Data-Driven Marketing in property: Insights from 'The Wave of Change' Session
“Marketing without data is like driving with your eyes closed” – Dan Zarella.
In our experience, you wouldn’t find many marketers disagreeing with this statement. Yet, access to data within our sector is still not universal. At our most recent Property Marketing Lounge session (Episode 4), we delved further into data, its importance, and as our session was titled: ‘How to use data to inform marketing decisions.
We were delighted to have StuRents as the sponsor for the session and be joined by Michael Rainsford from StuRents, Carrie Scrivener-Leask from Dataloft, and Adrian Hudson from Property Data Insight.
Our recent Property Marketing Survey found that only 28% of the respondents stated that they were most likely to use data to inform decisions; whereas 34% answered that they were least likely to use it. However, we believe that data is a beneficial element for a marketing strategy. We want to use this platform to help marketers release the insight that managing data in your organisation more effectively can bring.
Firstly, we started the session with the topic ‘which department(s) is responsible for research or data in an organisation’. Carrie, the Housing Market Economist at Dataloft, suggested that data often starts in the hands of researchers who collaborate with planning, development, or even other research departments in different organisations. Ultimately, data brings insights and, when collected, can be utilised by all departments.
The interesting thing that we discussed here was that the relationship between data and marketing. Adrian, the Director at Property Data Insight, said that in his experience, there was not a strong relationship between data and marketeers, primarily because the data that he was responsible for was not something that marketers asked for or had access to. Additionally, he also said that there were a limited number of conversations between people that are responsible for data, the analysts, the researchers, and the marketers. Therefore, using the data and the marketing strategy to move forward can be difficult depending on the relationships in the organisation.
Another issue discussed was that many companies or departments do not know how to use data or what to do with the data they have. Michael, Co-founder of StuRents, stated that understanding what insights have been derived and how the organisation can act on the information is key to optimising data, but this is often the most challenging thing to achieve.
Carrie suggested that companies have tools to help with access to data, such as Dataloft’s dataset called DRMA (Dataloft Rental Market Analytics). This enables users to quickly analyse the rental market with 5 million references and 3 million tenancies.
But what kind of data should we look at?
Carrie suggested that looking at data on tenants is vital to understand the market and analyse the data.
For example:
Where tenants living in the local area moved from originally
Where a tenant in the area work
Where tenants who previously lived in the area have moved to
Where tenants in the catchment area work and live
Understanding the data that an organisation should look at and utilising them in the marketing department will lead the organisation to improve products and services and understand audiences.
So, to look at those data areas, what kind of materials can property owners and operators use to collect for making marketing decisions?
Michael suggested that there are three datasets to be used for different purposes. One is Operational data which is used to focus on:
Where prospective tenants are coming from
Who is booking from where
What are their rents
How they collect the assets
Another is supply-demand which includes pricing data. This is powerful as it enables operators to understand the market and how best to position their products.
Finally, the third is StuRents Channel manager. This can be integrated with a host of third-party data sets, which can help identify trends and patterns.
One of the key takeaways is being prepared for what the insight tells you. It may not always be what you expect. But this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use the data. Anything that gives you insight into how your customers behave or what they want brings value – the answer may not always be the action you wanted the research to support. But it is telling you something, and the most innovative businesses will use this to their advantage.
But what about feedback? How do you get feedback?
Carrie proposed two types of feedback that the organisation uses: regular feedback and a survey. Asking for feedback allows you to understand the perspective of the clients or customers. This can be used to develop your product to meet your customers’ requirements more directly.
In addition, Michael made a point about engagement. Setting up a survey without providing an incentive to respond will not drive the engagement and results that you need.
To summarise, this session focused on the relationship between data and marketing, types of data and materials that an organisation should look at to analyse, how to collect feedback and issues around data. Although the relationships and how data is used can vary depending on an organisation, the session showed that understanding and utilising data brings benefits. It allows the organisation to understand the needs of customers or clients and buyer personas.
You can watch a recording of the full session here.
At The Property Marketing Strategists, we work with clients to develop their marketing strategy, including using data to drive this. Please contact us if you would like to discuss this.
