Challenge:

This major developer wanted to build interest in a new town destination – the largest new place being built in the UK. The challenge was to build presence, interest and engagement in a place that didn’t yet exist in order to generate interest in house purchases off plan.

Approach:

By monitoring brand mentions and chatter across social media and news sites it was clear that the length of time the homes were taking to build was an issue as was local access to housing and school places. I devised a strategy that picked up on the 4 main benefits a new place could bring to the area such as good school places, the pricing of new homes, access to healthcare and state of the art buildings. I aimed to generate interest via sign-ups, through back links from earned and owned media using digital engagement.

Results:

In the region of 2,500 sign-ups in the 12 months were generated before the first house was built (20%above target). The first 90 homes were direct-marketed and sold in 3 weeks of being on sale off plan. Increased new website visitors through earned links from news sites month-on-month, reduced the bounce rate by 20% and increased time spent on page month-on-month from 1 to 3 mins. Increased digital engagement by 400% on Facebook and an increase of brand mentions from highly rated Domain Authority news sites.

http://www.northstowe.com/