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Cut Wasted Ad Spend and Sell Off the Plan Faster in a Tight Market
Sonia Jeffrey, who founded Brisbane project marketing firm iCreate Agency in 2009 after a career in masterplanning and off-the-plan sales, argues the marketing campaign belongs in the feasibility, costed for the project a developer might actually have.
Town planning might take longer than hoped. The excavator might hit rock. Good feasibilities have a contingency for both, and you hope you never need it, but nobody’s caught out when it’s there.
The marketing campaign rarely gets the same treatment. It’s budgeted for the sell-down everyone hopes for, three months or maybe six, not the one the market might deliver.
Right now that gap is expensive.
After the 2026 federal budget announced changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax, the same ad spend across our campaigns stopped bringing in the leads it did earlier in the year, even though new builds kept negative gearing.
Every extra month waiting on presales means more holding costs, more marketing, and more time for the market to move again.
I’ve learned this one myself
Building my own duplex has taught me more about the cost of time than any campaign.
I was excited at the start and added things a rental duplex didn’t need. Without the right lending and accounting people on early enough, it took longer than it should have.
In that time, build costs went up, lenders tightened, and interest rates rose. It’s a good site, and I’m still sitting at a good development margin, but I’ve had to rein it in.
How much should an off-the-plan project spend on marketing?
For an off-the-plan project, we usually set the marketing budget at between 1 and 2 per cent of gross realisation. On a $40 million project, that’s $400,000 to $800,000.
Developers tend to make the same two mistakes with that budget that I made with my duplex.
Some find the figure frightening and plan to spend less. That’s the first mistake.
A leaner budget can work, but only if the campaign is planned properly from the start, with branding, marketing material, sales display, website and media costed for the whole life of the project, including the months it might run longer.
The second mistake is spending too much too early.
Excitement at launch puts everything on the schedule, and if the market turns, that money is gone before it’s needed.
A slow market clears out the bloat
iCreate started just after the GFC, and we’ve since marketed through Brisbane’s 2016 apartment oversupply, the Brisbane floods and Covid.
Each one made everyone nervous. Each one also forced a useful question: what on this media schedule actually works?
When projects sell easily, everyone becomes an order taker, and things get approved that shouldn’t.
A tighter market is the time to clear them out, back the ads that bring the best lead at the lowest cost, and close what we call ‘The Drift’, the gap between enquiry and contract.
Think further ahead than feels comfortable
Twenty years ago I was drawing masterplans for the northern Gold Coast corridor. Some of those communities have only just been built. Development rewards the people who think further ahead than anyone else in the room.
Allow for the campaign the way you’d allow for rock. Cost it for the project you might have, not just the one you hope for.
Working a project marketing campaign into a feasibility? We’re happy to help you cost it properly.
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