Digital Marketing for Real Estate

Real Estate market is heavily dependent on intermediaries for demand fulfillment e.g. Brokers/Channel Partners/Direct Sales/Classified Sites etc. these intermediaries seem to have well-defined roles, where classifieds used to help through mid-funnel, Brokers gets benefited from the local networks, Channel partners used to bear the risk while lowering the cost, and direct sales used to help with the walk-ins and brand push.

The ecosystem has become ever complex

With digital marketing becoming more and more accessible, it is breaking the barrier to reach customers now anyone with an Ad account sitting in a corner room can reach to the customers wherever and whenever. With barriers collapsing every other intermediary is encroaching upon each other’s territory. Now anyone and everyone seem to be performing each other role.

Problem of Measurement

For long marketers used to believe “Half of the money spent on marketing goes waste but we don’t know which half”. Digital marketing has given the power of measuring Money to the penny level. And suddenly Marketer Realizes it’s not 50% money that’s going waste but it is 95%. Since 95% of the users coming to my website don’t take the desired action on my website.

With the realization, kicks in marketers become super conservative and become overly obsessed with the conversion. And they forgot the most important thing “Marketing”

There are few problems with this approach one availability of numbers (data) doesn’t mean the practicality of the data, so we need to see them in context. Second, all these numbers default to the last touch-based attribution leaving all upper funnel and non-touch based channels without any credit.

“Rahul was researching for property to buy on the classified portal while he was going through various projects details he comes across a banner ad for a new project coming up in vicinity to the area he was considering. He went through the project details and compared with other projects he was considering. Later that week while he was sitting with his friends he discussed the properties he has shortlisted, after taking all feedback next he went on Google search and search for the project, found one project website and dropped a lead for enquiry.
Continued focus on the last touch-based attribution would result in activities (intermediaries) becoming more focused on driving last-mile conversion making funnel leaner (or we say quantity problem)

Customer Journey?

Let’s take a look at Typical Customer Journey through the funnel.

Acquisition

Awareness: This is an introduction stage where brand introduces itself to the prospect. At this stage user don’t know about the value of your project, focus here should be on showing the value of your project or service. Idea is to build trust and relationship.

Consideration

Interest: Once the introduction is done has been established prospect become interested in the product, they want to know more about the brand, their achievements, past performance, etc. The brand should ensure they have enough authoritative content sponsored by industry peers or experts to build trust further and nurture relationships. Online portals/experts reviewing product can be considered for a specific solution.

Desire: At this stage, prospects is actively a brand’s product or services. At the same time they comparing other products and services preferably on Aggregator/Websites/Forums collecting more information to work out their decision. This is an opportunity for marketers to make a strong case for why their product is the best choice for a buyer. Up until this stage they had very low intent with respect to dropping a lead or getting involved with the brand on a 1-1 basis. But each of the earlier steps helped in shaping his/her decision.

Conversion

Action: After going through earlier 3 stages now prospect is ready to make his decision. He/She is actively looking to make connections with the brand by searching, dropping leads, making site-visits before finally converting. Typically, marketing and sales should work together closely to nurture the decision-making process and convince the buyer that their brand’s product is the best choice.

Marketing Cliché

While I took you through the schooling of marketing Funnel Cliché, Important aspect I wanted to highlight was that by focusing on the last touch-based attribution we end up losing the sight of our customer journey were limited by technology we chose to ignore the impact of the process.

By having a hard focus on singular KPI for all marketing channels by ignoring their roles in the conversion funnel we are leaving a lot on the table. Prospect Funnel is becoming thinner, and we are seeing inflationary impact where too much of resources going for too few prospects. When we skip important steps we also see a drop in lead quality as well.

“Ramesh filled a lead for Project Rainbow, while he went home his wife told him that one of her friend’s relative had also purchased the flat from the same builder but they aren’t at all happy with the product, Ramesh went online to do more research about the same but he couldn’t find any authoritative content about their past or new projects no agency review/rating, etc., all he finds customer complaints. So when Builder calls Ramesh to follow-up on site-visit he politely declines”

There could be 1000s of such scenarios where builders are putting more and more efforts to drive leads but they fail to convert since important steps are skipped for lead nurturing

So what should a marketer do?

One Advice take ownership for a 360Degree Marketing bring back focus on the customer.
Marketers should plan for the customer rather than a channel. They should start with who they (customers), what they do, what places they visit. Being Present in the moment matters and that’s where the focus should be.

I will leave you with this to ponder upon your next 360Degree Marketing Plan.

Insights by: Amit Kumar
Senior Manager – Digital Marketing