Mobile marketing for real estate agents is fast becoming standard practice for agents and brokerages around the world. Today’s real estate agent needs to have a strong mobile presence, which includes a mobile friendly website complete with property listings, mobile photo galleries, tap-to-call and tap-to-map capabilities.
Mobile marketing has the ability to deliver information to buyers in a quick, easy, and timely fashion helping real estate agents to be responsive to requests for information automatically.
As it is with every business that any business that comes to the market first is the most well received and remembered,which indicates that if you are one of the first to market your real estate business on the several millions of devices being sold each year,then your business will be well positioned now and in the coming year.
The real estate is one of the most tech savvy when it comes to using new forms of media to market,sell and advertise product.This has provided real estate professionals with numerous tools to aid their business,selling ,marketing,tracking and managing existing clients and prospects effectively.
One of the most useful tool of the trade has been mobile devices more specifically the smartphones( iphones, google phones, blackberry, HTC phones and so on) These devices has changed the landscapes of finding and selling real estate. More importantly the have become necessities for real estate professionals looking for ways to market their services as effectively as possible.Mobile phones provides two main opportunities to Realtors when it comes to building exposure and branding in all ways which are:
Text Messages/Sms
People love their phones,but what they might love about their phones mostly is the ability to text message.we love being able to get messages as fast as possible and in its simplest form.Text messages allows us to be able to communicate with few sentences that are delivered instantly.
Text messaging / Sms is used frequently between home buyer / seller and Realtor, as it allows both sides to communicate efficiently and often without much hassle.
Best of all, text messaging / Sms can be automated, like Email drip Marketing, which makes it an extremely powerful tool to stay in front of clients and prospects.
Mobile Web Browsing.
Mobile phone users spend a lot of time on their devices,one of the main uses of these phones is to peruse the internet with the built in web browsers.With this, mobile phones provide yet another point of touch to customers that should be capitalized on for maximum exposure and branding.
It is also important to note that many websites are not built to work with every mobile phone as they do on a computer. For example, your great looking website may not work at all on an iphone, especially if it is 100% flash, as iphone do not currently support flash with its web browser. This means that you will need to either create a mobile version of your site for you or have your web developer make your site “mobile friendly.
Top Mobile Marketing ideas for Real Estate
Here are the Top Marketing ideas for Real Estate Businesses in Nigeria:
IDEA #1: Connect home buyers with property information via sms
One of the most convenient uses of sms with regards to real estate is to quickly get property information on a home without having to call or email anyone.Giving someone the opportunity to call without having to call or email you can save your valuable time by pre-qualifying prospects for you.
In addition to providing you with a pre- qualifying tool a premium mobile marketing will also provide your prospects and clients with the ability to receive notifications via sms on property updates.
IDEA #2: Create a mobile friendly Real Estate Websites
Millions of people with mobile phones spend a significant amount of time actually using their phones to surf the web. This gives real estate professionals even more of a reason to need a website that properly represents their services online. If you don’t have one already, we recommend that you get at least one mobile friendly website that allows people to search properties, read about the services you provide and contact you easily through your mobile site.
One thing to know though is that many existing or older real estate websites are not optimized to look and work the same on a mobile phone as they do on a computer’s web browser. For example, an older mobile browser would need a completely different version of a website, in most cases, for a user to be able to even see it. Even on newer, more advanced phones like the iphone, flash heavy websites will not be very user friendly or even visible to users. Knowing these things ahead of time will allow you to make the right decisions with your mobile marketing initiatives.
IDEA #3: Syndicate Your Listings to Top Real Estate Websites
If you do not have the luxury, or money, to get your own mobile website for your real estate business, then a simple and effective option is to make sure that your listings are included in the top real estate websites These large websites usually have fantastic mobile applications that are fully functional and feature-rich. If your listings are available on these websites then mobile application users will be able to find them via the web and their mobile devices.
IDEA #4: Run Targeted Pay Per Click Campaigns
We are huge proponents of paid search marketing as it provides advertisers with a fast, targeted way to get online visibility. There are tons of other reasons why you should be marketing your real estate business with Pay Per Click so if you need more convincing on why you should be using pay per click marketing.
For the purpose of this article, we are recommending PPC here because web browsers are all compatible with Google, Yahoo and Bing searches. These search engines display paid ads and content ads just as they do on web based sites so it is important that mobile users can find you both on the web and on their mobile devices.
By setting up and managing Pay Per Click campaigns on the main search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing, you are providing another way for prospective clients to find your services in every way possible.
