Why radio's rhythm is real estate’s best beat
For those who think radio is dead, note this – radio as a medium still has a powerful reach to about 400 million homes. And a testament to the fact that radio is nowhere near extinction is the amount of audio content and the number of podcasts being generated.
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From a consumer perspective, real estate requires interested buyers to briefly see the property visuals or at least the planned layout, but radio provides none. How does radio help in catering to the sector’s target audience? Radio, as a medium, offers several advantages that make it particularly appealing to the real estate sector, says Hussain. It serves as an excellent call-to-action medium, building a strong consideration set for their target group. Moreover, a substantial part of radio listeners is the car-driving audience, which significantly overlaps with the potential customer base for real estate. Moreover, radio is listened to numerous times during the day, unlike print media, which is usually only consumed once. This allows advertisers to repeatedly contact the same target population. Additionally, since traffic is steady throughout the day, real estate marketers can target different audiences at different times, he explained.
In more encouraging signs, it is not just large-cap sectors like FMCG and Auto, but we are seeing Real Estate players aggressively investing in the medium. According to TAM AdEx, the ‘Property and Real Estate’ category took the highest share of 16 per cent in ad volumes in 2023.
Speaking numbers
Ashish Tandon, Chief Sales Officer, Emaar India shared that radio creates brand awareness as well as maintains Top of Mind Awareness (TOMA) for the product. This is why real estate developers, on an average, spends about 3-5 per cent of their marketing money on radio, he said.
Sharing a radio channel’s perspective, M N Hussain, National Director Radio Sales, ENIL (owner of Mirchi Radio), revealed that approximately a tenth of their advertisers are from the real estate sector.
As for Abe Thomas, CEO of Reliance Broadcast network (owner of BIG FM), the radio channel had over 5,000 advertisers from the real estate sector across all 58 markets, through the whole year. As of now, about 6 per cent of their advertisers are real estate players.
How radio helps
Emaar India looks at Radio Advertising as an economical mass media option that draws on the concept of frequency and timing of messaging.
The hyperlocal nature of radio targets specific geographic areas, allowing real estate developers to reach potential buyers or renters in the neighborhoods they serve.
“The real estate industry derives most of its sales from pre-launch and launch phases, requiring high-frequency short-term campaigns, and radio is a perfect fit for this need. Additionally, radio allows geographical and language targeting, further enhancing the advertising effectiveness,” added Hussain.
What’s next?
The future of this sector on the GHz medium seems bright. Properties or Real Estates were among the categories that saw the highest increase in ad secondages with growth of 32 per cent in 2023, according to TAM AdEX.
Looking ahead, Hussain anticipates a further increase in the real estate advertising spends. Real Estate as a sector is expected to remain buoyant this year too with massive growth expected from Tier II cities where radio enjoys a larger share of mind among its audience.
While Emaar will continue to spend a proportionate amount on radio for their product launches, BIG FM expects radio to be in the top three categories of radio for the next couple of years because the whole country seems to be into housing.
Thomas said, “As we get to the third largest economy, real estate will drive that growth since there's a lot of things happening in the economy itself. The infrastructure is growing, highways are coming up, which is driving more industries and which is driving more homes accordingly. As the economy is growing, real estate has a lot of headroom to grow too.”
Tags : Radio Real Estate