Is it the Market or your Marketing?

Challenging Traditional Marketing to American and Canadian Baby Boomers from Latin America

By Luis Miranda.  
CEO - IMRES GROUP

Many of the resort style real estate developers and a great variety of service providers from Mexico and Latin America, like mortgage financing companies and title insurance companies are struggling to reach a target audience of affluent Americans & Canadians, the majority of them Baby Boomers. “Who continue to be the most powerful consumers in the marketplace and will continue for many years to come, regardless of the economic climate and the current market conditions”, according to David Weigelt & Jonathan Boehman .

The number of Americans and Canadians living abroad, approximately 7 Million, according to The Washington Journal, has steadily grown over the past decade and is expected to more than double within the next 10 years. In the next 20 years, 100 million baby boomers, from the USA and Canada, are expected to retire. Five million baby boomers turn the age of 60 each year which is the equivalent to ten thousand per day or eight per minute. Scores of these baby boomers are purchasing property abroad as vacationor investment homes. Naturally, many of them are planning to utilize these homes for primary retirement residences.

There is also a strong upward trend in the number of Americans traveling abroad for health care. According to Modern Healthcare, there were 750,000 Americans who traveled abroad for healthcare in 2007 and this number is predicted to increase 700% to six million by 2011.

In order to reach the target audience Real Estate Developers and Service Providers need to do things differently. They need to seek innovative ways to create awareness about their properties and products. Expensive direct mail, brochures, magazines and newspaper advertising, videos, radio and TV have been the predominant marketing methods. These traditional, conventional methods have become more and more expensive and less and less efficient.

Most of the times the proposals that are made from traditional PR and Marketing firms to Latin American Developers are out of context and prohibited. There is not enough money to do what these firms propose. Traditional means of marketing and selling resort properties and services are no longer working. “Traditional Marketing is Broken” according to David Henderson. Real estate developers and service providers need more cost efficient ways to generate buyer-investor traffic.  There are a significant number of boomers out there that are actively looking for afor more affordable and attractive places to live and Mexico continues to rank as the top retirement destination in the world.

The National Association of Realtors reports that more than 95 percent of all home buyers use the internet to help find a home. The internet changed the power dynamics of the property industry by giving consumers unprecedented access to information previously only available to agents and developers.  The use of effective Internet Marketing Strategies in Latin America has been slow to develop due to the lack of useful messaging, poor search engine marketing and poor search engine optimization.

Online Marketing has started to evolve in Latin America but not as quickly as in other countries such as the U.S., Canada, Europe and Asia.  According to Domus, Online Marketing has evolved in these other countries as follows: 1995: Learn Email, 1998: Learn CRM, 2001: Get a website, 2003: Email Marketing, 2005: Buy Online leads, 2008: Participate in Social Media.

Social Networks have evolved into open platforms to organize users’ internet experience. Users are posting a massive variety of content to platforms such asFacebook, My Space, Twitter, LinkedIn, Technorati, etc. Social networks have effective search tools, a simple user interface and the ability to post content quickly.  A means of fast and broad distribution to perhaps millions of users simultaneously.

Social Media has become a powerful medium for real estate marketing and lead generation at a significant lower cost than traditional marketing methods. The Future of Resort Style Real Estate and Marketing has arrived with Social Media. Latin American Developers and Service Providers have the urgent need to start using Organic Marketing, Viral Marketing. They need to jump in Social Media and Social Networks as soon as possible in oder to create and establish relationships with consumers.