New development marketing is the set of advertising, website, and content activities used to sell units in a residential project before and during construction, built around a pre-registration or VIP phase, a public launch, and an ongoing sales period until the last unit closes. It differs from marketing a single resale home because the audience, timeline, and budget all work on a larger scale, and the plan has to hold up over many months, not a few weeks.
- What is new development marketing?
- Who actually needs a new development marketing plan?
- What channels work best for selling new builds?
- How is marketing a new development different from marketing resale listings?
- How much should a builder budget for marketing?
- What does a launch timeline look like?
What is new development marketing?
New development marketing covers everything used to generate interest and registrations for a project that does not exist yet, or exists only as a model suite and a sales centre. That includes a project website, a registration form that captures buyer contact details, paid ads on Google and on Meta platforms, photography and video of renderings or the sales centre, and often a presence at local events or through a dedicated sales team.
The goal in the early phase is almost never a sale. It is a qualified list of names, emails, and phone numbers for people who will be invited to a VIP preview before the public launch. Builders and their sales teams use that list to gauge demand, set pricing for different phases, and sometimes to decide which floor plans to release first.
Later in the project, once units are released publicly, the marketing shifts toward conversion: nudging registered leads to book an appointment, attend an open house at the sales centre, or sign a worksheet. The messaging, the offer, and the channels used all change between these phases, even though the project is the same.
A developer we worked alongside once put it simply: "Our pre-construction list is worth more than our ad budget. If the list is weak, no amount of spending at launch fixes it."
That is the core idea behind new development marketing. It is front-loaded work. The database built in the registration phase determines how smooth or how difficult the actual sales period turns out to be.
Who actually needs a new development marketing plan?
Three groups typically need this kind of plan, and their needs differ enough that it is worth naming them separately.
Builders and developers need a plan that runs for the life of the project, often 18 to 36 months from first registration to final closing. They usually want a dedicated project website, a registration funnel, and ad campaigns that can be paused and restarted as phases release.
Real estate brokerages and agent teams that represent new developments need marketing that supports both the project and their own brand, since buyers who register for one project often become long-term clients for resale transactions later. For these teams, the overlap with Marketing for realtors and brokerages is real, and some of the same infrastructure, such as IDX search and lead capture, can serve both purposes.
Trades and suppliers tied to a development, such as a design centre or a staging company, sometimes run smaller local campaigns timed to a project's milestones, though their needs are closer to standard Marketing for trades and home services than to full project marketing.
Pro tip: before building anything, write down the project's actual timeline: registration open date, expected launch date, and expected occupancy. Every marketing decision, from ad budget pacing to what content gets produced first, should be built around those three dates rather than a generic 12-month plan.
What channels work best for selling new builds?
No single channel carries a new development launch on its own. The combination below is what most projects in Ontario end up using, with real trade-offs between them.
| Channel | Best for | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| Google Ads (search) | Capturing people already searching for the project or area by name | Limited reach before the project has any name recognition |
| Meta ads (Facebook and Instagram) | Building awareness and collecting registrations from a cold audience | Needs strong creative; weak video or renders underperform fast |
| Project website with registration form | Central hub for all paid traffic, VIP list building | Only as good as the traffic driving people to it |
| SEO and organic search | Long-term inquiries from buyers researching the area or builder | Slow to build; not useful for a fast launch window |
| Sales centre and signage | Local walk-in traffic, neighbourhood awareness | Limited to people already nearby |
In practice, most developments lean on Google Ads management and Facebook and Instagram ads together, feeding a single Website design and build that acts as the registration hub. SEO work tends to pay off more on longer projects with multiple phases, where the same site stays live for years.
How is marketing a new development different from marketing resale listings?
Resale marketing is built around a single property, a defined list price, and a sale that typically closes within weeks. New development marketing is built around a project, a price that often increases across phases, and a sales cycle measured in months or years.
The content requirements are also different. A resale listing needs good photos and maybe a walkthrough video. A new development needs renderings, floor plans, a model suite tour, site plan graphics, and often drone footage of the surrounding neighbourhood, since there is no finished product to show for most of the campaign. Photo and video production for a development is a bigger, more ongoing job than a single listing shoot.
Lead handling differs too. A resale buyer lead usually gets a call within the hour and a showing within days. A development registration might sit for weeks before VIP access opens, which means the follow-up has to be scheduled and consistent rather than immediate. Builders who treat a registration list the same way an agent treats a hot buyer lead tend to burn through goodwill, since the actual opportunity to buy has not opened yet.
Pro tip: segment the registration list from day one by how the person found the project, such as Google search, Instagram ad, or a referral from a current owner. That single piece of data makes it much easier to judge which channel is actually producing buyers rather than just registrations, later in the campaign when budget decisions get made.
How much should a builder budget for marketing?
There is no fixed percentage that applies to every project, but a few patterns are worth knowing before setting a number. Larger projects with hundreds of units generally spend a lower percentage of revenue on marketing than smaller boutique projects, simply because fixed costs like a website and a sales centre get spread over more units. A 20 unit project and a 200 unit project do not need the same website or the same ad spend, even though both need one.
A practical starting point is to separate the budget into three buckets: production (website, photography, video, floor plan graphics), media spend (the actual ad dollars on Google and Meta), and ongoing management. Many projects underfund the production bucket early, then find they have nothing good to advertise once the ad budget is ready to spend.
The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation publishes regular data on new housing starts and absorption rates by region, which is useful context when setting expectations for how quickly a given market absorbs new supply. Projects in slower-absorption markets generally need a longer media budget runway, not just a bigger one.
| Project size | Typical marketing focus | Common mistake |
|---|---|---|
| Under 50 units | Strong local targeting, smaller but focused ad spend | Treating it like a single listing instead of a project |
| 50 to 150 units | Phased launches, ongoing registration campaigns | Spending the full budget at launch with nothing left for later phases |
| Over 150 units | Dedicated sales centre, multi-phase pricing strategy | Underinvesting in early production, rushing renderings and site content |
What does a launch timeline look like?
A typical timeline runs in three stages. The pre-registration stage, often 8 to 12 weeks before public launch, focuses on building the website, producing renderings and initial video content, and running awareness ads to collect sign-ups. The VIP stage, usually a few weeks around the launch date, invites the registered list to preview pricing and floor plans before the general public. The public sales stage follows and can run for months or years depending on how many units remain.
Each stage needs its own creative and its own ad messaging. Reusing the same ad copy from the registration phase into the public sales phase is a common mistake, since the audience and the offer have both changed by then.
Marketing for new developments as the next step
If a project is still early, the most useful next step is usually to confirm what already exists: a registration-ready website, a clear VIP plan, and content that shows the project honestly rather than just the renderings. From there, a dedicated plan can be built around the project's actual timeline rather than a generic template. The Marketing for new developments page outlines how this is approached for projects across Southwestern Ontario and the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, and is a reasonable place to look at what a working setup includes before deciding what a particular project needs.
Key takeaways
| Point | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| New development marketing is front-loaded | The pre-registration list quality determines how smooth the launch and sales period go |
| Channels work best combined | Google Ads, Meta ads, and a central website registration form each cover a different part of the funnel |
| Resale and development marketing are not the same job | Longer timelines, more content, and different lead handling are required |
| Budget should be split into three buckets | Production, media spend, and ongoing management each need separate planning |
| Timelines run in three stages | Pre-registration, VIP, and public sales each need different creative and messaging |
FAQ
How long before launch should marketing start for a new development? Most projects start pre-registration marketing 8 to 12 weeks before the public launch date, giving enough time to build a registration list before pricing and floor plans are released.
Does a new development need its own website separate from the builder's main site? Usually yes. A dedicated project site makes it easier to run focused ad campaigns, track registrations for that specific project, and update content as phases release, without competing with the builder's broader corporate site.
Can the same marketing plan work for a 20 unit project and a 200 unit project? Not directly. Smaller projects need tighter local targeting and a leaner budget, while larger projects usually require phased launches and a longer-running campaign, so the structure of the plan should scale with the project size.
