CommonFloor.com: House agents

From just listing properties for renting, selling or buying, real estate portals have become research destinations. These portals are thinking beyond the commission they make by coming out with ideas that help the buyer or seller. Take CommonFloor.com. It has launched a new marketing campaign - with the tagline, "No Darr. Find Ghar." - to help nervous newbies overcome the fear of making property related decisions.

It also shows how the site's features - Verified Property Listings, Map Search, Direct Call (to property owners, available on its mobile app) and a Virtual Tour - can empower every consumer. The campaign will run across other media like print, outdoor, digital, cinema and radio.

The TVC typically targets the males, in SEC A and B across Tier I and II cities, who are into selling and buying property. The brand is eyeing new users while getting the existing user to use the platform regularly.

Common ground

CommonFloor was launched in 2007. So what took them so long to launch a TV campaign, when almost every consumer-focused internet company in India has embraced the platform long back?

Says Sumit Jain, co-founder and CEO, CommonFloor.com, "We just wanted to make sure that the foundation and the business sense required to launch a TVC was achieved by the platform. We wanted to make sure that the platform was capable enough to monetise the added amount of traffic that we will get through the TVC."

Jain also explains that the objective of this campaign was to highlight the problems faced by property seekers and how CommonFloor.com addresses this issue. Highlighting the objective behind the campaign, Vinayak Warke, VP- marketing, CommonFloor.com says, "The campaign focuses on increasing the brand awareness of CommonFloor.com and also showcases our mobile app, which will enhance the property search greatly."

The creative execution, believes RP Singh, CEO, Sirez Group, is different and that's what one needs in advertising. "You at least stand out in a cluttered market by being different. However the quality of ad, actors used or messaging will not appeal to slightly higher income group users," he adds.

Singh believes that users might look at the website once but ultimately it is the quality which decides stickiness. "So asking users to shift platforms will not be so easy," he says.

Presenting his views on the ad, Pradeep Chopra, CEO, Digital Vidya, states that though this commercial communicates the key message that finding a property can be a nightmare, it didn't leave a positive experience. "The same level of exaggeration in a hilarious context could have been more pleasing and had more impact. Also, it didn't showcase strengths such as the 'augmented reality' feature of their mobile app," he adds.

The real scene

Despite the growing popularity of the internet in the purchase decisions of home buyers, builders still spend only 6-7 per cent of their marketing and advertising budgets online, as a Google India study found. By contrast, 75 per cent of the budget is spent on print advertisements and the rest on TV and outdoor media. Real estate firms throughout India spend about Rs 2,500 crore annually on publicity across different media.

The Google study is based on data from field research conducted by marketing research firm Zinnov, between January and April. The survey was conducted across 15 cities with over 6,000 respondents.

The study reveals that the overall influence of internet on real estate transactions for both residential and commercial property including rentals amounted to $43 billion in 2013 (with $31 billion for residential and $12 billion for commercial properties).

Property agents and builders, says Jain, are not quite comfortable in dealing with the internet, which is why online marketing spend is so less. "But when it comes to property owners looking to sell, the affinity with internet is more. That is why we are looking at differentiating with others and have so far got 21 lakh property owners directly listing their properties on the platform. We also make sure that the property details listed on the website are correct and verify them manually," he adds.

According to Warke, mass media helps a platform like CommonFloor to reach a larger audience in terms of buyers and also create a brand for itself so as to attract more sellers. Accel India and Tiger Global have funded the portal.

At present, Commonfloor.com claims that the number of active listings on the site have grown by 55 per cent in the last six months to four lakh in 120 cities. With over 5,000 paying customers that include top-of-the-line builders, brokers and other property agencies, CommonFloor.com is targeting a turnover of $25 million in the next two years.