3INVESTONLINE – One inevitable term at any real estate gathering in Nigeria these days is “Green Building” or “Smart Buildings”, depending on how obfuscating the speaker intends to sound. A number of real estate developers and marketers are also always in a hurry to slam the term on customers’ faces. My interest today is not to define what is “green”. Rather to ask: if truly, you’ve got Green Real Estate, why the attempt to sell using “black”, traditional marketing?

Roughly defined, a Green Real Estate will be an eco-friendly construction that conserves energy, water and makes the environment fresher. It may therefore follow that “Green Marketing” will be that which conserves power, energy and makes the environment cleaner. So to sell your “Green” Real Estate with flyers/posters that litter the streets, TV commercials that runs on power, or having customers to buy newspapers they have to manually flip through, is a black marketing strategy – a misfit!

If you have never given it a thought, permit me to prompt you. Lately, you’re exposed to more marketing messages online than you’re exposed to in traditional TV, Newspapers and radio (Print and Electronic). Hang in there! Before my submission sounds like some illicit generalizations; let’s flip it this way: in this age when everything is smart – including Techno phones – what is the percentage of information you get on your phone against those you get from regular news media?

I’ll rather not ask when last you bought a newspaper and you took the pain to read it. And we can start a whole discussion on how parents now have to struggle TV remote-controls with their kids in the contest for news channel vs Disney Channel – and at worst times, African Magic! In my house, we have a time table.

Finally, before I get to my point, consider how many times you open Yahoo, Gmail, Sitemail and sundry sites in a day. What do you see on the landing pages? Marketing messages, isn’t it?

My point is this: your customers are going online, get there before them! I used to argue that the best way to sell Real Estate in Nigeria is through traditional media. I know some Realtors in the industry who are religious buyers of hard copies and unrepentant followers of the Money Show and CNBC Africa. But what quantum of the market do they constitute? Do they really buy or they spot to sell? No doubt, they are not lost in the equation, but you don’t have to target your market at them. They will look for it anyway – that’s the only way they make money! But the real buyers would not. They will buy what is available as at the time of their search in assumption that what can’t be found on the internet, probably doesn’t exist or it isn’t substandard.

Coming online with your Real Estate marketing plan this year will immediately give you the following:

1.     Defined Market: Let me begin from the marketers of the Green Real Estate. This market is obviously not for the average Nigerian. In fact, most of the projects secured funding on the projection that multinationals and FDIs are looking into the country. These expatriates and a few Nigerians are the ones who appreciate the “Greeness” of your projects. You will agree with me that targeting them offline is not an entirely remarkable idea. Imagine you’re going to visit Ghana; will you order a Ghanaian Newspaper, pay more to access Ghana TV or just ask Google “hotels in Legon?” So put your properties where buyers will find them when they type “Green Real Estate(s) in Nigeria” on the World Wide Web.

2.     A Green Marketing Budget: We can start this by placing the cost of a full page advert at an average of N150, 000 per publication and an online banner at an average of N250, 000 per month. The question you’ve not probably asked your media buyers is how many copies of newspapers are printed and circulated these days; and how many people actually have time to watch TV after a strangulating day in traffic? If need be, you may want to consider turning your budget upside down; after all, it is estimated globally that 62% of marketing budget will go the digital way this year.

3.     Puts you in control of your message: Some three years back, my boss used to tell me: “internet is the cheapest ‘advertising’ platform ‘God’ has given humanity”. Not anymore! Nevertheless, even with the likes of Facebook, Wikipedia, Twitter, etc now asking for money; you can’t compare the space you can get online to what you get in traditional media. For example to buy a whole domain name on WordPress is less than N3, 000 a year. Imagine what space a blog can give you. You can issue your press release and publish them without having to ‘romance’ the “editors at the top”. You can just do whatever you wish with your message!

4.     Makes the Marketing Communication two ways: My interest is not to discuss Social Media today, but online gives you ways of getting immediate feedbacks. If someone clicks your page, you can know where the person is and you have the opportunity of following up on the lead – you can’t get that on TV – 60 seconds and that’s all! It also gives you a window to measure performance, re-think strategies and the process progresses.

In conclusion, it is said that ‘only contemporary dogs that can chase the contemporary rabbits’; if we want to go global with Nigeria’s Real Estate industry, we cannot remain in the black days of relying on hard-copy property listing publications as the main source; and online as complementary – in fact, 2014 should reverse the case. We’ve got to go green!

Now it’s your turn. How would you prefer to do your marketing this year – Green, Blue or Black? Leave your thoughts in the column below.

Written by Olusesan Ogunyooye – Email

I am on twitter.

2014-01-12