Development hoardings are one of the very first opportunities to advertise your new development. As well as delivering on safety and security requirements, they’re also a fantastic advertising opportunity.
Let them know you’ve arrived
Large-scale by nature, hoardings announce the development to the public. They’ll likely reach your target audiences and, depending on the location, can attract interested buyers who perhaps didn’t realise they were even ‘in the market’ for a new home.
Discussing this as a team, we believe that at least four of the recent developments we’ve been involved with have achieved excellent off-plan sales as a direct result of well-designed hoardings. Chine Breeze was one of several developments we’ve worked on with our client, Bayview Developments. Chine Breeze was an exclusive development of detached homes in Alum Chine, Bournemouth. The brief was to build on their brand awareness and create interest to build up their database, with a possibility to sell some homes off-plan prior to instructing a selling agent. We knew the hoardings were going to be key in such a location and would provide a good opportunity to not only build on brand but to create some urgency. With careful design, the hoardings were installed as soon as possible and within days we had some initial interest in the development. We quickly achieved all sales off-plan and we believe a large part of the success was down to the on-site advertising.
“We know how important the hoardings would be to the development so we ensured they were very well designed and provided enough information for interested buyers to get in touch,” said Annie, Director at Antler. “We were overwhelmed with the response!”
Safety-conscious
Hoardings are often seen as merely a safety requirement rather than an opportunity. Some developers even allow their building contractors to brand the hoardings, which is a travesty when they could be used to bring much-needed leads. Hoardings do also have a safety role, protecting the public from construction tools and traffic, keeping out unwelcome visitors and also protecting road users from distraction. A safety-conscious developer is seen as a professional developer, which also helps to strengthen the brand values.
A measured investment
Chances are you will have conducted traffic surveys before the planning process was completed, so you will know the potential volume of people passing your site each day. Why would you miss this opportunity when you have to have hoardings anyway?
A sign of quality with excellent returns
The expense of high-quality hoardings can put some developers off, but good signage is a reflection on your brand and the product you deliver. If you’re a local or regional developer, consistently branding your sites well helps to build your profile in the local area, building a name for yourself as a quality housebuilder and one to look out for.
In our experience, signage can be one of the very biggest sources of enquiries. One of our clients received over 800 enquiries from hoardings alone. When you work out the return on that many enquiries, it actually makes your investment in hoardings quite good value!
Good quality hoardings say a lot about the development at first sight. They communicate the style and quality of the brand, advertise the types of property available and even potentially demonstrate how the development might look with CGIs. Hoardings can also be used to communicate campaign updates as the development progresses. Once in place, it is more cost-effective to change the graphics. For example, you may want to create urgency with percentage sold messaging, or promote launch dates and any offers you may be running.
If you’re planning a new development make sure hoardings are high up on your marketing agenda. Better still, get in touch! We’d be delighted to help.