Oliver Hume Delivers UDIA Victoria CPD Training on Property Marketing Strategy for Residential Land

There is a persistent assumption in residential property development that if the product is good and the location is strong, the sales will follow. That if you spend enough on digital advertising, the leads will come. That marketing is something you bolt on at the end, once the product decisions have already been made.

That assumption is costing projects.

On 13 May 2026, Oliver Hume's Harvey Carretero, Jessica Lochrie and Madden Boykett from our Project Marketing team delivered a CPD-accredited course for UDIA Victoria's Sales and Marketing cohort - Strategy to Sales: Property Marketing that Performs - covering the full project marketing lifecycle from data-led research through to campaign execution adapting to change.

The room was engaged. The questions were sharp. And one particular moment stopped the conversation entirely.

Which Marketing Channels Actually Convert in Residential Land Sales?

One of the session's most memorable moments came from a deceptively simple exercise. The group was asked to rank, in order, the ten channels that most consistently drive qualified enquiry and convert to sale in residential land development.

The top score int he room was three out of ten.

"There were some surprises," says Jess Lochrie, who co-presented the session.

What those surprises reveal is commercially important: even experienced professionals operating inside the industry every day can have blind spots about what is moving buyers - not just generating noise.

It is a distinction that matters enormously. Volume without quality is not a lead generation strategy. It is a budget leak. Understanding which channels genuinely convert - and why - determines where media spend goes, how sales teams prioritise their time, and how quickly a project can build pace in a market that rarely forgives slow starts.

How Data-Led Market Research Shapes Project Marketing Outcomes

Before a dollar is spent on marketing, a project needs to understand its market - not in a general sense, but with rigour.

That means knowing who is buying in the corridor and why. It means understanding the competitive landscape: what other projects are offering across price, product, and positioning, and where genuine gaps exist. It means reading supply and demand intelligence closely enough to make product and staging decisions with confidence rather than assumption.

It also means knowing your buyer well beyond their age bracket and postcode. Demographic profiling gives you a starting point. But psychographic understanding - what home means to this person, what community they are seeking, what fear or aspiration is driving their decision - is what allows a campaign to land.

A first homebuyer and a downsizer may be looking at the same estate. They are not looking for the same thing, and they should not be receiving the same message.

The research that underpins all of this does not stop at launch. Enquiry sources, lead quality, conversion rates, and days-on-market all feed back into real-time decisions throughout the campaign. Data shapes strategy. Then data shapes execution. Then it shapes adaptation.

Brand Strategy for Property Developments: Moving Beyond Aesthetics

One of the sharpest observations from the session was this: brand is subjective. Strategy is not.

It is common for developers and project teams to make brand decisions based on personal taste - on what they find visually compelling or what language they find persuasive. The problem is that the buyer's hat and the developer's hat rarely fit the same head.

A strong project brand (e.g Ambrosia) starts with clarity of purpose: who this project is for, what it offers that others cannot, and why that matters to the specific buyer you are trying to reach. Every creative decision - visual identity, tone, messaging, channel - should flow from that clarity, not precede it.

In residential land, this challenge is compounded by the fact that you are asking someone to make one of the largest financial decisions of their life based on something that does not yet fully exist. There are no established streetscapes, no gardens, no neighbours. Story becomes the product.

That story must be consistent across every touchpoint. Fragmented messaging does not just confuse buyers - it erodes the trust the entire sales process depends on.

Why Sales, Marketing and Development Alignment Determines Project Performance

The session dedicated significant time to what is arguably the most structurally under appreciated issue in project marketing: the cost of silos.

It is remarkably common for sales, marketing, and development to operate as separate functions, each with their own KPIs, timelines, and internal priorities. The result is predictable. Marketing builds campaigns without full visibility of what the sales team is hearing on the ground. Sales makes commitments that development cannot always deliver. Development makes product decisions without input from the people who speak to buyers every day.

This misalignment does not stay internal. It shows up in the buyer experience, in inconsistent messaging, unmet expectations, and a project that feels disjointed rather than considered.

For Jess Lochrie, this is the single most important shift a project team can make.

"If anything, it would be collaboration and cohesion as a project team," she says.

"There may be KPIs across development, marketing and sales, but ultimately there's ONE project objective, and each division is working to achieve that."

When alignment exists - when the same intelligence flows between all three functions, the project benefits from a feedback loop that makes every decision smarter. Sales intelligence informs product decisions. Marketing insights shape release strategy. Development confidence gives sales and marketing something credible to lean on.

Why Property Marketing Education Still Matters for Experienced Professionals

The question that hovers over any professional development offering in a mature industry is whether the audience already knows what is being presented.

"You never know everything," Lochrie says,

"and even industry experts still have things to learn. Our industry - particularly across sales and marketing - is evolving at an exponential rate. Staying ahead of the curve, learning and adapting to change is important for innovation, finding efficiencies, and doing things better."

The pace of change across proptech, AI integration, digital marketing, and buyer behaviour means that what worked three years ago is not necessarily what works now. The research on buyer timelines alone illustrates this - the average property research journey has lengthened considerably, meaning the window in which a project needs to be present, credible, and visible is longer than many campaign strategies account for.

The UDIA cohort demonstrated exactly why ongoing education matters. Experienced professionals, working through the complexity of a market that demands more than it ever has.

Oliver Hume's Approach to Project Marketing: 70 Years of Data-Driven Strategy

Oliver Hume is Australia's largest privately owned project marketing business - 70 years in operation, more than 200 people nationally, with active projects across Victoria, Queensland, and South Australia and a significant national pipe line in development.

That scale matters for one specific reason: research & insights. The intelligence that informs Oliver Hume's approach to market research, campaign strategy, and sales execution is drawn from a portfolio that few businesses in this sector can match. It is the difference between decisions grounded in genuine market evidence and decisions grounded in assumption.

The UDIA partnership reflects a longer-term commitment to industry leadership - not just delivering project outcomes for clients, but contributing to the elevation of standards across the sector. When Oliver Hume's people stand in front of a room to teach, they are drawing on what the business has learnt across decades of taking residential land to market in conditions that have ranged from buoyant to bruising.

The willingness of UDIA to carry that content as a CPD-accredited course is, in itself, a signal of the quality of what was presented.

Project Marketing Strategy: Key Takeaways for Development Managers

Project marketing that performs is not a product of luck, location, or spend. It is a product of data-led decision-making, brand clarity, buyer-centric messaging, integrated channel strategy, and a project team that operates as one - from acquisition through to settlement.

For development managers, sales professionals, and marketers working in residential property, the competitive advantage in this market is not in reaching more people. It is in reaching the right people, with the right message, through the channels that actually convert - and doing so with a team genuinely aligned around a single project objective.

Working on a residential development? Find out how Oliver Hume's Project Marketing team can help.

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