Playing Offence in a Defensive Market: Rethinking How Trust Is Built in Property

The default reaction to soft enquiry numbers

Every property marketer has felt the crunch. Enquiries dip, and the knee-jerk reaction begins: send out another EDM, increase your listings, offer discounts to create urgency. It’s a familiar rhythm, and in the short term, it often feels like action — like control.

But in truth, these are defensive plays. They treat the symptoms, not the root causes. And as the property market continues to shift, it’s worth asking: what happens when defence becomes our only strategy?

The reality is, buyer trust isn’t lost all at once. It’s chipped away slowly — when messaging feels disconnected, when campaigns miss the mark, when there’s no real reason to believe beyond a price tag.

If we’re honest, many brands are marketing louder, but not necessarily smarter.

A shifting foundation: trust over traffic

Today’s buyers are more informed, more connected, and far more sceptical than they were five years ago. They aren’t making decisions based on the next ad they scroll past. They’re listening to people they know — neighbours, coworkers, friends who recently built or bought. They’re piecing together recommendations from WhatsApp chats, Facebook groups, or a caption on an Instagram story.

This isn’t new. But for many in the industry, it’s still unacknowledged.

Marketing teams continue to prioritise reach, impressions, and traffic over influence. But trust doesn’t live in your media plan — it lives in relationships. And it doesn’t scale through repetition. It scales through relevance.

EOFY is more than a budget checkpoint

As June approaches, the conversation turns to what worked and what didn’t. Budgets are reallocated, spreadsheets updated, and decisions made about where to invest next.

But maybe the question isn’t just “what worked?”

Maybe it’s “what built trust?”

Because the campaigns that truly shift the needle aren’t always the flashiest. Sometimes they’re the quiet, unpaid moments when someone shares a genuine story about what it felt like to hand over the keys. Or how their landscaper recommended a community they loved working in. Or how a site supervisor’s walkthrough gave them confidence in the process.

These moments aren’t captured in click-through rates or open percentages. But they’re incredibly powerful — and often overlooked.

Advocacy isn’t accidental

There’s a tendency in property marketing to treat advocacy as a bonus. If a buyer shares their experience online, great. If a stylist tags your development in a post, fantastic.

But relying on word of mouth without any framework to support it means relying on chance. And in today’s market, chance isn’t a strategy.

It’s not about creating scripted testimonials or chasing influencers. It’s about recognising that your team, your trades, your community — they already hold influence. The question is whether you’re making it easy for them to use it.

Encouraging participation doesn’t require a complete overhaul. But it does require a shift in mindset: away from marketing to your audience, and toward activating the network around you.

Rethinking what marketing success looks like

The industry has long measured success in terms of reach and frequency. But these metrics are losing relevance in a world where buyers are looking for connection, not noise.

Instead, we should be asking:

Are people sharing our story in their own words?

Are we showing up in the spaces where real conversations are happening?

Are we building a brand that others want to advocate for?

Because these are the signs of long-term traction. And in a market that isn’t guaranteed to bounce back quickly, traction matters more than traffic.

Playing offence means building ahead

To play offence in this environment means doing the work before it becomes urgent. It means looking beyond the next campaign and asking how your brand earns trust at every touchpoint — not just through the polished ones.

This isn’t about abandoning digital advertising or ditching traditional strategies altogether. It’s about layering them with something more resilient: a model of marketing that’s built on belief, not just budget.

As we look ahead to the second half of 2025, brands that focus on participation, trust and community will be better positioned to weather whatever comes next.

Because growth doesn’t just come from marketing louder. It comes from being believed.