Smart Marketing Strategies For Smart Projects

The Indian real estate industry sadly remains a male bastion, where women are still underrepresented, especially in the higher echelons. However, Anjana Sastri, Director, Marketing at Sterling Developers, is shattering that glass ceiling and setting a benchmark for wannabe women realty market professionals.

The second-generation entrepreneur entered the business at a time when marketing in real estate was evolving.

Sastri has successfully led the evolution of Sterling Developers’ marketing strategies from the traditional to more dynamic and digital methods, operating as an intrapreneur. “My focus has been enhancing customer experience in unconventional ways and improving the buying process through the integration of technology and virtual reality. I have worked on developing 4D walk-throughs for all our residential projects. We offer live digital walk-throughs of a project as well, and we have digitized a major part of the buying process to ensure that our customers can not only see and select their dream home online, but also purchase it,” says Sastri, Director, Marketing for Sterling Developers. Sterling Developers was among the early entrants into the real estate industry in Bangalore. Having started off with single building projects, it has now expanded into multi building projects and villa communities. More than 100 employees are involved in various roles at Sterling Developers. Sastri delivers unique campaigns by pairing her MBA degree from the University of Michigan Ross School of Business with her in-depth understanding of the marketing tools used in the realty sector.

She also looks into the sales vertical of the company and assists in developing sales strategies. “Over the past three to four years, digital marketing in real estate has gained a lot of popularity. I have worked on understanding the process flow of lead conversion through digital platforms and through trial and error, have optimized our campaigns to bring us leads at a competitive cost per qualified lead,” she reveals.

“Going beyond that I have focused on driving site visits through these digital campaigns and worked on optimizing the cost per qualified site visit as well. In addition to lead generation through the digital campaign, I have also worked closely with digital housing portals to list our projects and generate a robust lead flow from these sources as well,” says Sastri.

Road Ahead
Sastri holds a degree in Bachelor of Science (B.S.) Business Administration and Management, focused on Marketing and Organizational Behaviour from Boston University’s Questrom School of Business and an MBA from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. She is the CREDAI Youth Wing representative at CREDAI national for new initiatives. She was previously the South Zone and Karnataka State Representative for the CREDAI clean city movement. Sastri believes that smart cities are the future. In her first role in the Clean City Movement, she was focused on helping cities across the south turn cleaner and greener.

Sastri aims to play a key role in enabling Sterling Developers to get into the commercial real estate space. She is also drawing up plans to push the company into new geographic locations and serve markets beyond Bangalore. Sastri foresees a drop in the average age of firsttime home-buyers, which could open up a new market for real estate developers to tap into. “Technology will play an important role in the home buying process, and there will be a need to digitize the entire process,” she predicts, adding that “Child-centric homes may gain prominence” in the days ahead.