Innovative ads and greater ad budgets to woo buyers

Despite the market downturn, most of the real estate developers have upped their advertising budget by over 20%. This is just a case of increasing visibility for the players as most of the properties for the small developers are sold once their brand has a recall by the buyers. The print media is taking up the major chunk while the rest goes to the outdoors. Till some time back, advertisements were confined mostly property supplements or niche magazines, but with the slump in the realty market, developers are targetting the television and even print.

Stakes for developers are very high as their projects are not being sold in this high interest regime. Real estate developers are optimistic that the sceario will be good in the coming 6 months and hence are working on increasing their brand value for now.

Promotional activities are in full swing. Unitech, when it started its luxury project Grande launched an ambitious TV campaign just 4 weeks from the time the project commenced. The company also held special events - derby in Delhi and polo in Mumbai - in the past few weeks to attract buyers for the launch of its two new towers in the Grande project.

In a referral programme launched by a Mumbai-based developer, a buyer, who gets an additional customer, gets a 2% commission on the sale proceeds. In fact, to create hype, some developers have hosted pooja at the launch inviting guests.

When real estate company Unique Builders launched a condominium development near Jaipur, 3,510 Hindu priests performed traditional rituals and prayed for divine blessings. The number of priests equalled the number of condos on offer at the development, My Haveli@ Mannat1. The gimmick helped, and the project made up 63% of total residential sales last year in a softening Jaipur real estate market. It is an example of how developers are moving away from traditional marketing techniques and adopting novel strategies to attract reluctant homebuyers.

Mumbai-based Lodha Group hired an event management company to think up a different on-site experience for potential buyers to sell its luxury villas in Lonavala, a hill station near Mumbai.

The company conducts pre-visit interviews where personal details about the potential buyer are collected. Based on these, buyers are picked up in a luxury car, given their favourite magazine and offered a beverage to sip through the journey to the site, which is then followed up by a personalized trip around the site. Lodha adds a personal touch by clicking a photograph of the visitor on the site. The photograph is framed and then sent to the potential buyer as a memento.

It is time for innovative techniques to woo property buyers in this testing time. Only time will tell if these modern techniques are able to revive the recession that the real estate market has entered into.