Content Marketing Today

To Attract Affluent, Independent Buyers, Bonita Bay Group Launched an Elegant Magazine

What you do when your buyers just don’t want to be sold? That’s the dilemma that Southwest Florida community developer, Bonita Bay Group faced recently. Their target demographic wants to make up their own mind about where they live and what they buy. The developer’s solution was to develop print and online content so compelling that future residents would sell themselves.

When it comes to planned communities, the Bonita Bay Group is one of the good guys. From the 1980s, they have sought to achieve sustainable development which promised a comfortable lifestyle in concert with nature. They have been recognized by the Urban Land Institute as one of the best community developers on the planet.

Most importantly, they’ve always worked to understand who their buyers are and what they want. Their latest in-depth research led them to develop a glossy magazine that lives both in print and online. They realized that it was essential to execute a content marketing strategy that would resonate with the unique demographic represented by their residents.

How Do You Sell Buyers Who Don’t Want to Be Sold?

Current and future Bonita Bay residents fit the VALS profile of ‘thinkers’ and ‘innovators’. They are self assured, successful, and careful in how they make buying decisions. On average they are 59 years old, empty nesters, and affluent. Most of all they do not want to be sold. The folks at Bonita Bay struggled over how to sell their lifestyle to individuals who did not want to be sold. They were finding that some of their traditional marketing methods such as direct mail were becoming much less effective than they had been.

They decided that creating a magazine that accurately and elegantly represented the Bonita Bay community experience would be the best way to attract future buyers—and to make current residents feel good about the communities in which they lived.

Although the prices of homes in their communities range from $200,000 well into the millions, Bonita Bay executives learned that the profile of the residence was consistent across the board. This meant that they could safely create a magazine which all of their current and future residents would enjoy.

And so, the magazine, In Good Company, was created in partnership with the southwest Florida division of Curtco. The name of the magazine reflects the neighborliness that is typical of residents of all seven Bonita Bay communities. Reading In Good Company, you have no sense that its intentions are to shill for the company or any of its communities. Rather, it reads just like any luxury, lifestyle magazine that you might find in Naples, Palm Beach or Palm Springs. It does include advertising which defrays most of the cost of production. Happily none of the advertising is from their competitors.

In Good Company has a total print run of 25,000, of which 9000 are mailed to individual households. The rest of the copies are distributed in their sales centers throughout southwest Florida. Bonita Bay residents love the magazine because it accurately reflects the communities in which they’d live and the lifestyle that they enjoy. For future residents, it offers a virtual immersion in the way that they could expect to live if they were to move into a Bonita bay community.

In Good Company Achieves Global Reach on the Internet

More than 80% of potential residents who visit a Bonita bay community have done thorough research on the web. Typically, they know the names of neighborhoods and have a pretty good idea of exactly where they would like to live–before they ever show up in person. It was then logical that the magazine should reside on the Internet as well. Today, it has its own dedicated web site, IGCMagazine.com where a beautifully rendered online version of the magazine resides. The online version recreates the look and feel of the print edition with large colorful graphics. In addition it offers an easy link under “Communities” to each of the individual community sites.

Over the past year, the Bonita Bay Group has rebuilt most of its web sites and has seen a dramatic increase of monthly web traffic. That’s not surprising because there’s plenty to see and do, including perusing the virtual pages of In Good Company.

In Good Company, both in print and online, makes clear statement to current and future residents that they are in fact “in good company” when they belong to a Bonita bay community. You might not be surprised to learn that the magazine won the Charlie Award, the Florida Magazine Association’s highest honor. The premier issue, which debuted in February, earned first-place honors in the custom magazine category. In addition, three of their websites were honored by the web marketing association in 2007.

Where Does the Bonita Bay Group Sit on the Content Marketing Continuum?

The Bonita Bay Group has executed brilliantly on the core elements of content marketing:

• They have gone to great lengths to understand who their customers are and what is important to them.

• As soon as they understood that their customers did not want to be sold in the traditional way, they created content that would build a positive relationship with future buyers.

• Their content is in no way self-serving or promotional. It simply opens a window into the way of life that their communities represent.

• They partnered with a company, Curtco, that is expert in producing high quality lifestyle magazines that accurately reflect the demographic graphic which they serve.

• The quality of their online content matches that of their print publication–and reaches a global audience.