Sales of villas on Phuket (average spend is more than $300,000) – how we sold in a premium class segment

Client

We were supposed to promote villas on Phuket in private quarters with all amenities (swimming pool, sports areas, security etc.). Unfortunately, in accordance with the NDA, we may not disclose any details about the client, but we will gladly share details on how to implement a case for promotion of land estate in the Russian market.

Goal

To collect apartment purchase bids running to the budget (1% of the apartment price).

Solution

After we talked to the sales manager, we formed a USP for an advertising campaign:

• Turn-key ready villas, area: nearly 300 sq. m., price: $300,000 and more;
• Fully equipped houses and adjacent grounds;
• Phuket’s quiet residential area;
• Secured areas and parking;
• Legal support of deals;
• Transfer on Phuket and accommodation at the company’s expense.

It is one thing to promote apartments at a price of $20,000, but it is quite another thing when you promote premium class land estate. We started learning ‘dwelling’ channels of the solvent audience that could get interested in our offer.

• Landing page with an application form. A beautiful landing page was created with a full description of not only the facility and its infrastructure, but also surrounding areas with pictures (they were provided by the very client).
• Social media targeting. To promote in this segment, we chose Facebook and adjusted ads to the segment of solvent audience. By doing so, we split this audience into minor segments (age, residence, interests etc.), developed dozens of creatives, and tested them. During our experiments, we highlighted several formats with which we worked in future when promoting the facility.
• Affiliate advertising. As our task was to find premium land estate buyers, we found an agency that majors in sales of such accommodation in Russia and sent mass emails to clients from their database that used to purchase or were going to purchase land estate abroad at a price starting from $200,000, provided that the agency will get their interest. Our client was okay with this condition, and we prepared a number of mail-outs: we told about the infrastructure, region advantages, provided information on price scanning in the market. This gave a good result: right after the first mail-out we already got 3 bids.
• Voice recording. During the promotion, our client had a partner that was dealing with telemarketing and processing bids. We propose to optimize the phone call process and correct it, taking into account the general concept of marketing promotion. For this, we installed a voice recording system and wrote scripts with several key messages. During the advertising campaign, we made minor corrections to scripts from time to time, which finally let us not only collect bids, but also sell villas.
• Mass media advertising. We analyzed the list of publications and decided on Top-3 business magazines that clearly met criteria of our target audience.

During the campaign, we daily monitored indicators of each advertising channel. We looked at what key messages worked better and what channels brought higher conversion, and this is where we redistributed a higher share of the advertising budget. Besides, we added new promotion channels at different times of the advertising campaign. Upon its completion, we provided our client with a complete report containing source of traffic, bids, and cost of every bid in separate channels.

Result

Within the period of the advertising campaign (6 months), 6 requests for a villa review were received and 4 villas were purchased. At that, KPI were fully met—we managed to meet the budget.

Taking into consideration that land estate sales, especially expensive ones, are long-term, it is hard to estimate the efficiency of a separate channel.

Premium land estate is demanding for thorough consideration of not only channels, but also target audience. The final cost of every lead will also depend on how surgically you will work on every audience segment. This is one of the most complicated and interesting segments in the field of property sale promotion.