Three Distinct Ways To Showcase Your PROPERTY'S Neighborhood
Most real estate developers (or their brokers) put a map and neighborhood description in the print and digital marketing collateral for their properties, but are they making the most of this aspect of storytelling? Is their approach supporting the property’s brand positioning? Is it keeping people on the website longer? Is it enhancing the perceived value of the residence?
Here are three distinct approaches to showcasing your neighborhood in a way that will help sell your property.
Curated Lifestyle
For The Continental, a luxury residential rental building in New York City’s Herald Square neighborhood, the agency I worked with created three themed maps: Best Local Markets; Style & Design Essentials; and Art, Culture & Entertainment. Each map showed the same catchment area, but only indicated the destinations for that theme. I wrote editorial-style overviews for “featured” destinations, giving the brochure the feeling of a travel magazine or a guide book. This strategy shifted focus from the perception that Herald Square is not a residential neighborhood to the reality that it is incredibly accessible to a wide array of valuable lifestyle destinations.
Destination Guide
In the brochure for One Thousand Museum, an ultra-luxury residential condominium in Miami, we built out an extensive location section. It opened with a single map showing thumbnail photos of over a dozen selected nearby destinations. Almost all destinations are related to art, culture and entertainment, which is very much in alignment with the brand positioning of the building – an architectural masterpiece designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Zaha Hadid. Subsequent pages have larger images of each destination along with a paragraph describing it.
Activity-Oriented
The brochure for HYDE Resort & Residences is much more streamlined and focuses on broad activity-oriented categories rather than specific destinations. Across a single spread, one-word headlines and photos let potential buyers see at a glance all of the nearby lifestyle amenities. This “at-a-glance” layout is in line with the high-energy, stylish, and youthful positioning of the property.
Do It for Your Property
Choosing the right approach for your property is a matter of asking the right questions up front and then brainstorming unique ways to frame your location in support of your property’s brand positioning. Here are some things to consider:
Is your property located in a residential neighborhood that is already well known and highly regarded?
What kinds of destinations are likely to be important to your target audience? (restaurants, entertainment, shopping, airports, etc)
What kind of lifestyle is your target audience seeking and how would living at your property deliver on that lifestyle? (access to green space, waterfront, beach, sporting fields, etc.)
Take the answers to these questions and start thinking outside the box. When you approach it this way, the “location” section of your website can really support your property sales and marketing efforts.