Drones and 3Ds: real-estate players innovate to attract buyers

From using drones to film upcoming projects and offering 3D visuals of completed constructions, developers and real estate portals are going all out this festival season to close deals.

The real estate industry hopes to sell at least 2,00,000 residential units during the October-December period, which usually accounts for about 40 per cent of the annual sales. Industry watchers say developers are hoping to create a buzz with the help of digital marketing and soft tools.

Several developers said that they are using 3D walkthroughs that help customers visualise what they are acquiring. “We have used drones to capture the view of a project from various angles. For a consumer, the Internet is the first point of enquiry and we want the experience to be good,” says Advitiya Sharma, co-founder of Housing.com.

The company, which counts Tata Housing and Rustomjee among its clients, says it has about 10,000 projects under its net.

Several developers, including Tata Housing, Godrej, Mahindra, Wave and CHD already have a digital presence on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Pinterest.

Tata Housing recently partnered with Snapdeal to sell homes online.

“The world is moving towards new age marketing, where referrals and word-of-mouth are becoming very critical for brand building and sustaining growth,” says A Harikesh, Senior Vice-President, Marketing & Sales, Tata Housing Development Company. “This is why online and social media are extremely relevant for real estate marketers, as they help them engage with prospective buyers and build confidence in their product. ”

According to an Assocham study, realty firms spend about ₹2,500 crore every year on publicity across different media and digital marketing accounts.

Real estate portal CommonFloor.com has launched an augmented reality-based property search app called CommonFloor Real Estate, which also enables GPS-based map search and brings all its services to the mobile phone.

Industry watchers say that the shift to digital media is also helping developers cut costs by 10-15 per cent.

Ravi Saundh, COO, CHD Developers, says that compared with traditional marketing, which was either through newspaper advertisements or billboards, digital advertisements are far cheaper and have a longer shelf life.

“In 2006, we were using billboards and banners but now it is largely the digital medium. Going forward, we see the spend on digital increasing as more consumers log on to the net to make their purchase decision,” he says.