Simple and Effective Technology Tools Give You the Advantage in Commercial Real Estate Brokerage

In commercial real estate today there are plenty of advantages to work with when it comes to real estate technology, both online and offline. 

The tools that we have available can help us save time, save money, and build market share.

In saying that, it is incumbent on every agent and broker to utilize the available technology tools in a comprehensive way, if they want to dominate their market as a top agent.

Most new business and communications today can be conducted remotely away from the office and be done from your car or local coffee shop.  Make it a deliberate choice to get out of your office at every opportunity; take a laptop computer with you and work remotely.  Get out into the property market at every chance.

Here are some ideas to help when it comes to this process:

• Database – The software alternatives today to help you build your database are complex and varied.  Most up-to-date software packages are ‘cloud based’ and therefore offer the convenience of access at any time providing you have a laptop computer or tablet.  If you are yet to choose a good software package, determine what you want from the process and how you are going to use the software.  Will you want it to integrate into your email system?  Will you want it to track opportunities and clients?  It is best to test a few database systems first before you make a decision.  It is also wise to determine if the package comes with training, because you are likely to need some.
• Mobile technology – Ensure that you have a mobile telephone package that gives you data flexibility in messages, calls, digital photographs, and emails.  If you are working away from the office constantly you will need the mobile technology to support you.
• Digital photography – A high quality camera with a large megapixel allowance will be a necessity.  Every photograph you take will then be suitable for cropping and editing; you can’t do that easily to suitable resolution if you are using a basic camera.
• Videos – Videos offer variation in marketing.  A good video on a website listing will attract more hits in a marketing campaign; that will then help the levels of inbound enquiry.  Most videos will need to be professionally taken and edited.  That will be a cost to the vendor in the marketing budget.
• Blogs and Websites – You can write valuable articles about the local property market and place them on the websites that you use and your real estate blog.  That then allows you to integrate the articles into your social media efforts and get more social media exposure.
• Podcast – You can easily create an ‘audio newsletter’ and send it into your database; they call the process a ‘podcast’.  There are plenty of real estate things to think about and talk to locally so don’t be afraid to start.
• Auto responders – Auto responders are valuable tools to help automate your email marketing process into your database.  There are many good auto responder services that you can use at low cost.

So, simple things like these will help you utilize your technology tools to complement your real estate marketing processes.  In this day and age, that is a good thing.