Building Brand Identity

Smita Thorat, Founder & Director - Brandniti + Design briefs on the real-estate marketing and sales strategies based on innovation, customer satisfaction and ROI-driven approach.   RERA has changed many things in Indian real estate landscape and while numerous transformations are taking place at the policy levels, renowned real-estate brands are also looking at revamping their sales and marketing strategies. The paradigm shift that the industry has witnessed after RERA is the change in the mindset and approach of the homebuyers. From a seller’s market it has turned to be a buyer’s market and big real estate brands are quickly responding to this shift in mindset. More and more developers are changing their pricing strategies on the basis of the realization that the focus can’t be entirely on profit. The homebuyers are expecting discounts and easy payment terms more than ever before and the established developers aren’t afraid to make room for the changed outlook. Another shift in the approach would be focusing on personalized communication. Sales and Marketing teams of the real estate brands are investing much more time to be a significant part of a buyer’s home buying journey. With the entry of RERA, print advertising took the hardest blow with as much as 40% dip, the importance of word-of-mouth publicity and public relation are being realized more than ever before. The brands are now cautious of building and maintaining their public image at the same time the communication focus changes gear to become more customer-centric than product-centric. In the pre RERA and GST time, real-estate brands were not much bothered about their brand images and their brand communication were focused more towards the product, location etc. But post RERA it has become extremely important for a real estate brand to not just ‘be the good’ but also to ‘show the good’.   The Digital Tools Online is no more about listing on property portals. More innovative multi-channel and multi devices campaign approaches are being executed such as video ads, interactive banners, carousels, etc on Google, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.  Once the user is pulled in with the banners and video ads, the emphasis goes on to deliver engaging content on the landing pages that may comprise 3D virtual reality apartments views and drone shoots to panoramic shots of the projects under construction sites to give easy glimpse of the progress. This helps to increase the attention span and capture the lead with most interactive or auto filled call to action. Also, the relevancy of online reputation management (ORM) exercise has gone up multifold after RERA. In this era of online conversation, no brand can afford to remain ignorant or aloof about what the customers want or talking about. Even an unintentional or small lapse from the developer’s side can spiral out of proportion if a timely action is not taken. Thus, for any real estate brand, it’s more important than ever before to employ some good ORM agency to track online conversations, listen to the customers and address their problems wherever possible before they go out of hand.