6 Steps That'll Make Your Realty Brand Stronger

Branding Real Estate Projects For Better Marketing & Profits

?As a promoter your biggest concern is how to sell your projects as quickly as possible and that too at the best possible price. There was a time when, if the location were right, sales would take care of itself. Not anymore, in the current market scenario even the best-located projects are struggling with sales.

Lessons about how to consistently outperform the market can be drawn from best practices of highly successful companies in the sector. The reason they able to sell even in the most depressed market conditions is the strong project brands they build. These brands help differentiate, connect and consistently stay top-of-the-mind and hence are a source of constant flow of enquiries & leads.

How does one go about building such strong project brands?

Here in very brief is the essence of how you can build your brand in 6 simple steps.

1.   What Should Your Brand Mean To Your Potential Buyer?

Your very first step towards arriving at an answer to the above question is to first being able to define your brand. You need to be very sure about the first thing that you want your potential customer to think about when they hear your project’s name. Is it its expanse & greenery, its one apartment per floor planning, a celebrity architect, its accessibility, its superior amenities, affordability or some other differentiating factor? The key issue here is to isolate that one factor or a combination of factors that would differentiate it from the hundred others offering a roof and walls.

 2. Who Is Your Audience?

Who is most likely to value the differentiating feature that you’ve identified for your project? What kind of a person is he/she: income level, education, family status etc.? What kind of media do they consume, are they heavy social media or local newspaper kinds? The better you know the person for whom your brand communication is being created the more effective your messaging will be.

 3. Who Is Your Competition?

In any market there would be players offering to fulfil a customer’s needs. Never presume you have no competition. Get your intelligence in place, have your people pose as customers and visit all the similar kind of projects in the city/vicinity. Make a comparative statement of strengths and weaknesses; be very sure about the price point of competitive offerings, discounts, special packages, promotions like modular kitchen etc. You will be able fine tune your offering for your customer better when you know the competitive landscape.

 4. Design A Strategic Brand Identity Programme And Bring It To Life

Once you’ve understood your Brand and its relationship with its audience as well as it’s positioning in the competitive landscape you should know the look and feel of your brand. The colours, fonts, the slogan etc are the outward symbols that try and bring alive the soul of your brand. Look at it like a human being; if a person is a CEO of a professional company you’ll very easily know what kind of clothes he’ll wear, the language he’ll speak, the way he’ll behave in public, the clubs it’ll belong to, the company of people he’ll be seen in etc. this defines the personality of this person. Similarly your brand’s identity is a reflection of its personality that should be consistent at all times. Remember brand identity i.e. the way the brand is used in all communications whether on the website, blogs, signages, promotional literature etc has to be similar always, brand consistency is sacrosanct.

 5. Create The Right Buzz

“You cant save souls in an empty church.” said David Ogilvy in his book considered to be the bible for those starting out in advertising. You may have created the strongest brand but if it’s only on your drawing board and hasn’t reached its audience, it’s a total waste. Make sure you create platform-relevant compelling content capturing your brand’s personality and place it where your audience has the highest. Whether it’s the print advertising campaign, outdoor signage, collaterals or digital media, make sure its highly engaging, consistent and bang on brand proposition.

 6. Finally It’s All About Relationships

‘You can get the horse to the water, but you can’t make it drink.’ Your brand can get your potential customer to enquire, visit the site but after that it’s how the relationship is handled that will decide whether the sale will materialise. It is for this reason that I emphatically state ‘Branding is too important to be left only to Brand Managers alone.’ In fact one of my favourite lines is ‘From the CEO to the peon, everyone is a part of the branding process.” It’s the vibes the customer gets at every touch point that defines the brand for him, from the time he sees the ad, handles the brochure, visits the website, to the ambience of the builder’s office, the receptionist every little detail has to be taken care of. Hence the need for sensitising and training the entire staff for every interaction. Generating an enquiry for a real estate project today costs thousands of rupees, if mishandled not only will a potential sale be lost but it will create a bad word-of-mouth too. The objective should be that even if a sale doesn’t materialise for some reason, the enquiry has only good things to say about the builder and the project. That’s true branding!

Even large realty companies may find themselves not fully capable of handling all the above-mentioned branding processes; hence it makes immense sense to hire professionals with proven competencies in the areas strategic brand thinking and execution. After all it has been proven time and again that a brand is the most valuable asset that any company has.