Mobile, social, and other technological advances over the past decade have altered the way consumers search for homes, providing real estate brokerages with the opportunity to leverage this shift in consumer behavior.
By integrating a few basic technological tools into your business development process, you can improve your ROI and position your firm to capitalize on the new market landscape. The following ideas can improve your operating efficiency and help you target more potential homebuyers and sellers.
1. The Cloud – Make your business more accessible online with the Google Apps suite and other platforms designed for real estate. These tools can help you manage transactions, share documents and store digital files from any device. Additionally, the cloud reduces on-site storage needs and drives down your overall operating expenses.
2. Mobile – Mobile web use continues to explode, which allows more consumers to view your website on their phones and tablets. Engage your website developer to optimize your site across all mobile devices and how to keep your customer experience consistent.
3. Social Media – Over 89 percent of agents use some form of social media. At minimum, you should be monitoring your brand via social sites, but engaging your customers via social media can be even more rewarding. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Facebook—which itself has over a billion users—are great for promoting your brand and acquiring potential new customers. You can also use social media tools such as Hootsuite, Sproutsocial, Buffer and Social Bro to manage your brand online.
