IF YOU WANT REAL ESTATE AGENTS TO pay attention to your vacation-home project, feed them pizza every Friday for 10 weeks. Oh, and it might not hurt to offer cash and prize incentives for new prospect visits and sales, as well as free pizza slicers, plastic plates, and serving spatulas as fun and useful memorabilia. That’s the tack taken by Beazer Homes to promote its vacation properties near Orlando, Fla.
Targeting 22 real estate offices known for bringing in vacation-home prospects, specifically those from overseas, the builder’s ad agency developed pizza boxes and promotional flyers with a ‘Lil Beazer’s logo and messages such as “Here’s your chance for a piece of the pie.” Every Monday, Beazer’s inside sales staff (or home sales counselors, in Beazerspeak) delivered a new box with a related doodad to the targeted agencies, and then treated each office to pizza every Friday through the campaign. “Everyone in the market was doing something to incentivize brokers,” says Theresa Tilton, vice president of marketing for Beazer. “This promotion really stood out.” The midsummer 2002 campaign boosted languishing traffic up to 22 prospects a week at each project, both of which have since sold out. “Sales during the campaign skyrocketed,” says Tilton. “The brokers were into it.”
CAMPAIGN DETAILS Program: Broker promotion; Projects: Sanctuary, Davenport, Fla., and Cumbrian Lakes, Kissimmee, Fla.; Builder/Developer: Beazer Homes, Orlando, Fla.; Cost: $9.27 per piece; Marketing/Advertising agency: Metropolis Advertising, Orlando
Learn more about markets featured in this article: Orlando, FL.
