The target market

Working out who your buyer will be is the first step towards creating a marketing campaign. By VICKI HOLDER.

Your property is for sale, but nobody has snapped it up. The problem may lie in the words of your advertising. Without carefully targeting buyers before you write the ads, it can be a hit-and-miss affair.

Even the experts have difficulty pinpointing specific buyers in an increasingly diverse market.

Deborah Kelland, of Kellands Real Estate, says working out a property's target market is something her office anguishes over and debates widely. "It's important to get it right, because if you come up with a product that's too general, it can get confusing [for buyers]. But you have to make sure you don't exclude anyone."

Kellands consultants sit down as a team and look at the attributes of the property - how many bedrooms it has, its age, architecture, condition, the location and price bracketing - to determine how they're going to target buyers.

"If we're selling off the plans we design the target market and wrap the interiors and price bracketing around it. When you're selling to investors, you must have the right price bracket and returns. Owner/occupiers are interested in space and personality rather than returns. They want car parking and proximity to lifestyle amenities. Houses, on the other hand, can appeal to any number of markets. For example, a bungalow in Ponsonby with three bedrooms might appeal to a family or a professional couple."

Deborah's answer is to focus on the benefits rather than the facts. When you promote benefits like "low maintenance" and "easy care", then you can attract elderly people or busy working people without cutting anybody out.

Although he sets a target buyer for each property, Wayne Bulog, of Unlimited Potential, Herne Bay, says you can't have tunnel vision. "You can't go too far down the path getting too narrow as your marketing has to be very property specific. The best and easiest way is to ask the current owners why they bought the property."

Cher Reynolds, a sales consultant for Bayleys, St Heliers, has an MBA and post-graduate study in Buyer Behaviour. She applies her business knowledge to understand where her buyer will come from. She designs her marketing material to focus on that particular buyer. Cher says understanding consumer behaviour is essential these days.

"I consider myself a match-maker. I match buyers and sellers to a potential market. In my opinion one size does not fit all. It's very situation specific.

"Today, as opposed to 10 to 15 years ago, it's about putting both the science and art of marketing in place. Before, you would put a classified ad into the paper to attract a buyer into a homogenous neighbourhood where all the houses were just about the same. Now you have to look closely at the individual property, the demographic attributes of the area where the property is located and the lifestyles of the people both selling and purchasing."

When she lists a property, Cher accumulates relevant data, noting the make-up of the neighbourhood. In many locales however, she says you now find a mixed group of ages, incomes, educational levels and so on.

"Take Orakei, for example, where million-dollar houses with swimming pools sit beside modest State houses and everybody lives happily together. Communities are so dynamic these days," she says. "And many people actively seek this diversity."

After analysing the property and the neighbourhood, Cher considers reasons why somebody might buy that particular property to work out how it should be portrayed in the marketing.

"The words you use have to be appropriate for the individuals you're targeting. And the photographs must carry the same messages to match the demographics and lifestyle attributes you've identified."

Finally, she says, qualitative interviewing skills are needed when potential buyers phone and say they're looking for a house. Before she presents a property to clients, Cher needs to know she has a potential match between vendor and purchaser.

Mark Sumich, of Cahill Real Estate, Sandringham, knows his buyers will come from one of three groups: investors, first-home buyers/upwardly mobile families or ex-pats looking for a good buy. Depending on the specific property, the advertising is devised to attract one of these groups.

Mark says many people have significantly increased their equity in their own homes and have borrowed for an investment property. They're looking for stand-alone homes, which offer a good rental income. Once the property goes beyond $500,000, investors aren't a factor because the returns are not as good.

Mark is surprised by the number of first-home buyers at the $500,000 level, earning two good incomes with the ability to pay back the bank. First-home buyers, typically renting in the central city, are the majority of his buyers. Then there are ex-pats returning from overseas. That's why the internet is such a big factor in Cahill's advertising.

He notes the numbers of people coming into Auckland everyday and says buyers can come from anywhere, making it extremely difficult to categorise them. He believes the market is too unpredictable to specifically target who your buyer will be.