I know that being a Real Estate Developer is extremely demanding in so many aspects…
I cannot provide solutions to most of them, but I believe I can help with a small but important pain point that all developers face during their career: marketing and selling properties. If you have read my previous articles, you probably already know why marketing is essential for your business.
Our mission at Propertising is to help you understand the fundamentals of marketing so that you can start implementing it yourself. This way, the cost of having and maintaining a dedicated marketing department in your company will no longer be an excuse.
I will try to assist you to create a powerful story for your next development project in simple steps without you having to become a novel writer.
You see, it’s not enough to just tell your buyers what features your property has. You need to engage them emotionally, make them feel something. You need to tell them a story. A story that connects with their emotions, values, and aspirations. A story that makes them want to buy your property.
That’s the power of storytelling and emotional marketing and it can help you:
- Stand out from the crowd and show your unique brand
- Build trustand credibility with your buyers
- Create a memorableand engaging experiences that will
- Motivate them to take action and buy your properties
But, don’t just take my word for it. Here are some facts and figures that prove the power of storytelling and emotional marketing:
- According to a study by Headstream, 79% of consumers prefer brands that tell stories
- According to a study by Harvard Business Review, emotionally connected customers are more than twice as valuable as highly satisfied customers
- According to a study by Nielsen, ads with emotional appeal generate 23% more sales than ads with rational appeal
So, now that I have your attention let me tell you how can you use storytelling and emotional marketing to connect with your buyers and sell more properties.
In this article, I’ll show you how to:
- Craft a compelling story for your properties and projects
- Use emotional triggers to influence your buyers’ decisions
- Measure and optimize your storytelling and emotional marketing efforts
By the end of this article, you’ll have a clear roadmap on how to use storytelling and emotional marketing to boost your real estate sales and conversions.
Ready? Let’s get started.
How to Craft a Compelling Story for Your Properties and Projects
A story is not just a description of what you offer. It’s a narrative that showcases the value, the benefits, and the experience of your properties and projects.
I have broken down this segment to a fully detailed guide that will help you write a basic story that you are going to use along your marketing communication forward.
A good story should have three essential elements:
- A hero: The hero is your buyer persona, the ideal customer you want to attract and serve. You should know their pain points, their goals, their motivations, and their emotions.
- A problem: The problem is the challenge or the obstacle that your hero faces and that prevents them from achieving their goals or fulfilling their desires. You should empathize with their problem and show how it affects them.
- A solution: The solution is your property or project, the offer that you present to your hero as the best way to solve their problem and satisfy their needs. You should highlight the features, the benefits, and the outcomes of your solution.
To craft a compelling story for your properties, you should follow these steps:
- Define your buyer persona: Who are you targeting? What are their demographics, psychographics, behaviors, and preferences? What are their pain points, goals, motivations, and emotions? In my Ultimate Guide to Marketing for Real Estate Developers you will be able to find how to define your buyer persona. Check it out before moving forward.
- Identify their problem: What is the main challenge or obstacle that they face? How does it affect them personally, professionally, financially, or emotionally?
- Present your solution: How does your property or project solve their problem? What are the unique features and benefits of your offer? How does it make their life better or easier?
- Show the transformation: What is the before-and-after scenario of your hero? How do they feel after using your solution? What are the positive outcomes and results that they achieve?
Here is an example of a story for a property:
Hero: John is a young professional who works as a software engineer in a busy city. He loves his job but he hates his living situation. He lives in an old fashioned, noisy, and expensive apartment with his parents and younger brother. He has no privacy, no space, and no comfort.
Problem: John wants to move out of his apartment and buy his own place. He dreams of having a spacious, modern, and cozy home where he can relax, work, and entertain. He also wants to live in a safe, and convenient location that is close to his office and other amenities. However, he can’t find any property that meets his criteria and budget. He feels frustrated.
Solution: John discovers LAV Residences, a new development project that offers luxury apartments at affordable prices. LAV Residences has everything that John is looking for: spacious rooms, elegant design, smart features, high-end amenities, security systems, energy efficiency, and prime location. John is impressed by the quality and value of LAV Residences. He decides to book a viewing and see it for himself.
Transformation: John visits LAV Residences and falls in love with it. He finds the perfect apartment that suits his needs and preferences. He feels happy. He signs the contract and moves in. He enjoys his new home and his new lifestyle. He has more privacy, more space, and more comfort. He can relax, work, and entertain in his own place. He also saves time and money on commuting and utilities. He feels satisfied with his investment.
Do you see how this story connects with the buyer persona’s emotions and motivations? Do you see how it showcases the value proposition of the property? How it creates a memorable and engaging experience for the buyer?
This is how you can easily craft a story for your properties.
If you want to stop here, it’s fine, but if you want to continue you can evolve the story even more with the next section of the article. A story can turn into a truly motivating one, when using emotional triggers to influence your buyers’ decisions.
How to Use Emotional Triggers to Influence Your Buyers’ Decisions
Emotional triggers are psychological factors that affect how people feel, think, and act. They can be positive or negative, conscious or subconscious.
Emotional triggers can have a powerful impact on your buyers’ decisions. They can make them feel understood, more interested, more engaged, more motivated, and loyal. They can also make them more impulsive and more emotional.
According to a study by Harvard Business Review, there are 10 emotional triggers that drive the most profitable customer behavior.
- Stand out from the crowd: People want to feel unique, special, and different from others.
- Have confidence in the future: People want to feel optimistic, hopeful, and secure about their future.
- Enjoy a sense of well-being: People want to feel healthy, happy, and satisfied with their life.
- Feel a sense of freedom: People want to feel independent, autonomous, and in control of their choices.
- Feel a sense of thrill: People want to feel excited, adventurous, and curious about new experiences.
- Feel a sense of belonging: People want to feel connected, accepted, and valued by others.
- Protect the environment: People want to feel responsible, ethical, and respectful of nature.
- Be the person I want to be: People want to feel authentic, consistent, and aligned with their values and identity.
- Feel secure: People want to feel safe, protected, and free from harm or danger.
- Succeed in life: People want to feel accomplished, competent, and recognized for their achievements.
To use emotional triggers to influence your buyers’ decisions, you should follow these steps:
- Identify the emotional triggers that resonate with your buyer persona: Based on your buyer persona’s pain points, goals, motivations, and emotions, what are the emotional triggers that appeal to them the most? What are the emotional triggers that match your value proposition?
- Incorporate the emotional triggers into your story: Based on your story’s problem and solution, how can you evoke the emotional triggers that resonate with your buyer persona? How can you show them how your property or project can help them achieve or avoid the emotional triggers that they desire or fear?
- Use emotional words and images in your marketing materials: Based on your story and emotional triggers, what are the words and images that can elicit an emotional response from your buyer persona? How can you use them in your headlines, slogans, copywriting, testimonials, visuals, etc.?
Here is an example of how to use emotional triggers for the same property as in our previous example.
Emotional triggers: Stand out from the crowd + Feel a sense of freedom + Feel a sense of belonging + Succeed in life
John is a young professional who works as a software engineer in a busy city. He loves his job, he is recently promoted but he has a problem. He hates his living situation. He lives in an old fashioned, noisy, and expensive apartment with his parents and younger brother. He has no privacy, no space, and no comfort. He believes that his living situation has a terrible reflect on his personal life and his need for privacy, space and comfort. He feels he deserves better especially after working so hard to achieve his professional status.
He wants to move out of his apartment and buy his own place. He dreams of having a spacious, modern, and cozy home where he can relax, work, and feel proud to entertain whenever he wants. His needs also include living in a safe and convenient location that is close to his office and other amenities. He hesitates moving forward because he is a first time buyer and moreover he hasn’t been able to find any property that meets his criteria and budget. He feels frustrated stressed and hopeless. After being disappointed by several available options in the market he want to stop the intense apartment hunting.
Luckily he discovers LAV Residences by browsing through his social media, a new development project that offers luxury apartments at affordable prices. LAV Residences has everything that John is looking for: spacious rooms, elegant design, smart features, high-end amenities, security systems, energy efficiency and prime location. John feels skeptic at first as this seems too good to be true and researches the development further before getting too excited. He visits the company’s website, and then looks for reviews and testimonials from other buyers. John finally feels excited with the value of LAV Residences. He decides to book a viewing and see it for himself.
John visits LAV Residences and falls in love with it. He finds the perfect apartment that suits his needs and preferences. Moreover LAV Residences’ sales representative made him feel understood! He did not only offer any interior customization John needed, he also provided him with a valuable solution on his payment plan and a full guide for a first time home buyer. John left happy, excited and confident. His decision was already made! He signed the contract and moved in.
John now enjoys his new home and his new lifestyle. He has more privacy, more space and more comfort. He can relax work and entertain in his own place. He also saves time and money on commuting and utilities. He feels proud of his investment and his achievement. John will be sharing his story with his friends and colleagues for a long time. He is more than happy to let others know of his positive experience with LAV Residences.
Emotional words: luxury, affordable, quality, value, impressed, perfect, understood, happy, excited, confident, enjoy, lifestyle, comfort, relax, work, entertain, save, proud
Emotional images: A picture of John smiling in his new apartment, a picture of the exterior of LAV Residences, a picture of the amenities and features of LAV Residences, a picture of John working on his laptop in his living room, a picture of John hosting a party with his friends in his apartment.
Do you see how these emotional words and images reinforce the emotional triggers that resonate with John? Do you see how they make him feel more interested, more engaged, more motivated, and more loyal to LAV Residences?
This is how you use emotional triggers to influence your buyers’ decisions. Now every “John” is having the chance to picture himself living in LAV Residences.
How to Measure the Effectiveness of Your Emotional Marketing Campaigns
So, now that you have finished your tailored emotional story, it’s time to measure the effectiveness of your emotional marketing campaigns.
Measuring the effectiveness of your emotional marketing campaigns is important for several reasons as they help you:
- Evaluate the return on investment (ROI) of your marketing efforts.
- Identify the strengths and weaknesses of your campaigns.
- Optimize and improve your campaigns based on data and feedback.
- Demonstrate the value and impact of your campaigns to your stakeholders.
To measure the effectiveness of your emotional marketing campaigns, you should follow these steps:
- Define your goals and objectives: What are the specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals and objectives that you want to achieve with your emotional marketing campaigns? For example, do you want to increase brand awareness, generate leads, convert sales, or retain customers?
- Choose your key performance indicators (KPIs): What are the quantitative and qualitative metrics that you will use to track and measure your progress and performance towards your goals and objectives? For example, do you want to measure website traffic, social media engagement, email open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, or customer satisfaction?
- Set up your tools and systems: What are the tools and systems that you will use to collect, analyze, and report your data and results? For example, do you want to use Google Analytics, HubSpot, Facebook Insights, Mailchimp, or just an Excel sheet..? (we would strongly recommend something better than Excel… feel free to contact us for some free advice or services)
- Implement your campaigns and monitor your results: How will you execute your emotional marketing campaigns and monitor your results in real-time? For example, do you want to use landing pages, social media posts, email newsletters, or online ads?
- Evaluate your outcomes and take action: How will you compare your results with your goals and objectives and evaluate your outcomes? What are the insights and learnings that you can derive from your data and feedback? What are the actions and recommendations that you can take to optimize and improve your emotional marketing campaigns?
Example of how to measure the effectiveness of an emotional marketing campaign for a property:
- Goal: To generate 50 qualified leads for LAV Residences in one month.
- KPIs: Website traffic, website conversion rate, lead quality score.
- Tools: Google Analytics, HubSpot.
- Campaign: A landing page with a video testimonial from John, a happy customer of LAV Residences, who shares his story and his emotional triggers. The landing page also has a clear call-to-action (CTA) button that invites visitors to book a viewing of LAV Residences.
- Results: The HubSpot landing page receives 500 visitors, of which 100 click on the CTA button and fills out a form with their contact details and preferences. The lead quality score, which is based on the criteria such as budget, location, and urgency, is 0.5 on average, meaning that half of the leads are qualified. Therefore, the campaign generates 50 qualified leads (100 x 0.5) in one month, meeting the goal.
- Outcome: The campaign is successful in generating the desired number of qualified leads for LAV Residences in one month. The video testimonial from John is effective in evoking the emotional triggers that resonate with the target audience and motivating them to act. The landing page is also effective in converting visitors into leads with a clear and compelling CTA.
- Action: The campaign can be optimized and improved by testing different elements of the landing page, such as the headline, the copy, the image, or the CTA button, to see which ones perform better and increase the conversion rate. The campaign can also be scaled up by increasing the traffic sources, such as using social media ads, email marketing, or referrals, to drive more visitors to the landing page.
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Conclusion
Emotional marketing is a powerful strategy that can help you attract, engage, and influence your buyers’ decisions.
By using storytelling and emotional triggers, you can create emotional marketing campaigns that appeal to your buyers’ emotions and motivations. By measuring the effectiveness of your emotional marketing campaigns, you can evaluate your ROI and optimize your performance.
I hope you enjoyed this article and learned something new. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact us. Thank you for reading!
This Article was written by Lilian.
Lilian is the Founder and CEO of Propertising. She has more than 17 years of expertise in Advertising and Marketing, collaborating with large International Enterprises, and has a proven track record in Hospitality and Real Estate Entrepreneurship. She is currently focused on creating a Marketing Community that helps Small/ Medium Real Estate Businesses to grow into great companies. On her spare time, she builds Star Wars Lego and travels around the world!
