Real estate goes mobile

With the present fierce competition in the market, creating high impact and an ever growing presence for your company is becoming a big challenge in itself. Real estate is one market that is constantly evolving and there has been a major shift in this market over the last decade. Likewise there has been a major change in focus as regards the marketing activities in this sector.

Those who have studied marketing must be synonymous with the effective marketing mantra- AIDA (Attention – Interest – Desire - Action). Going by this very mantra, every builder and developer in the real estate market today is striving hard to grab the attention of the target customer by employing traditional advertising and marketing tools like that of a newspaper, hoardings, glossy and attractive brochures etc. However these tools seldom leads to any success as it fails to generate any desire to explore more avenues,almost never leadingthe customer to take any affirmative actions.

However in recent times and with the advent of technology, there has been a paradigm shift in the way customers consume new product information. Most of the people these days are smartphone or tablet addicts. They love to surf internet on the phone, conduct search using tablets and even like to buy or book items online.

Yet, the real estate industry still has a very meager presence online. Except for real estate websites that look very similar to each other that too with not much exclusivity, there is nothing exciting that these developers are offering their targeted customers.

Mobile technology today has made it possible to fill in all the loopholes in the marketing strategy of the companies. Smartphone and Tablet applications which deliver fluid designs and engaging content are fast becoming main stream.

Here are some of the key advantages of using mobile technology over the traditional marketing tools as regards real estate –

• Touch based navigation: Guides the user to the desired view and an interactive content makes it highly engaging
• Image and Video Galleries: Immaculate display of the project details
• 360 Degree views of the Properties: Improved feel and tangibility
• Augmented Reality: Brings life to the project and boosts customer interaction
• Integration of Maps and direction tools: Easier to locate and find the project
• Call to Action tools : To take the customer from Desire to Action
• Analytics: Know the customer requirements and needs better
• Mass distribution: Smartphone and Tablet applications can be distributed across the world without any cost overheads. Also owing to the advantage of cross platform, they can work across a range of devices available in the market
• Reduced spending on Sales and Business Development employees
• Reduced spending on designing, printing, packaging and distributing costly brochures and other marketing collaterals

All these factors certainly improve the ROI on the marketing spends of the real estate companies. Not to mention the improved inflow of customers and enquiries.