Market leader Land & Houses has set a marketing budget of Bt600 million to drive its sales to reach Bt20 billion this year after sales dropped from Bt22.7 billion in 2005 to Bt17.6 billion last year - down 22.5 per cent.

Lalin Property has set a marketing budget of Bt80 million this year, up from Bt60 million last year, to drive sales to meet a target of Bt2 billion.

SC Asset plans to spend Bt70 million on marketing to re-brand its housing projects and another Bt50 million to boost sales to meet its target growth of 20 per cent this year.

According to a survey by AC Nielsen Research, the property sector spent nearly Bt3.5 billion on marketing last year.

Land & Houses executive vice president for marketing Naporn Sunthornchitcharoen said that the company had to increase its marketing budget to "refresh its brand" and would concentrate on special discount prices, event marketing and television advertising.

"We have to launch our new marketing campaign to expand our customer target from aged over 30 to under 30," he said.

This is the first time that Land & Houses has expanded its marketing budget since the economic crisis in 1997.

"When we increase our advertising budget to drive our sales this year, we will reduce our gross margin from an average of 32 per cent to 30 per cent. This is a good way to drive our sales to meet the target," Naporn said.

Lalin Property CEO Chaiyan Charkarakul said that property firms had to increase their marketing budgets since home-buyers are delaying their decision to buy now because they are concerned about slow economic growth and political risk.

SC Asset chairwoman Yingluck Shinawatra added that the property market had become highly competitive since last year so property firms had to use aggressive marketing.

"Our marketing campaign will combine both event marketing and special discount prices, which will reduce our profit but speed up sales to achieve the target," she said.

According to research by Jones Lang LaSalle, the property market shows signs of dropping between 5 and 10 per cent from last year in the first half of this year. This follows continued political uncertainty.

Somluck Srimalee

The Nation