We all make mistakes in business, and we learn from them, but in some industries like Real Estate, even small real estate marketing mistakes lead to a significant loss.
In the real estate business of selling homes, your real estate marketing strategy is critical to selling homes.
Suppose you need to promote your product with the correct information, proper manner, and at the right time. People may perceive your brand in another way, and they may buy a product from your competitor.
As per Statista, the market size of real Estate in India will grow from 180 billion U.S.U.S. dollars to 1000 billion U.S.U.S. dollars by 2030.
Source: Statista
I am showcasing these statistics because many industries are related to real Estate and work with real Estate. The Real Estate Industry contributes to the highest employment in India too.
I am writing this blog as I know this industry has many challenges in India. After 2016, the industry saw a challenging phase where many companies had to shut down their businesses or merge with more prominent companies.
But setting up the right approach and strategy will help real estate companies to do much better and achieve their sales goals.
Here Are 15 Real Estate Marketing Mistakes That Can Impact Your Sales Funnel
Not Doing a Market Research Before Making a Real Estate Marketing Plan
Real Estate is more of a local business, so you must do extensive market research before you launch your projects.
Research on the demand of configuration, buyers’ price expectations in that locality, perception of clients about locality, projects in that locality, competitor companies, and perception of buyers about them and your project or brand.
Market research helps you to know where you stand and what opportunities in the market you wouldn’t have known otherwise.
The research will also help you to set the right real estate marketing strategy for your project.
Not Setting Up a Right Real Estate Marketing Strategy
Among many real estate marketing strategies, I would like to discuss one design or a plan of action built around a project and sales goal timeline.
Real estate marketing strategy is based on two things, mainly your long-term goal and the project completion timeline.
Generally, the real estate marketing plan is divided into 3 to 4 parts based on the primary planned strategy of the sales goal.
This includes a soft launch or a property launch of a project, a sustenance campaign through the project’s construction, time-to-time offers on different festival occasions to achieve cash flow goals, and finally, when the project is completed, and the developer gets an O.C.
In this project lifestyle, the developer creates a marketing plan to set up different communications and choose the platforms to achieve the sales goal.
Not having this strategic planning will lead to a waste of the marketing budget and a loss of potential customers in the market.
Not Preparing Enough Marketing Collaterals
In any industry, before you start marketing, you should be well-equipped with all marketing collateral for your product or service.
Marketing collateral represents your brand and brings valuable leads to your business. From business cards to websites that include all the offline & online collaterals should be ready before a project’s launch.
Not Hiring Professional Creative or Branding Agency
Many companies don’t focus on branding, and they don’t invest any budget in it. Having proper communication with good graphics can give a better R.O.I.
Organizations need to think about the core of successful real estate marketing. It’s communication. You need to set up the proper communication to market any product.
Designing seems simple, but it takes years for professionals to build a brand basis on the right design and communication.
A real estate sale includes a product worth lakhs or crores; for many buyers, it’s once in a lifetime that they buy a home.
So, any of the developers need to have the right communication strategy with convincing visuals.
Avoiding Network Of Channel Partners:
In real estate sales, there are two ways to generate sales: through marketing efforts and through a network of channel partners and brokers.
Though marketing focuses on a larger side to achieve a bigger goal, channel partners focus on the local level, and they get clients through their network and business expertise.
It’s proven that channel partners play a crucial role in driving sales for any real estate project. Hence, they should be considered an integral part of sales strategy while planning.
The other more significant advantage of having them is they get the sales regularly and help the client and sales team throughout the process until the customer register.
Hence having them in your marketing and sales strategy is important.
Not Having A Website
It’s a fact that a website is a soul for your business.
For your online presence, everything is linked to your website, and all prospects visit your website before considering your project or home at any of your projects.
Make sure your website should have easy remembered URL, a good design/layout for easy navigation of a user, high-resolution images of the project, show flat videos or images, mobile responsive, enough information about the company and project, strong call to action, testimonials, faqs and at last it should upload fast for a better user experience.
If your website is not good enough and convincing, a user may leave it without further enquiring about your project.
If you lose any inquiry, it’s a big loss to you, as in real Estate, a single sales amount is bigger than an average product.
Not Spending On SEO
Everyone needs SEO, be it a B2b or B2c segment of a company. We all know that people use Google for all their queries.
No matter how good you are with the website or social media communication, if you fail to get organic traffic online, you may lose the quality of business leads.
SEO is critical for real estate companies, as most searches happen over Google. E.g., for any particular locality, people search for 1 & 2 B.H.K. at Vashi or 2 B.H.K. at Vashi.
So, in this case, developers in Vashi should optimize these keywords and try to rank for them, which will help them get quality leads.
This is how search engine optimization can help real estate companies to get quality leads through an online search on search engines.
Right keywords, good URLs, quality content, and backlinks will help you to convert the traffic into leads.
Though SEO is a long-term strategy, getting quality leads is very helpful.
Not Utilising The Power Of Social Media
Buying a home is an important financial decision; before anyone takes it, they search for it on social media too.
In the last ten years, the online screen time of a user has increased by 1000%.
Many real estate developers make a bigger mistake by not using social media to reach their audiences.
Social media has become integral to our lives; people spend most of their time on it today.
For any information, news, and knowledge, or any information, they check social media too.
So, providing them with the right information with offers, values, and testimonials increases the chances of them enquiring about your product.
Your presence will help you to build relationships with end-users, and they will start interacting with you for their requirements.
As large audiences are present on social media platforms, these companies also give their users a chance to reach out to them via ads.
These features can help you to bring out new clients by targeting different parameters and matrices available on these platforms, like geographic location, age, gender, occupation, etc.
Also Read: 7 best real estate lead generation tips for 2021
Not Using A Video Marketing For Communication
A well-made real estate video is key to converting leads into clients.
There are different video formats, like a virtual tour shoot, an aerial shoot of a property, or a walk-through. All are immensely useful in marketing your product to end-users.
Videos help buyers decide on their investments and push them to visit a site to see an actual property or their future homes.
By not investing in video marketing, many real estate companies lose the chance to convert their leads into customers.
Not Managing Your Leads Data
One of the biggest mistakes you make if you are a real estate developer or a marketer is not leveraging data correctly.
Using technology and CRM tools is something neglected by most developers today.
With the right technology and data management, you could manage data and teams correctly and reach out to many prospects.
These tools help you with lead management and resolve your many marketing challenges while communicating with clients.
These tools can help you capture leads in real time, remove duplication of leads, help you streamline your lead’s follow-up, and manage all data and information in one click.
Not Utilising Website Chatbots
Now, the real estate business is moving online. More than 50% of home buyers search for properties online.
The buying process has been simplified today because of the internet at each home and mobile.
By using chatbots on your website, you can easily streamline the work after office hours as chatbots on websites can answer all clients’ queries.
Chatbots not only provide information to prospects or visitors but also help you to schedule a site visit for prospects, and you will also come to know the queries as you get the chat history of each user.
There are many other benefits that a Chabot has, like data insights, quality leads, and lead capture.
Use chatbots if you are a developer or a real estate agent who doesn’t want to lose a visitor from your website.
Not Investing In Real Estate Portals
Real estate property portals are very helpful in generating leads.
If you don’t have much marketing budget, investing in a real estate portal should be prioritized while setting up a marketing strategy.
As these portals will give you space online along with your competition. So, you will also have a chance to get a lead, along with your competition for people looking for a property in the same locality.
Also, read Top 5 Real Estate Property Portals In India Today.
Not Investing In Google Ads
Online advertisement on Google is very helpful for all real estate industry professionals, whether you are a developer or an agent.
Though platforms seem to be complicated, once you know how it works and how to do targeting through keywords, Google Ads will help you to generate high-quality leads.
Targeting area, configuration, and brand-specific keywords will help get the right amount of traffic to your website or landing page.
These visitors are already aware of the property as they have dropped an inquiry after knowing about your property, so the chances of closures are very high.
Not Using Email Marketing Tools:
If you are still thinking about how I can promote my business online at less cost per lead, then let me tell you email marketing is one of the best platforms to use it.
If you have a database of all your leads with email marketing, you can leverage and use the email marketing tool to drive your sales.
Through email marketing, you can reach out to your target audience or people who had enquired earlier.
The average open click rate for email marketing is 14%, which is very good for reaching your target audiences.
More than 50% of the world’s population, including your target audience, uses email. So if you are not using email marketing to generate leads, you are missing out on a big opportunity for sales.
Not Focusing On Customer Experience
Customer Experience is the core of the real estate industry. Customer experience is something that can set you apart from your competition.
Setting up the right tools to provide maximum information to customers at the site, along with the right hospitality and smooth process, will help any real estate brand to create a positive space in a customer’s mind.
The good experience will not only help you to enhance your brand image, but customers may end up buying your home; not only this, but they will also give you more referrals, which may save your marketing spending as they promote you through word-of-mouth publicity.
Final Thought:
In the service industry, it doesn’t matter what you sell; what matters is how you do it, which sets you apart from your competition.
While making a marketing plan, make sure you focus on your goal, think about the future of real estate marketing, and utilize all real estate marketing techniques we have today with the support of technology.
These future techniques will help you stand apart from competing for tuition, techniques like 3D experience to customers, 360* shoots, virtual tours of the property, website chatbots, etc. Here I am with all the communication channels that can provide clients with enough information and give them the best experience.
Suppose you are thinking about the right real estate marketing strategy in India. Let me tell you, there is no such right or wrong strategy. Just focus on customer experience and build your strategy around it.
You can contact me if you are looking for more real estate marketing tips.
Frequently Asked Questions (F.A.Q.s) :
How can I decide on a budget for my projects?
Setting up a marketing budget for a project depends on management. It’s a management call to decide a percentage on spends. Generally, most companies spend 4% of project sales revenue. However, some companies spend up to 8%, considering the market scenario, challenges, and how fast they want to sell the project.
How can I promote my real estate project?
If you are facing a marketing challenge or if you don’t have a team, you can outsource the project. Many real estate marketing companies in India can help you set up the right strategies using their knowledge and different real estate marketing techniques. If you are looking for any such companies, you can contact Xanadu Realty or Anarock.
You can also set up a plan around the pointers mentioned above, and if you don’t have much budget, you can avoid google ads, but rest of the pointers mentioned above, you should consider selling your project.
Where should I invest on the website or real estate marketing portals first?
First, you should have a website for your business as buyers first want to see from whom they are planning to buy their home and. also it increases your credibility and puts a positive impression in the mind of visitors.
Once you have a basic website, you should start investing in SEO. Still, if you have a budget constraint and want to generate leads, you can start with property portals before planning any other lead-generation activity.