Real estate digital marketing- New Trends in 2020

You don’t need an extensive survey to recognize the downturn of the real estate business in 2019. According to the real estate statistics, even the country’s most resilient real estate zone- Bangalore, has seen the real estate market drop by 35% in 2019 when compared to the previous year. Also, being a real estate developer in Bangalore and surviving among the real estate giants like Prestige, Shoba and Brigade is no simple task. As a real estate developer in 2020, to have a business lead and converting the lead to a successful business deal is quite difficult to achieve only with traditional real estate marketing strategies. You also need a strong online presence with dedicated digital marketing strategies for real estate customized to your business needs to stand out from your competitors in this digital era.

This is a real estate digital marketing case study of a Bangalore based real estate company that had a very rare online presence. They came to us with a huge task in hand. They wanted us to generate leads online for their plotted-development in Devanahalli. We took up the challenge in September 2019 to devise a customized real estate digital marketing campaigns to generate leads for them.

The following insight indicates how we made it possible.

For a company that lacked digital marketing initiatives and had a very rare online presence, devising a successful real estate digital marketing campaign needed a thorough and systematic planning. 

Understanding marketing difficulties

Our first step was to analyze the difficulties the developers had in marketing this property. They were, 

• When compared to apartments, plotted developments did not gain much popularity among the people.
• The location of the property was very far from the main city.
• The developers were not popular like other real estate giants.
• The real estate market in that area was highly competitive.

Additionally,

• Their online presence was very rare.
• Their website needed a better UI.
• They had no social media marketing campaigns.

A thorough market research 

Our next step was to analyze the marketing perspectives of the property by doing thorough market research. This included,

• Visiting the property.
• Interacting with the sales team and the company founders to gather valuable insights.
• Analyzing the yearly statistical data on real estate marketing and plotted developments to gain an edge on the current real estate trends.

Also, we identified the top competitors for our client in the area and we did an extensive competitor analysis. This included,

• Analyzing their website’s SEO strategies.
• Research on their social media integration- gathering insights on how effectively they are using social media platforms.
• Analyzing and comparing competitor marketing strategies.

After performing a detailed analysis and a thorough competitive research, we now had the data to identify the key areas for improvement. We planned to do an extensive real estate digital marketing campaign starting with restructuring these key areas.

Analyzing the selling points of the property

After obtaining the data from our research, we analyzed it and found the potential selling points. This was pivotal in planning our real estate digital marketing strategy. Our analysis concluded the following results. 

• Bengaluru international airport is just 15 minutes away from the property.
• The property had easy connectivity across Bangalore via NH 44- the 6 lane Bellary road connecting Hebbal to Devanahalli.
• Government proposed the construction of a metro station and 12,000-acre BIAL Investment region in Devanahalli.
• 1500 billion rupees worth Science park, Aerospace SEZ, IT and biotech park, Integrated textile centre and logistics park were coming in the area.
• Over 55multinational IT companies including Infosys, WIPRO, Shell and IFCI were planning to set-up their new office in Devanahalli.
• This meant 4 million+ job opportunities.
• The property also had reputed schools, medical institutions and recreational centres at close proximity.

Also, our client had the advantage that,

• It is a gated community. People were more likely to feel safe and secure in a gated community.
• They did not charge a premium for the brand like their competitors.
• And the area where the property is situated saw 13.4% growth annually.

These selling points insisted people on the idea that, investing in this plotted development would have a great ROI owing to the upcoming economic growth due to the potential developments and social establishments in the area.

Identifying the right target audience 

After obtaining the selling points, we planned to find our target audience to start our real estate digital marketing campaigns. So, on the basis of our communication with the client, we decided to target the people based on the following demographics,

1. NRIs who are likely to invest in India.
2. People from Bangalore, who are interested in the property.
3. People who fall in the age group of 28 – 55.
4. People whose annual income is more than average annual income.

Based on these data, we planned to device a compelling real estate digital marketing strategy to promote their property.

Conversion focussed plan to action

We started our real estate digital marketing campaign by designing a landing page for the advertisements. The design and development took two weeks to complete. We used tools like Adobe XD for wireframing, prototyping and design and WordPress as Content management system for development. 

• We made good use of Google optimize to create custom landing pages for the campaign. This helped us to customize the user experience to suit each type of audience.
• We designed and built 2 different landing pages with different designs and surveyed the audience response.
• We finalized the landing page which provided seamless experience for the users.
• The landing page built to support both computer users as well as mobile users.
• The landing page also contained chat and call features for customer inquiry.

With the website up and running, we set up ad campaigns and lead generation campaigns on Google and Facebook and targeted our potential customers.

• We ran lead gen campaigns in Facebook to generate leads from Dubai, Qatar, Mumbai and Bangalore.
• We created promotional content and posted ads on Facebook which included posters and videos.
• We ran Google search ads in Bangalore and Qatar. Search ads targeted the customers who explicitly search online for investing in plots.
• For NRIs in Dubai, Qatar, Saudi, Bahrain and Omar, we concentrated on Google display ads where we targeted the
• people who search for Indian cricket and Indian regional movies online, people who read Indian newspapers online and the NRIs who planned to visit India.

We took the task of devising customized real estate digital marketing strategy to generating online leads for our real estate client in September 2019. We redesigned and rebuilt their website and did an extensive real estate digital marketing campaign to market their property. As a result of our real estate digital marketing strategies, in just 3 months into the project, the website started generating a good number of traffic and the Ad campaigns on Google and Facebook started receiving significant number of clicks. Currently our client is running a successful real estate business receiving 900 leads per month with our successful real estate digital marketing campaign.