A different pace of life

Using social media to sell high-end homes at Stowford Mill

Stowford Mill is a development of luxury new three, four and five-bedroomed homes, sitting on the historic site of Ivybridge’s old paper mill – owned by award-winning property developer Burrington Estates.

We were approached in November 2019 by the Stowford Mill team to put together a social media strategy document, and implement a schedule of organic social media content across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn.

This would also be supported by paid advertising across Facebook and Instagram, with the objective of driving viewing enquiries to the sales team.

Social media strategy

After an initial workshop with the Stowford Mill team, we created a social media strategy document which outlined:

  • Stowford Mill’s key objectives
  • Audiences and key drivers
  • Brand values and tone of voice
  • Content themes
  • Choice of channels and frequency of posting
  • Examples of organic content
  • Paid advertising approach, budget and expected results
  • Competitor analysis

Organic content

Following this, we created a series of fortnightly content calendars highlighting the three core themes which were identified during the strategy workshop. These included:

  • Destination and lifestyle: portraying Ivybridge as a desirable place to live.
  • Community, history and incentives: highlighting the benefits of living at Stowford Mill, and the developer’s contributions to the local community.
  • House specifications and benefits: showing that Stowford Mill’s homes were superior to those of other developers, with luxury fittings and fixtures included as standard.

Highlights from organic content


31,252

people reached on Facebook


34,489

people reached on Instagram


67,282

impressions on Twitter


14,684

people reached on LinkedIn – a key platform amongst Stowford Mill’s audiences.


Click through rate of 3.2%

(with the industry average on LinkedIn being 0.06%)


Engagement rate of 6.21%

(with the industry average on LinkedIn being 0.59%)

Paid social media advertising campaigns

We also set up 37 advertising campaigns over a period of five months, with a spend of £150 per month. These included: 

  • Four tier advertising campaigns to drive viewing enquiries:
    1. Brand awareness adverts to engage new audiences.
    2. Consideration adverts to provide more information to those who had engaged with the previous adverts.
    3. Conversion adverts to drive traffic to the website to sign up for more information.
    4. Remarketing adverts to direct people back to the website or to contact the sales team.
  • Brand awareness and traffic adverts amongst Stowford Mill’s key audiences, which include key workers, families and empty nesters.
  • An ongoing page likes campaign to support audience growth on Facebook.

Paid results

As well as the team reporting a significant increase in viewing enquiries via telephone and email, the campaigns achieved:


125,000

people reached across Facebook and Instagram


700,000

impressions gained across Facebook and Instagram


5,574

link clicks back to the website


3,956

new unique users on the website


226

page likes (+42%) gained on Facebook

Kirsty Barker, Stowford Mill

"The Barefoot team has been an absolute pleasure to work with, and we really appreciated how responsive Barefoot has been to our needs. Jim and Sophie understood our requirements for all social media channels, and produced high-quality social media posts and paid campaigns which had a positive impact on our social media by not only increasing reach, but getting our information to the right type of client and producing good sales leads. We would not hesitate at using its services again in the future."

Like what you see? This is just the start.

View our work