Earlier this summer, digital marketing firm Amura organized the first-ever Indian Realty Flash Sale (IRFS), a four-day online real estate event showcasing properties across 15 cities and 50 top Indian developers. Given the time-sensitive nature of the sale, Amura teamed up with Taboola to boost its content promotion efforts, targeting niche audiences across the web in real-time, and driving engaged users to the IRFS microsite, generating over 500 new registrations throughout the sale.
Our teams recently published a case study featuring the key results and highlights of the overall campaign. Last week, we asked Amura’s paid media manager, Vaibhav Prabhune, to step into the Taboola Think Tank and provide his perspective on the unique challenges and opportunities of applying digital marketing to the real estate industry.
How does content marketing fit into Amura’s overall digital marketing portfolio?
VP: As our team sees inbound marketing gain precedence over outbound methods, insightful, relevant and well-planned content is vital to our overall marketing strategy.
At Amura, the content marketing we do via Taboola plays an important role in targeting category-specific audiences, and providing each group with content relevant to their interests, profiles and behaviors. After engaging these prospects with relevant content, we are able to recommend different product and promo portals that may be of interest, and progressively move them towards making a purchase.
Additionally, with real-time bidding on platforms like Taboola, we (as marketers) can look to get maximum reach at optimal costs. The self-service nature of the platform allows us to have full control over our inventory and spends.
What are the unique challenges and opportunities around digital marketing in the real estate industry?
VP: Real estate is a unique market because practically every product is very different from the rest, even within specific micro-markets. Thus, buyer interest is not necessarily an indication of buyer preference that might translate into an offline conversion. A major difficulty for marketers in this space is linking online marketing efforts and engagements with offline purchases.
On top of that, real estate is usually the most expensive purchase any customer will make in his or her lifetime, and is therefore characterized by extensive research, exploration, and indecision for the buyer, and an extended sales-cycle for the marketer.
This extended cycle means that the advertiser has to engage, monitor and nurture the audience at every phase of the buying process and create top-of-mind recall using relevant content and better targeting.
As traffic surges on mobile, how has Amura adapted its digital marketing strategies to reach and engage consumers on smaller screens?
VP: Mobile as an industry sector is now growing at an exponential rate, presenting marketers with a huge opportunity to move beyond traditional and digital media to target audiences directly on their mobile phones.
The personalised nature of the mobile platform, as a precisely targeted communication channel, calls for personalised communication – thus requiring more direct engagement with the user. With this in mind, we (as advertisers) are more focused on differentiated communication and campaigns that are optimized for cross-device marketing.
Can you provide our readers with 3 tips to help measure the success or failure of their sponsored content campaigns?
VP: In our industry, we find that digital marketing needs to walk a fine line between quality and value at every stage in the journey. For example, because of higher property prices and rebounding equity values in the Indian market, real estate buyers are much more price-sensitive and attuned to quality throughout their “consideration” cycle.
Thus, when executing our sponsored content campaigns, we have begun to look beyond simply leads, to focus our goals around: 1) maximizing reach; 2) creating awareness; and 3) engaging users with the brand. Similarly, the measurability of these campaigns rests on: 1) number of clicks; 2) time-on-site; and 3) specific post-click actions from the users on the site.
At Taboola, we often talk about the unique power of content to engage with consumers at all aspects of the “purchase” funnel, from awareness to consideration to conversion. Given the extended sales cycle in the real estate market, content is especially relevant and can be a powerful tool for not only reaching new prospects, but keeping them engaged over longer periods of time. We’re thrilled to continue our work with Amura and look forward to unlocking new winning strategies in this exciting space.
Check out the Taboola resources page for a full write-up of our case study with Amura, along with our data sheets, webinars, videos, ebooks and more.
Want to learn more about how Taboola can help boost your content marketing efforts? Contact us today!