Creative thinking for property marketing in 2020 Standing out from the crowd is an ever-increasing priority for house building businesses (indeed any business) wishing to rise above the competition. In a sector saturated with meaningless messages and bland imagery, how can we help make your development stand out amongst the collective white noise? Unique campaigns, eye-catching creative and killer copy are of course some of the ways to differentiate your offer, but we’ve learnt along the way is that’s only the beginning… “It’s not the ink, it’s the think.” – David Ogilvy The ‘Father of Advertising’ Ogilvy placed a great emphasis on data-driven, research-oriented marketing that knew what it was doing. Everything depended on planning and strategy. It’s easy to get caught up thinking of a marketing campaign as a bunch of stuff – emails, content offers, infographics etc. But without a planned strategy – without the think – the ink isn’t going to do anyone any good. Take the time to plan ahead and devise a compelling campaign. Taking a novel approach to the creative We know that our brains respond better to novelty than to the familiar. In fact when the brain discovers a novel idea, it releases a reward (dopamine) that inspires us to go exploring for more. In marketing, this exploration translates to the reader spending more time with our content, diving deeper into our websites, and ultimately learning more about our offerings. Achieve this by presenting content using a medium that isn’t as common, such as motion graphics, parallax scrolling, or interactive experiences. Information Gap Theory This theory is based on an innate human behaviour that’s triggered when people feel there is a gap between what they currently know and what they want to know. When people feel this gap, they are compelled to take action, such as clicking through to a story and engaging with the content. How? Focus on creating curiosity-based headlines for your content. Test a variety of headline options internally to make sure you’ve chosen the one that will resonate best with your audience. Or when telling your story, strategically place knowledge gaps at each page-fold to ensure your audience continues reading through the entire piece. Leave them wanting more Finally, every marketing communication should end not by closing the door, but opening it wider. The end of an email, blog, content offer, white paper, podcast, or anything else should always leave your audience seeking more content, more information, more engagement. We call it “delight,” and it’s an oft-neglected part of marketing. But it’s the most important part. Because if you leave them wanting more, they’ll come back…