The Buyers Who Said “Not Now”
What managing marketing for a premium residential project taught me about the commercial value of delayed demand.
When the first COVID-19 restrictions reached, apartment sales at the residential project I was working on stopped. Viewings became difficult, meetings were restricted, and people who had spent months considering a property suddenly had other priorities. Some developers in the city reduced their advertising and waited for conditions to improve. We had to decide how much marketing activity still made sense, and what we could afford to keep running.
I was the local Marketing & PR Director of a premium residential development within a national real estate group, with responsibility for strategy, approved budgets, agencies, suppliers and the marketing activities supporting sales. The apartments were sold during construction, so buyers had to make a substantial financial commitment based on plans, renderings, specifications and the information they received from our consultants. Decisions often took months, and some people had been in contact with the project long before they were ready to buy.
We had already invested in introducing the brand to the local market. There were advertising campaigns, sales materials, a growing database of contacts and ongoing conversations with prospective buyers. When sales slowed, that history became particularly important in deciding what to do with the marketing budget.
What a pause in sales can tell you
A sudden fall in contracts tells you that fewer people are buying. Understanding what has happened to their interest takes more work, especially when the purchasing decision normally takes several months.
During the restrictions, some potential buyers continued asking questions and comparing apartments, while others postponed their plans. The sales team had contacts in the CRM who already knew the development, its location, prices and payment options. We could follow those conversations, although we had no way of knowing exactly who would return or when.
This mattered when deciding what to cut.
Stopping all promotion would have reduced expenditure immediately. It would also have interrupted the communication we had maintained with people who might reconsider their purchase once circumstances improved. Continuing with the original media plan would have ignored the changes in how our audience spent its time.
I discussed the budget with management in terms of the buying cycle and the commercial activity we needed to preserve. The existing contacts deserved attention because we had already invested resources in reaching them, informing them and bringing them into conversations with the sales team.
Their interest had value. How much of it would eventually turn into contracts remained uncertain.
Keeping the brand visible under different conditions
Our launch strategy had relied partly on radio, outdoor advertising, press and PR. These channels had helped introduce a new residential brand to a city where buyers were understandably cautious about purchasing apartments from plans.
During lockdown, traffic dropped and daily routines changed. The exposure we could expect from billboards and radio was different, particularly for people who normally encountered those messages while commuting.
We reduced offline advertising to a fraction of its previous level and redirected part of the budget towards online brand promotion. Google Search campaigns continued for people who were actively looking for apartments, and we maintained a presence in financial publications to reach potential investors.
We also changed the tone of our social media communication. One campaign explored what people dream about, love and create at home. The subject fitted a period when homes had become workplaces and, for many families, classrooms as well.
There was a practical reason for keeping the brand present in these conversations. A buyer who postponed a viewing could still follow the project, see the latest information and remain familiar with the development. Maintaining communication helped us continue that relationship while the usual sales process was disrupted.
At the same time, the marketing team continued preparing visual content for the project. We worked on new renderings of the common areas, interior design concepts for apartments on the upper floors and video materials that could be used in online communication and future sales presentations.
The sales team kept working with contacts already recorded in the CRM, including people who needed more time to decide. We used the information coming from those conversations to understand which questions buyers still had and what they needed to see.
As restrictions eased, we introduced a physical element that made the offer easier to evaluate. We rented a glass-walled container near the construction site and furnished it, together with our suppliers, as a demonstration apartment, with finishes, furniture and smart-home technology.
Visitors could finally examine materials and see systems they had previously known through architectural renderings. The demonstration space arrived at a point when physical visits were becoming possible again, building on the information we had continued to provide during the restrictions.
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Keeping those activities going required decisions about priorities and approvals. We were dealing with reduced sales and an uncertain timeline, and I had to explain why some marketing investments still deserved a place in the budget.
The length of the buying cycle was central to that argument. We were working with people whose purchasing decisions had already developed over several months. The immediate slowdown affected when they could buy, and we needed to keep following their interest as the situation changed.
What the record quarter actually showed
The residential market eventually recovered, and the construction of our building had progressed. Prospective buyers could see the development taking shape, which made it easier to assess a project that had previously existed mainly in plans and renderings.
Some people who had delayed their decisions returned to the sales process. We also had new contacts and a few existing buyers who came back to purchase another apartment.
The strongest sales quarter during my time with the project produced almost three times as many apartment sales as the average of the preceding four quarters, with the same volume of new leads in our corrected internal reporting.
The comparison and its attribution limits are explained in the original Pinpoint case study.
The market recovery contributed to the result, as did the progress of construction and the work of the sales consultants who handled negotiations and contracts. Marketing had continued to develop the brand’s visibility, support commercial conversations and prepare the information buyers needed.
The experience also changed how I looked at monthly marketing reports. New enquiries and signed contracts could follow different timelines. A strong sales month might include people who had first contacted the business much earlier, while some of the leads generated that month might only become serious prospects later.
That distinction matters whenever founders are trying to decide whether their marketing is still useful during a slowdown.
The decisions I would take into another crisis
The conditions of a recession differ from those of a pandemic lockdown. People may continue commuting, visiting showrooms and attending meetings while becoming more cautious about spending. Outdoor advertising or radio might remain appropriate, depending on the audience and the market.
When I discuss marketing expenditure with founders during a difficult period, I want to understand what is happening to buyers before recommending changes to the budget.
Some may be waiting for financing, some may need more evidence before committing, and others may have postponed their purchase because their own financial circumstances have changed. The sales team can often distinguish between these situations through its ongoing conversations.
I also want to know what the business has already accumulated. There may be people in the CRM who have visited, requested offers or discussed a purchase over several months. Their previous interest deserves to be understood, even if some of those opportunities are no longer commercially relevant.
Financial capacity is equally important. Maintaining brand visibility and customer relationships can make sense when the business has sufficient resources and a credible prospect of future demand. A business facing immediate cash-flow problems has different priorities. I assess marketing risks in that context, weighing the immediate cost of each activity against the consequences of stopping it.
Research offers useful context here. A Harvard Business Review study of 4,700 publicly listed companies across three recessions found that businesses combining selective cost reductions with investment in future opportunities, including marketing, were better positioned for recovery. The findings concern broader business strategy, and the right level of investment still depends on the circumstances of each business.
Advertising costs also deserve attention during a downturn. When competitors reduce spending, some auctions may become less competitive, creating opportunities to maintain visibility at a better cost. It is worth checking actual campaign data, since prices depend on the platform, audience and auction conditions.
For a business with a long buying cycle, I would pay particular attention to the work already done to create interest. Marketing budgets fund new opportunities, but they also support conversations that began months earlier. Keeping those conversations relevant requires an understanding of the buyers, the sales process and the resources available.
During the restrictions, we could not predict when the residential market would recover or which contacts would eventually sign. We could decide how to spend the remaining budget, what information to prepare and how to maintain communication with people who were still considering the project.
Those were decisions we could make while sales were almost at a standstill.
If sales in your business slowed sharply tomorrow, how many of the people who had already shown interest would still have a reason to stay in touch?
