The role of technology in each and every sphere of life is indisputable and a time has come when we cannot think of a world without technology. This dependence on technology has happened over the span of a decade and knowingly or unknowingly we have started relying on it almost to a point when we cannot do without it. Technology’s main role is the way it has helped to cut down on time and made people more productive. The same is applicable for a real estate broker who has more time on his hands to focus on main issues due to the advantage of technology.
The story holds good even for a progressive real estate broker who relies on the many uses of technology to improve his business.
Let us consider a particular broker. We will call him Mr. Broker or Mr. B in short. He needs to rely on good sales and marketing, using skills that get honed with each successful or failed transaction. For this Mr. B needs to rely on online marketing to a great extent. The technology for this has improved tremendously over the past decade and every day we find a new nuance that can be used to advantage. To begin with Mr. B needs a website to showcase his business as most people search online for most businesses nowadays. Gone are the days when customers would rely entirely on shops and services without doing a background check of the website first. Moreover this is how a broker creates his web presence in a market which is fast being taken over by search engines like Google. Through a website Mr. B can showcase categories of listings and a customer can get a thorough knowledge about the properties. Based on the information a customer can make a balanced decision. Basically, Mr. B needs to put up all information about a particular property and a customer will choose the ones which benefit him. After all people buy for different reasons.
Through a good website, Mr. B can show his profits and prove the firm to be a reliable one. Information about whereabouts, past sales and testimonials prove to be quite valuable when a customer is making a decision about which agent to choose. He can also showcase his market knowledge through his website. All this goes a long way in convincing a customer to buy from him.
Simply having a website is not going to get Mr. B anywhere. The website needs to be search engine friendly. Google is the world’s largest marketing company and when people search for any product or service, Google spills out pages of data carrying listings. Now, if Mr. B hopes to get his website on Google’s search pages and appear among the first few listings, he needs to have his website search engine optimised. He also needs to rely on Adwords so that his website gets more targeted traffic. He needs to work continuously on the website to keep it ahead and avoid complacence as soon his position on Google will diminish if he is not ahead with constant updates and so on.
Along with a good website that is Google friendly, Mr. B needs to have a strong social media presence. He needs to take advantage of all ways to advertise his products and past sales by word of mouth and to look for repeat business from past clients. For this he needs to work on maintaining a good Facebook page for his company, a Twitter account and all other means to keep his clients and would be clients abreast of his company and its goings on.
Along with the above, Mr. B needs to make marketing material, and we are not talking of any such material here, but only the best one, which could need professional help. Again technology comes in handy here and helps him to come up with the best content, design, graphics and so on. The world of marketing has changed phenomenally since the advent of technology and there is no end to what one can use to support marketing through appropriate materials.
All property businesses need well maintained inventories and listings and this is more so for Resale Business. For new properties, less of inventories are required compared to the resale ones. All brokers have a fair share of old and new properties and need to showcase their products accordingly. To manage the resale ones, a broker has to make appropriate use of features to benefit a buyer. He needs to showcase all advantages that would motivate a buyer to buy an old property in a particular society.
As Mr. B grows by doing more transactions and adding to his profits, he needs to increase the size of his office. This is true for the square feet area as well as the number of staff. His database needs to grow too to keep him ahead.
Portals are not cheap or easy to maintain. Brokers need to pay portal charges which are quite expensive, apart from bearing the cost of staff required for maintaining the portal. All this adds up to the running cost of Mr. B’s business.
Apart from the aforementioned points which are more accurate for a real estate broker, the other added costs of maintaining a good office, staff and other associated issues all go into making having an independent broker’s office not a winning proposition. A huge percentage of Mr. B’s profit goes in taking care of the overheads incurred in running a full-fledged office.
Under the aegis of RE/MAX, the world’s No.1 brokerage company, a broker can make full use of technology without shelling out a large portion of his income. He can afford to have his own office, share the staff, and enjoy all facilities of a full-fledged office. The best part is that since customers vouch for the reliability of RE/MAX, being a part of it will increase a broker’s credibility too. His business will grow with this added reliability while saving him office expenditure. So it is actually a win-win situation all the way. With RE/MAX a broker sells more, makes more money, makes full use of technology, and cuts back on regular costs!