Within one week of the bookings opened the company has sold 800 apartments of the total of 2,000 available and the success, the company said, was partly because of the innovative marketing strategy.
Using latest technology, Prestige for the first time in the realty industry printed a QR (Quick Response) code in its print advertisements. By using a smartphone, a reader of the advertisement could decode the QR code just by aiming the camera of the handset on the code (after downloading a QR decoder from the net) and this, in turn, allowed the user to go straight to the microsite on ‘Prestige Tranquility’ to see all the details of the project. “Since smartphones are becoming a way of life, specially for the city dwellers, we decided to use the QR to provide quick and easy access to information for the customers on the handsets,” pointed out Prestige Group Director Corporate Communication Uzma Irfan.
Another innovative use of technology was eVisit to the site. By clicking on the ‘eVisit’ tab on the Prestige Tranquility website an user can do a virtual travel by road from anywhere in Bangalore to the project site at Budigere, on the Old Madras Road (outskirts of Bangalore). Once a visitor types the location from where he or she wants to visit the Tranquility project site, a webpage opens up with two windows. The left window is a video of the actual road (shot from a moving vehicle) for the entire stretch to the project and the right one shows the road map on a web map. Also available on the page is the detail direction of roads and turns for the entire route. “We had an amazing response from the tech-savvy Bangaloreans. In just one week we had nearly 2,000 taking the eVisit,” said Uzma.
Yet another new initiative was printing the full application form along with the advertisement, another first from Prestige, said Uzma. This helped both, the customers and the company, because customers visiting booking office already had completed forms with the required information, resulting in quicker turnaround in booking.
Uzma said that Prestige is currently working on another new tool to make it very convenient for customers to track the progress of the project work.