The mistakes that cost developers the most aren't the obvious ones. They're the quiet assumptions that go unchallenged until opening day reveals them.
I've been brought in to advise on enough development launches to recognize the patterns. The mistakes that cost developers the most aren't the obvious ones. They're the quiet ones—the assumptions that go unchallenged until opening day reveals them.
These are the six most common pre-opening marketing mistakes I see in CRE, and what to do instead.
Most developers treat opening day as the beginning of their marketing story. The developers who outperform treat it as the payoff of a story they've been telling for two years.
— Leslie Himley, Founder & Fractional CMOThe Six Mistakes That Cost Developers the Most
Treating the Brand as a Finishing Detail
The single most expensive pre-opening marketing mistake I encounter is the decision to defer brand strategy until the building is near completion. By that point, the name has been chosen without strategic process, the design has been finalized without brand input, the leasing team has been pitching without a clear narrative, and the marketing materials being developed are trying to retrofit a brand onto decisions that were never brand-informed.
The result is a misaligned identity—often beautiful in execution but disconnected from the property's actual market position and potential. The Brand-First Development Principle I advocate at LHSA is straightforward: brand strategy is a pre-design discipline, not a post-construction one. The brand should inform the architecture, the tenant strategy, the name, and the community engagement approach—not the other way around.
Confusing Awareness With Audience
Many developers invest in pre-opening awareness campaigns—press releases, advertising, social media announcements—without building an audience. Awareness is passive. An audience is active. Awareness tells people the project exists. An audience is a group of people who are engaged, interested, and ready to act when opening day arrives.
The difference is an email list, a social community with genuine engagement, a group of prospective tenants who have been in relationship with the development team throughout the construction period. Developers who build an audience rather than just awareness arrive at opening day with momentum. Developers who only generate awareness arrive at opening day having to start the relationship-building process from scratch.
Separating Leasing Marketing from Consumer Marketing
This is one of the most structurally damaging mistakes in development marketing, and one of the most common. Leasing marketing and consumer marketing are treated as separate workstreams: one team is pitching tenants, another is building community awareness, and neither is using a shared brand narrative or strategy.
The result is a development that tells different stories to different audiences—sophisticated and vision-driven to potential tenants, generic and features-focused to consumers. Both audiences sense the incoherence even if they can't articulate it. And the opportunity to use consumer demand as a leasing asset—to say to prospective tenants "this is the audience that's already excited about being part of this destination"—is lost entirely.
Under-Leveraging the Construction Period
The construction period—which can span 18 to 36 months for major developments—is not a marketing dead zone. It is the most valuable audience-building period in the development lifecycle, and most developers use it only for construction fencing graphics and occasional press releases.
In my work with development teams, I build structured content and community programs for the construction period: behind-the-scenes content that builds anticipation, community engagement events that introduce the development to the neighborhood, email campaigns that grow the subscriber list month over month, and media relationships that ensure the development has coverage partners ready for opening day.
No Clear Call to Action Before Opening
A development with no pre-opening call to action is leaving significant value uncaptured. Every person who becomes aware of the project before opening is a potential email subscriber, social follower, opening-day visitor, or future tenant customer. Without a clear, consistent call to action in all pre-opening communications—"join our list," "follow our story," "be first to know"—that potential evaporates.
The LHSA Pre-Opening Audience Stack
Five layers, each with a different value and a different role in the opening-day momentum equation. All five should be built before opening day arrives.
Email Subscribers
The highest-value owned audience. These people have self-selected into the brand. They convert at the highest rate on opening day and beyond.
Social Community
Awareness and ongoing engagement. Broad reach, lower conversion than email, but essential for brand visibility and social proof.
Media Relationships
Earned reach at opening. Cultivated during construction so reporters and editors already know the story when opening day arrives.
Prospective Tenant Pipeline
Leasing momentum. Tenants who have been engaged throughout construction enter opening conversations with context and confidence rather than cold skepticism.
Neighborhood Advocates
Community champions who will drive word-of-mouth. People who feel invested in the project's success and share that enthusiasm organically.
Treating Opening Day as a Finish Line
Opening day is not the finish line. It is the starting line for the long game of building a destination that performs over decades. Developers who treat it as a finish line invest everything in the opening moment and have nothing left for the sustained marketing effort that determines whether that momentum translates into lasting performance.
The most successful developments I've worked on treat opening day as a major milestone in an ongoing story—significant, celebrated, and strategically executed—but always in the context of the longer arc of community-building and brand development that precedes and follows it.
The developers who avoid these mistakes share one orientation: they treat marketing as a strategic input, not a finishing step. They bring brand and marketing thinking to the table before design decisions are made, before the name is chosen, before the first tenant conversation happens.
If you're preparing for a development launch and want to pressure-test your pre-opening marketing strategy, we would be glad to help.
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