Shifting Paradigm in Real Estate Marketing

By Somit Madan, AGM-Marketing, Paras Buildtech The new Bells & Whistles of Sales and Marketing in Real Estate Industry and how to be ready for it.  Being a high-investment category, marketing for real estate sector has primarily remained centred around creating reputation, brand value and trust in the market. With a shift in “how to reach” out to the customer base in the modern era, marketing now plays a much larger role, particularly in real estate sector. While earlier, marketing used to be focussed on maximization of sales and profit as its primary objective, now-a-days it has a much bigger role - such as Brand Building, Customer Retention, CSR, etc. With the market flooded with lots of new and upcoming projects, it remains crucial to create a unique brand identity to stand out from the crowd. This is where marketing takes a giant leap in creating a competitive edge. Taking into consideration that sales and marketing go hand in hand in the Real Estate sector, it is important for both the marketing and sales teams to understand the specific processes of both these verticals. It is important to align both the marketing goals and sales goals, since both these verticals have one end goal and that is: to sell more, while maintaining the brand reputation. For this purpose, both sales and marketing rely on Customer Loyalty, Brand Identity and Brand Awareness, and here comes the joint role of advertisement. Without advertising and marketing campaigns, even the best-in-class project cannot be sold. Moreover, marketing also helps in building more loyal customers and in creating new markets. In Real Estate sector, the brand should create an aura of uniqueness, dependability and trust. Hence marketing for this particular industry involves a lot of tools and techniques to highlight the best practices followed by a realty brand. The marketing tool in Real Estate sector normally employs – Print and Outdoors. The advent of internet has added a wide range of additional platforms for marketing like Web Sites, Blogs, Social Networking sites, Forums &Emailers. The brands are increasingly looking to boost their digital presence and to leverage upon their digital identity amid the emerging challenges of the changing consumer preferences in this highly competitive market To achieve this, an innovative marketing strategy is the only solution. A regular, effective and frequent marketing campaign helps in repeat sales and in building a strong customer base, by promoting the brand favourably. Already, in the last couple of decades marketing in Real Estate sector has witnessed this shift from being focussed on mass selling to being more focussed on changing aspirations of the consumers. Obviously, the shift has taken place to meet the long term objectives of the companies, looking towards expanding their wings across various segments and increase their slice of the pie.