Global Financial Crisis:

1. If you are doing TV advertising, make sure your ad has a link on the screen to point people to a special page on your website, so you can track the effectiveness of your TVC campaign.
This could even be a series of ads all pointing to different web pages to monitor which works most effectively.
If you are selling a real estate project the page must have an enquiry form to capture leads. Provide an attraction to entice the viewer to subscribe to your marketing form.
This may be as simple as a download of your brochure, or something more impressive like a night’s accommodation at one of your hotels. For the cost of a night’s accommodation this is still extremely cheap marketing.
This enquiry form should be linked to a professional email marketing system such as Aweber. Don’t try doing email marketing through Outlook..it is a guaranteed way to fail!
Aweber allows you to set up automated campaigns so you can send targeted marketing on a scheduled basis to your market. Most people don’t impulse buy real estate and won’t usually purchase on first contact, so targeting them with scheduled email marketing will usually eventually hook them. This is where traditional brochures and TV ads can’t compete.

2. Brochure Marketing – A nice glossy brochure is great, but again only if there is added value for the reader. If it is simply showing nice design and photos and not really prompting them to want to find out more it usually ends up in the rubbish in a few days. The brochure should always have a link to the website as well, allowing them to sign up for a special VIP membership, so they get first pick at new real estate projects. Adding ‘VIP’, ‘Exclusive’, or even ‘FREE Membership’ and people feel important and want to sign up. They are no longer just part of your anonymous marketing campaign…they become a ‘person’ to you and feel special. remember, these are the people that could turn out to million dollar clients in time, so capturing them and treating them nicely is important. The usual marketing brochures don’t do that and usually can cost a sale.

Incorporate online social media into your brochure – Adding links to your Twitter, Facebook and Youtube accounts [help your potential audience to interact with your business and extend your branding online.
These people that connect usually share their links with their friends, usually with similar interests, and before you know it you have a global audience of thousands.

3. Press Advertising – Similar to brochure advertising, your press needs to draw your market to a webpage to capture your audience, and again you can also do this through other online networks such as Youtube.
Upload your TVC to Youtube and then add a link in your press ad. A press advertisement is very two-dimensional and capturing an audience with a few sales words, a nice design and a couple of static photos of a new real estate project is pretty bland. Drive traffic to a video can secure a deal. Make sure you brand up your YouTube Channel with the company logo, and a few tricky advertising tools to drive them back to your site to sign up to your mailing list.

4. Website – I see a lot of property developers and real estate websites which are usually designed by a ‘graphic designer’, not a ‘web developer’. What’s the difference?
It doesn’t matter how good a graphic designer you might be, unless you know how to apply the principles of website development and internet marketing your nice shiny design won’t hit awesome sales, especially in hard financial times.
The website needs to work as a marketing tool, not just an online brochure.
Make sure you pack it with all the tools required to capture the online marketplace, and think big. Remember, your audience is GLOBAL. You have potential sales leads coming from every corner of the world viewing your website and looking at your properties.

Adding tools such as Language Translation tools, the enquiry marketing forms (mentioned above), Social Networking links, Google Maps, A live chat support system, TVC videos on your homepage, plus the standard tools to create traffic, such as search engine optimisation, will help turn your website into the the most powerful marketing tool (and probably the most cost effective) you could ever have.
Most of the tools mentioned here are totally free, so if you’re not using them you should be.

If you can’t get at least 1000 good leads a day in Property Marketing with modern marketing tools you advertising team is doing something wrong.

before planning your next big ‘traditional’ marketing campaign, consider if your current marketing is really working for you.
Maybe a few changing in the way you market could change the global financial crisis, for your business at least.

Author: Chris Bourke – Devision Design Australia and WebSEOCoach.com
Chris Bourke is an graphic designer, web developer and Internet marketer, who also runs a online global accommodation network.

Follow Chris on Twitter at twitter.com/devision or twitter.com/webseocoach