RETHINKING OFFLINE SALES IN 2021

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The pandemic has catalysed digitisation across sales & marketing strategies in Indian real estate but, there is still significant value in old school marketing techniques. With the rise of technology and social media, many business owners have made the mistake of moving all marketing plans online. But, when it comes to real estate, best business results come from making use of both online and offline marketing strategies. Zahed Mahmood, Director, Silverline Realty Pvt Ltd, expressed, “Primary sales is focused more by all the developers. I believe secondary sales buyers’ market is also important. In this regard, one needs to identify the right offline marketing channels that can include direct mail to sponsoring community of online or offline events." Jayesh Rathod, Director, The Guardians Real Estate Advisory mentioned, "Even during lockdown, there were people making site visits having done their primary research online and thus shortlisting the project to visit. For our marketing strategy, we reached out to people through online social media platform and as per our data maximum sales happened when the customers visited the site physically." Alok Gupta, Director, GraphisAds agreed, "Going forward we will see further integration of online and offline sales & marketing with initial impressions created by digital outreach and converted to sales in an offline manner All the developers need to make sure their firm has virtually enabled all the project details mentioned and updated on the site. Build good relationship with customers as they will refer your brand to other people." Adil Altaf, Senior Vice President Sales & Customer Service, Raheja Developers Ltd agreed, "Customer referral is working effectively in Delhi-NCR market. At Raheja we don't need to do much marketing as our existing and past customers become brand ambassadors and promote our project. In addition, we remain in constant touch with our channel partners’ community. We got good number of booking through them as well." Sudeep Bhatt, President & National Head – Sales, M3M India added, "We should learn from the mistakes made in past projects and move ahead with creating better products. It's important to send the right message through right medium. Digital platforms are working very well for us. Customization, Personalization and Digitization are the key to creating a holistic communication through all the mediums - ATL and BTL, print, digital etc." REAL ESTATE IS ONE OF THE MOST RELATIONSHIP-DRIVEN INDUSTRIES IN THE WORLD. MAINTAINING AND BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS WITH CLIENTS VIA SOCIAL MEDIA AND PERIODIC SMALL GATHERINGS OF RESIDENTS HELPS NURTURE GOODWILL TO ENHANCE BRAND LOYALTY. GETTING CREATIVE WITH PRODUCT Happy customers make good business sales. Real estate is evolving with time and adopting technologies and strategy to build a strong market presence. Targeted marketing and product should be in sync with the customers demand. Developers should closely look at the requirements of customers and try to adopt it in their next projects for better results. Jayesh Rathod said, “Marketing is especially complex for real estate because it comprises selling both services and goods. Developing a value proposition both in terms of the goods i.e. project and in services i.e. transaction and engagement is critical to sales and marketing function. The present economic scenario has further enhanced this aspect for marketers.” Sudeep Bhatt shared, "We did a campaign called 'Port your Property' campaign. It allowed buyers to upgrade their property by opting for a new project out of the M3M portfolio, including residential, commercial, and ready-to-move-in or under-construction. The amount that the customer had invested in the stuck project would be adjusted against the cost of the new property. We generated sales of Rs 500 crore in two weeks.” Alok Gupta added, "There is no straight answer for direct sales. For instance, a luxury project requires personalized marketing and communication and not necessarily the front jacket of the leading newspaper. The right mix of targeted online and offline strategies creates best results.” Adil Altaf, reiterated “Virtual meeting followed by a physical site visit is a best case scenario even today. SMS marketing too is showing good results".