BELLA is a beautiful 33 unit condominium building currently in the final stages of construction. Located in an emerging area of Burnaby BC, it has been a fantastic project, and we are proud to be involved with it. deBruyn Design + Marketing was retained by the project’s developer in early 2009. By that time, the local real estate market had cooled substantially, and construction & development costs were at their highest levels in history.

The developer was facing an enormous challenge – how do you keep building in a decreasing market, while keeping quality levels high and still bring your units to market at a reasonable (and sellable) price point? Further to that, how do you then sell these units in a market where presales were at an absolute standstill?

We worked closely with the developer to re-examine the entire marketing approach for the building. We took the entire project back to its fundamentals – quality construction, and reasonable pricing. We re-examined the target market and refined the target buyers. We boiled the marketing down to basics and determined what could & could not happen. We refined and refined, developing an efficient, consultative marketing program that even allowed the developer to reallocate marketing budget back to construction – helping them respond to market conditions.

The online component of the marketing program is centered around the new www.bellaliving.ca website. We took an entirely new approch to the revamped web presence. We build an online resource loaded with information about the project, including floorplans and a regularly updated video blog that has been chronicling the project during the entire construction process. The entire site was built on the wordpress platform, allowing it to be interactive, work well with social media, and truly highlight the blogging aspects of the site.

Traffic is being driven to the website via the facebook & twitter social media activities, site signage, and “offline” print advertising. We also initiated an aggressive online PPC advertising campaign targeting buyers of “tiny condos” in some of the larger presale sites in the area. Response to these initiatives has been strong, and has been ever-increasing as we draw nearer to completion. Traffic on the website has a time duration and bounce rate far better than the industry average. Buyers are engaged, they feel “part of the process”, and it has been a very rewarding process.

Regular email blasts target both the registered buyer list, and we developed a “VIP Realtor program”. The ongoing activities help keep everyone abreast of the development’s progress. We also worked with the developer to stage & setup a show suite, giving buyers a taste of the final product.

The results speak for themselves. The project is on track, on budget and is almost sold out. Buyers are thrilled, the developer is satisfied. We couldn’t be prouder.