Real Estate Embraces Influencer Marketing

As pretty much everything goes digital in India, so is the process of buying a home. From searching property online to contacting sellers, brokers, channel partners and developers, arranging site visits and reading property blogs and reviews, the prospective urban homebuyer has taken the online route to buying their dream home.

Could developers be far behind then? Every major realty brand and even smaller developers have taken to digital marketing and social media engagement spending 30% of their advertising budget online. It makes sense for developers with less deep pockets who cannot afford to advertise on electronic and print media. Digital marketing costs a fraction of its traditional counterpart and promises a wider reach, especially among the affluent, urban middle class and millennials.

Statistics show that developers get approximately 20% business through online channels such as their own and channel partner websites, online broking platforms and search engine advertising. This ratio is bound to grow as India’s future generations get online.

While digital real estate marketing is cost effective, it is also fiercely competitive and cluttered. The same projects are advertised by multiple entities channel partners, keywords are bid intensely, information is duplicated and even some campaigns appear alike each other. What then can digital advertisers do to stand out? The answer may lie in the very social media platforms that digital marketers and social media experts are so widely advertising on.

Enter Influencer Marketing – a recent trend that relies on social media influencers to endorse real estate projects, much like the celebrity brand ambassadors who promote consumer goods on TV and in print.

What is Influencer Marketing?

An ‘Influencer’ is someone who can influence others. In marketing terms, influencers can influence people to buy products and services they promote. As a marketing tool, influencer marketing is not limited to digital mediums and platforms. The term and its use, however, largely owe their popularity to social media influencers – individuals with a large group of followers who get paid by advertisers to promote products and services.

In the democratic and borderless world of social media, influencers give voice to brands and products beyond the usual reach of social media marketing avenues. Their small or large armies of followers can be directly reached via a single post, story or video.

Recent figures according to INCA India Influencer Report show that Influencer Marketing is a Rs 900 crore industry with a 25% annual growth rate that projects its growth at Rs 2,500 crore by 2025. Brands are spending 73% of marketing budgets on influencers and only 27% on celebrities. The tide has turned as Bollywood megastars, sports stars, celebrities and media personalities make way for influencers who are stars in their own right and corner a collectively larger share of social media following.

Does Influencer Marketing work for the real estate sector?

With influencers promoting everything from cosmetics to health food to holiday destinations on their social media channels, there is no apparent reason why they cannot promote homes and property. Choosing a home via Facebook and Instagram is now a reality. Real estate brands and their marketers have sensed that it’s time to be in the game.

This Hindustan Times story cites the example of Bengaluru-based influencer, Neha Somvanshi, who promotes real-estate, travel and lifestyle to her nearly 23,000 followers on Instagram. She posts about new projects for a local real estate developer without it making her stories look like obvious marketing. Post her success with this developer, Neha has been approached by homestay brands, co-living brands and other developers too.

Neha’s is not a one-off story. Developers are increasingly testing the effectiveness of social media influencers to promote new projects. Closer home in Mumbai, Lodha, Marathon, Piramal and many other top-drawer real estate brands are employing influencers to tell authentic and relatable stories. Mayur Shah, MD of Marathon Group says, “Real-estate has traditionally been heavily influenced by word of mouth and referrals and that continues to be an important driving factor for sales. Influencer marketing strikes a balance between word-of-mouth referrals and traditional advertising by bringing a certain degree of authenticity and resonance to the message.”

Influencer marketing is indeed resonating with India’s homebuyers who scouring social media platforms for the next great deal on their dream home and looking up to their favourite influencer for affirmation.