Virtual is the New Real for Real Estate in the Post-Covid World

The real estate sector is currently realigning its marketing strategies and rethinking the business models in the post-Covid world. It was an honour for me, moderating virtual panel discussion entitled "Re-thinking real estate marketing considering the current Covid situation" organized by CorpGini recently. The esteemed panelists included Dhruba Ghosh, Sr VP Marketing at Provident Housing (Puravankara Group), Vyoma Pandit, CMO at Shriram Properties, Bhasker Jain, Head Marketing at the Wadhwa Group, Suresh Rangarajan, CEO Colive, Bharat Gaddam, CEO Cognitive ROI, Ex DDB Mudra, Ravikant, MD, Elegance Enterprises & Shashikiran Kalyanpur, Marketing veteran.

It was an endeavour to bring experts and best marketing minds together for a brainstorming session and as a moderator I shared my views along with other panelists. This write-up is not only a gist of my views but also my take from the panel discussion.

Changes in demand and buyer psyche

The discussion centered on the changes that will be witnessed by the real estate landscape against the backdrop of social distancing and work from home norms. I strongly feel that the market now constitutes of bargain hunters with ready funds and cautious buyers who are in the wait and watch mode. There will be an affinity towards RTMI projects (ready to move in), and work from home enabled housing.

Media Mix

Real estate brands will have to change their marketing strategies and maintain a continuous communication channel with the customers. I feel that the focus should be on the previous, current, and prospective customer database along with selecting the right media platform to use. Marketing campaigns right now must focus on being educative, empathizing, and not so much on new lead generation and hard selling. With marketing budgets being shrunk by 50-70%, the post-covid media mix must have around 90% digital & 10% for anything else.

Go ‘Digital’ to go forward

Real estate is on the path of digitization across all touch points. On the discovery side I feel that it can be done with virtual tours, immersive experience VR/AR technologies while website information architecture, online customer interaction, online expos, and a fully enabled online unit selection could be adopted into the selection phase. The third phase of the transaction could evolve digitally through initiatives like online booking and registering an expression of interest.

Sales are happening

How I see the roadmap in the coming days is that the industry will have to follow some principles to stay ahead in the game and these include:

• Aligning the right schemes and offers considering the current market sentiments
• Embracing online enablement whereby digital is no more choice but a mandate. Do not miss out on the first-mover advantage in going digital.
• Stationing the sales reps at RTMI projects
• Initiating Stay Safe campaign that sends across the message: ‘we care for you’. It is the time for trust-building
• Finding common target customers with non-competing diverse industry partners and sharing a common customer database
• Organizing project webinars for prospective customers which can give a conversion rate to the tune of 10-15%

Residential product enhancement strategies 

1. Home office design, Co-working space within societies, amenities like meditation center, grocery store, saloon, medical shop within the campus will be in demand
2. Builders should be willing to adapt this new demand in their on-going or upcoming projects
3. Aptly sized, tier-2 cities inventories and affordable projects will be in demand 

Virtual is the new reality in the post-covid world. I feel that the choice for the real estate sector is to either jump on this wagon fast or be left behind. In case you missed the session, here is the panel discussion summary video:

If you are a professional in Real-estate industry, need help around virtual property launches, digital funnel building and re-aligning the digital roadmap across phases - discovery, inventory selection & transaction etc. Please reach me out at pawan(at)comezzo(dot)com, shall be happy to assist.

Would love to hear your comments. Cheers!