What do you think of real estate marketing in Saudi Arabia today?
Demand fluctuations and unexpected factors in the real estate market drive the need to predict the trends of customers and investors, so real estate marketers need to be on standby, master many tools, and consciously forecast demand for each period.
In this article, we review the focus of real estate marketing between the old and the new.
Traditional practices
The real estate marketer was seen as a seller who has no role except in the last phase of the transaction for a product that developers and engineers have worked hard to produce.
Because the whole process clings to the idea that housing, as long as it is a basic need, will force the consumer to buy to achieve that need, and there is no need for a major marketing effort if the demand is unified.
In the past, we used to ask about the behavior of real estate stakeholders, what they want and what they prefer in their homes, and we don't find a clear answer, but today the answer has changed completely. What's the reason?
Today's dramatic shift in consumer preferences, after the pandemic, has had a radical impact on the recent housing preferences after many realized the condition of their homes, which allocated not a small part of their homes to guests, resulting from the common division of homes and wasted spaces that could have been used.
Because of the technical migration of most companies to the remote work system, the idea is beginning to take its seriousness in creating office space for work and study at home, taking advantage of the outdoor spaces as a breather during breaks and creating a pleasant atmosphere for the family. If we compare the average family income from the 1980s to the present, the rate of family income has increased.
The desire for individual independence while opening up to the world through education, travel and the internet have increased curiosity and the pursuit of uniqueness and excellence, thus turning the page that housing is just a need, to a new page of wants.
There is no doubt that government programs have greatly contributed to changing attitudes of society, including the Quality of Life Program, which encourages the inclusion of quality within the housing units.
All these factors must be taken into account by the real estate marketer.
New practices
Marketing is the backbone of companies whose work is based on the production of real estate services or products and one of the criteria for the company's success in the market depends on the position of its marketing. After searching for the latest developments in real estate marketing in the world, we found that the marketing complex goes through three stations, starting with the search process, studying the region and tracking customer behavior to establish a targeted marketing plan, and ending with the marketing means taken.
1) Marketing research centers
The first phase of the marketing journey, which studies consumer decisions based on the neoclassical economy for extracting behaviors and preferences, based on the interpretation of the true motivation and prediction of consumer behavior in the future.
Real estate researchers examine demographic transformations as values, beliefs and external practices that affect a particular society, with psychology and sociology introduced to the results of studies to explain the underlying causes of these behaviors. This information is consolidated through interviews and questionnaires, databases, archived files and other methods.
2) Value-added marketing plan
In the second phase, there is the creation of a marketing plan so that companies market real estate in an innovative matter, marketing plans are many but the most famous marketing plan is value added and it is one of the fastest ways to market real estate projects used in the world, focusing its work on raising sales and acquiring new customers systematically and scientifically through marketing campaigns that are different from traditional campaigns carrying added value to the target audience so that not to advertise itself for the goal of buying and selling only but trying to help the public in overcoming challenges or offering certain solutions.
3) Real estate marketing methods
Some people might limit marketing as the stage where the product is acquired, without acknowledging the marketing effort and hard work with tools through multimedia or modern technological methods, in addition to exhibitions and physical sales, and some are:
VR virtual reality technology
Virtual tours have become the preferred way to view properties and have increased the number of visits to the real estate market around the world, and this technology simply displays everything you see on the screen with a solution connected to your PC or mobile. The main reason for applying this technology is that 70% of those who use phones prefer content sources that provide real information about the product, and experts have proven that 35% of them buy without actually visiting the site.
° 360 imaging
It is a panoramic photography that photographs the real estate product simultaneously and in all directions in high resolution, so that the public can enter the property and wander inside it as if they were actually there. Property technology sites that automate the real estate marketing process and stimulate the use of means easily, and readily in a short time to help the real estate marketer create technical tools for project management that connect the marketer to his team of vendors, designers and others.
Multimedia channels
Video content is the number one thrill and one of the biggest marketing tools and real estate companies have pursued in marketing their brand by introducing human sense, humor and community participation in videos. As the world pours into social media, it is no longer a chat booth with friends, but powerful tools that can be used for business as well. In addition to producing electronic brochures that are illustrated for all the contents of the property in an attractive way that answers all consumer questions.
Future direction
The marketing practices in real estate are developing rapidly. This is a reality where the Ministry of Housing and the Real Estate Institute play an important role in making real estate marketers more efficient and giving them the tools to push marketers to perform actual marketing tasks. We still notice a general concept of the role of the marketer and limit it to bring customers to inspect the real estate product to complete the deal and limit its work to publishing ads while these are marketing means as mentioned and are part of the entire marketing process. This undoubtedly confuses the concept of the role of the broker and the role of the marketer. The new regulations in Saudi Arabia are evolving towards a complementary specialty market in terms of distinguishing between the two tracks and regulating the real estate market. It is worth mentioning that real estate marketing companies that entered the market through global marketing faced challenges, they found that marketing methods vary from society to society and are not a condition to suit the real estate market in Saudi Arabia, which makes the picture very clear to us when we find most citizens and residents dealing with real estate offices while businessmen deal with real estate marketing companies.
Recommendations
Saudi Arabia races the world in technology and ranked first in major areas, and in every field that lives up to the quality of life in it remains to be mastered by the real estate marketer with his marketing tools and reaches the stage of keeping pace with the flow of professional marketing in the world and what is important is to achieve the goal of understanding what the consumers want today.
Some suggestions: