Redefining Boldness in Marketing: Lessons from the Pandemic's Impact on Property Marketing Strategies

Have the events of the past year scared marketers into losing some of their boldness?

It was only a year ago when the marketing landscape changed – marketers within rented community property, particularly student accommodation, were at the centre of crisis comms, fielding social media and email comms from their confused and anxious customers. Many of these were in a blind panic, spurred on by the uncertainty and wanted answers about getting refunds, changes to services and contract disputes.

At the time, it felt insensitive and inappropriate to be proactively marketing for new business, it would have been too risky to raise your head above the noise and put out offers and incentives. And that was if you had time to create a campaign amongst all the customer comms that was needed!

So instead, we waited, we stayed quiet and we planned what we could do when things got better.

Only things didn’t really get better and customers were still angry, they were still demanding refunds and they were still arguing with the ‘big guys'.

So where did that leave the marketers, desperate to prove their worth, wanting to release their pent-up creativity, engage proactively with their customers and eager to support the commercial goals of the business? Amongst all this, as our recent Property Marketing Survey research suggests, 53% of organisations do not have marketing on their Board. What do you do as a mid-level marketer to show initiative and make suggestions, when the entire senior leadership team is jumping from fire to fire just to keep the operational cogs of the business turning.

Has this left a permanent scar on the marketing landscape where marketers are now too worried about upsetting people to return to bold and innovative campaigns? Have we moved on from getting Board approval for every piece of collateral and social media post? Are we still holding our breath after hitting ‘send’ on an email campaign?

Imagine you had started your marketing career in the past year and all you knew was tentative customer comms and passive brand awareness? Where would you get the confidence to unleash the creativity that you thought being a marketer was about? In this landscape is it surprising that we found that 35% of respondents in our survey didn’t answer the question on career aspirations and 21% said they had none? How as a sector do we re-invigorate the next generation into what a career in property marketing can be and ensure they can see a shining future – which will return bold campaigns and strategies?

Most of our marketing respondents cited brand development and reputation as their number one priority in their role. Undoubtedly, this has been hard to navigate in this past year. Yet, at The Property Marketing Strategists, we believe that this is the time for the senior marketers to take a stand and decide where your team should take its next steps. Are you going to look forward and take control of moving your business on and become once again, the marketing team that generates leads? Can you support your team in leaving the fear behind and to grow in confidence once again, safe in the knowledge that the skills you have learnt in the past year will stand you in good stead should a contingent of your customer base still feel too raw to accept marketing messages in a positive light? And do you have the trust of your senior leadership team in being decisive and rising upwards to create engaging marketing campaigns again?

It cannot be denied that the last year has been about communication and collaboration. Not a single part of the business will have been unaffected by the commercial impact of the last year but now is the time to use those stronger relationships to elevate marketing into a strategic position.

The Property Marketing Strategist are on a mission to elevate the role marketing can play in the property sector. Improving value, reputation and positively impacting the commercial objectives of their organisation. 

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