The Village Taigum wins inaugural award for retirement living marketing excellence
The Village Retirement Group has won the inaugural Wise Agency Award for Marketing Excellence at the Property Council of Australia National Retirement Living Awards 2017, for its partnership with Anglicare to market and sell The Village Taigum.
A specialist retirement village developer, operator and marketer, The Village Retirement Group entered into an agreement with Anglicare Southern Queensland in 2015 to develop, market and operate 297 independent living units in the Brisbane northside suburb of Taigum.
Ben Myers, Executive Director – Retirement Living at the Property Council of Australia, said the award was created to recognise companies that were able to communicate the benefits of retirement living to a new audience.
“Our research shows that the vast majority of retirement village residents enjoy their experience, and tell us they wish they made the move earlier than they did,” Mr Myers said.
“The team at The Village Taigum have shown how to educate a local community about the value of retirement village life, in a cost-effective way, to achieve great sales and generate local hype.”
Marketing for the first precinct of 121 villas commenced in November 2015, including letterbox distribution to 85,000 local homes, traditional print advertising, outdoor signage, community events and digital marketing, including Facebook advertising.
A database of previous buyers within the group was developed and a buyer persona was developed, and paid marketing was then constrained to media where the audience was most active.
The campaign generated 956 qualified sales leads in 18 months, to the end of May 2017, with 100 villas sold in 100 days and the entire precinct pre-sold in seven months, amounting to $45 million in sales.
The marketing campaign was highly commended for its ability to keep costs down and use demographic research to target a significant population that lived within 6 kilometres of the Taigum site. The project team delivered key messages that emphasised The Village Taigum was the first single-storey village in Brisbane’s northside to be built in 20 years.
With many buyers purchasing up to 18 months before moving in to the village, great effort was spent to continually engage these buyers through a series of lunches to learn more about the lifestyle they were about to enter, the construction process and to meet their future neighbours.
The Award for Marketing Excellence is proudly presented by Wise Agency, and is part of the National Retirement Living Awards. For more information, visit www.retirementlivingawards.com.au.