With over 17 years of experience across advertising, retail and the telecom sectors, Prasun Kumar is a seasoned marketing professional, brand expert, blogger, technology enthusiast and an entrepreneur at heart. With previous experience from working with Levis, Sony and Reliance Communication, he is currently Head – Marketing at Magicbricks.com We present to you the ‘BTL Baatein’ of the week which is powered by VISCOMM with Santosh Jangid speaking to Prasun Kumar about Below The Line (BTL) advertising for real estate sector, focus of the company and the balance between ATL (Above The Line) and BTL.
In the real estate sector, how would you say have marketers adopted the concept of experiential marketing to its actual potential?
They are accepting it in a big way. The more you see around, you see developers putting up experiential homes and centres all over the place because at the end of the day with supply overshooting demand, every developer is in the hands for every single consumer and they want to create different creations and that different creation comes largely across by giving a real-life experiences. The footfall at a developer’s site where the project is being executed is very limited and therefore for a real estate developer to enhance his reach and saliency as well as engage and create differentiation, BTL becomes a very important field. So to that extend we see a lot of that happening but largely it’s done by big builders and developers who have deep pockets. Mid to small level developers are not into this at this point of time but there is a prime need on their part as well because everyone wants to be different. Everyone wants to showcase projects in full glory because traditional channels have limited opportunities. To that extent, it becomes very important and for brands like us who are an online real estate website, it is also very pertinent for us to create such experiences and create such differentiations because at the end of the day the consumer who is of a very high value category and has a high purchase item wants to be well-informed and for us to be able to enable that to happen we also keep creating such experiences for them.
How important is BTL to your overall marketing plan?
BTL is very important to us because real estate is a very touch-and-feel industry and consumers want to go, touch and feel the property. So it’s very important therefore to create stimulation for consumers where they can get probably as close to the house that they are looking for as possible. The closest is obviously to visit the site but from a marketing perspective, BTL allows us an opportunity. For instance, we have just last week, opened India’s first real estate experience centre in Mumbai. This experience centre is built on the Magicbricks Western Express Highway metro station where there is a captive footfall of over one lakh commuters every day. On the platform, we have built a 400 sq cm experience centre. Using technology, one can actually see the property that you might be looking for buy, sell, rent, etc., in a new light altogether and with more immersive experience which is otherwise not possible to deliver. Creating such stimulations in real life for consumers is very important especially in real estate business where it is a high ticket purchase item and high involvement activity and that’s why consumers want a lot of assurance before they take a decision and therefore the more the human touch, the better.
Can you also specify the range of activities that you undertake as part of the below-the-line advertising and promotion?
Apart from the experience centres, we keep doing activities on ground. Some of them are in malls and multiplexes where the captive footfall is huge. The main motive is to at the end of the day to create and help consumers find and close their decisions with a more informed and immerse way and that’s why whatever opportunities we get in terms of creating real time experience at captive footfall area we continuously do.
Magicbricks does regular consumer connect activities as part of its strategy to bring enhanced real estate experiences to its users. It has recently launched India’s First real estate Experience Centre in Mumbai. Located strategically at one of the busiest metro station in Mumbai, Magicbricks Western Express Highway Station, the centre is a never-before-seen innovation in the category. Using technologies like Virtual reality, Augmented Reality, large interactive screens and video chat , the centre elevates the property search experience of intenders and delivers never before seen consumer engagement. The thought behind the centre is to give potential home buyers an opportunity to get over the hardships associated with property search. In true BTL fashion, it gives the brand ‘Thought Leadership’ in the category. Apart from this, magicbricks.com keeps organising events like Real Estate Dialogues with the Developers / Builders. Normal Mall / Multiplex activities are staple part of the marketing initiatives at magicbricks.com.
Can you give a broad idea of your spends pie of ATL v/s BTL?
We do not quote the exact spends per se but between ATL and BTL we spend around 30% BTL and 70% on ATL but within BTL if we do some specific initiative like the magic bricks experience centre then that kind of twists the percentage ration but these are once in a while activity.
Do you prefer to do this through BTL agencies directly or via your existing creative/media agency?
Mostly the activities are done through BTL agencies because traditional media or creative agencies are not equipped with on ground activation team and the BTL agencies being specialist in that field bring in a lot of value on the table which otherwise probably would not come so for most of the activities including large scale activities we do it with BTL agencies.
In terms of generating results especially from consumers and in B2B, do you find BTL a more sure shot avenue than ATL?
I wouldn’t say in terms of results but the inherent benefit or strength of BTL is that you can through a fleet on data capture, lead capture, etc., you can show some tangible ROI on the investment which through ATL unless you are doing digital where ROI is something that you can measure which otherwise on traditional ATL is not possible. So BTL does have that advantage if your activity in terms of capturing dats, leads and database leads you to a better ROI.
While sales and salience are good indicators of its success, what are the attributes you look at to measure the success of a BTL campaign?
The success of a BTL campaign depends on the objective with which you are doing it. There are BTL campaigns which are done purely on a brand engagement purposes and there are BTL campaigns which are done largely to capture data and lead. These are two different kinds of BTL campaigns but in both the cases, in terms of looking at an indicator to identify whether the campaign had been successful or not the metric would be different for both. For a lead generation activity or a sales support activity, the indicator becomes their database or lead generation from that activity. The activities that we do which are purely on brand engagement there you end up capturing a lot of feedback and it can be used further. So it does not directly impact salience per se because there are no touch measure at this point of time which tell you what saliency it delivers but about sales, unless you are closing sales at the BTL venue you will not be able to… and most of the times sales are not allowed because most of the BTL campaigns happen in a pre-defined area like a mall or a multiplex or some crowded market area where you are not allowed to sell. You can engage, you can capture lead but you cannot sell. Sales and salience are not something that you can merely measure out of a BTL campaign but the consumer feedback about the brand and brand attributes is something that you can capture as well as for sales support campaign or lead generation campaign which ends up generating a lot of leads which transitions into potential sales indicators. That comes close to sales as an indicator but it is not pure sales.
There are many organisations that often do new launches almost entirely on BTL aided with an outdoor and/or digital blitz? Your views on this. Given rising media costs, do you see BTL managing on its own, without ATL?
I don’t think ATL vs BTL is the point. It’s about which channel or medium suits your objective at that point of time better. I have seen brands which have launched complete proposition on BTL largely because the proposition demanded a one to one consumer interaction or reaching out to a captive set of audiences which was not possible through ATL. I have seen brands using BTL largely as a standalone channel of reaching out to consumers and launching as well. That’s also possible but at the end of the day it all depends on the objective that you are carrying and how BTL or ATL or digital any of the channels in your strategy. I don’t think any force-fitting also helps. The inherent advantage of BTL is that because you are generating experiences, none of those experiences can become very engaging content for digital media, especially for social and therefore a lot of integration that can happen during a BTL activity and a lot of brands presently are doing that. BTL in terms of cost, a good event will cost as much as a full page ad on leading daily. So in terms of cost there is almost a parity.