Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: What is your Marketing Budget

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On 31 May 2012, at 10:51 AM, Mary English wrote:

> As I recall our budget is about $500 here.

Where is here? Are you already moved in or is this pre-construction.

My earlier post referred to post construction since we have been moved in for 
almost 12 years. But pre-move in, our sales were also heavily the result of 
flyers and word of mouth. I'm doing a community tree of where the founders came 
from and so far it is personal contact with friends, coworkers, or someone at a 
party, and flyers and news articles in neighborhood papers. (One person, I have 
to track down because he has since moved.)

The developer did hire a professional, Ann Zabaldo, to field phone calls, get 
news articles placed, etc., in addition to helping develop the community. Early 
on we had a tri-fold brochure/mailer but it was produced in-house and printed 
at the local copy shop in black and white.

One obstacle that is less of a problem now is that many people have heard of 
both heard of cohousing and in a positive way. In 1998, that was not the case. 
They didn't know the word/concept and when you tried to explain it, they heard 
"commune."

Sharon
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Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org