In this article, we'll share the benefits of technology and ways you can integrate to scale your real estate business.
Isn’t technology wonderful? With all the technological advancements that have been made in just the past twenty years, we’ve gained the ability to access any song, movie, book, or piece of information instantaneously; have face-to-face conversations with humans across the global; and automate repetitive tasks so we can focus on more meaningful responsibilities. Technology allows us to perform our jobs effectively, more efficiently, and with less errors and labor. Technology is the tool that can propel your business to the next level and is key to scaling your real estate business.
Real estate professionals that use technology to scale their business should focus on automation and integrated systems. Why? Because they help you create more efficient processes. Automation will help you reduce manual work by completing repetitive tasks more efficiently and at a lower cost. Most importantly, since automation will manage many time-consuming tasks, you’ll have more time and energy to focus on clients or your family. Using integrated systems will help you centralize contacts and other information, making it easier to access and manage.
Examine your real estate business and search for areas to implement technology to help you support more volume, more efficiently. Then break those areas down into tasks and decide whether that task can be automated. These areas include business operations like marketing, sales, client management/services, accounting, and human resources.
Integrating your systems and tools will help you stay organized and work more efficiently. Your system should, at a minimum, combine your CRM, listing management tools, emails, texts, lead tracking, website, social media tools, real estate marketing tools (ie: home search, CMA), and automation tools. Systems that link together, such as your MLS to your website to transfer listings or from third parties like Zillow to forward leads, centralize information, decrease the amount of places needed to log into, information you must remember, and data you must transfer.
In addition to software, you may also need to invest in hardware like phones, computers, tablets, printers, fax machines, etc.
Digital marketing ads, like Facebook Ads and Google Ads, are powerful lead generation tools that can grow your real estate business by generating new leads outside of your audience. Though they take time and money to discover the perfect formula, the benefits are incredible. To figure out your perfect formula, target the right audience, use persuasive ad content, apply the correct ad format, and analyze your data to find optimization opportunities. All these tasks can be automated, and they can work together with your social media posts and SEO neighborhood pages to generate leads.
2. Long-Term Lead Nurturing: with Text and EmailInstead of spending all your time and energy writing and setting up emails, leverage a CRM that uses email drip campaigns to automatically send a variety of personalized emails on your behalf. The Zurple’s CRM will send emails and/or texts based on a lead’s behaviors on your website and marketing tools. These triggered messages have high response rates due to their relevancy and timely correspondence.
3. Social Media Posts: Creation and SchedulingDoing social media, the right way is time consuming. You must create a content calendar with a variety of entertaining, informative, and educational posts with captivating content, a compelling caption, a hot headline and a decisive description. Then you must share or schedule the post – at least five times per week! Sure you could save some time scheduling future posts in sets, but you can save even more time by using a social media posting tool that does all of it for you – all you have to do is follow up with the comments on your posts.
4. SEO: by Updating City/Neighborhood PagesTo save time creating and updating SEO pages or blogs, use real estate marketing tools like local market reports, community reports, school reports, and points of interests to keep information relevant and fresh.
5. Follow Up: with Behavior-based, Timely, Personalized MessagesThere will be times when you might not be able to call a new lead, but a text or email should suffice, since many consumers do not pick up unknown phone numbers. Since the timing of your follow up message is crucial for converting a lead, it’s best for you to automate them and have them send based on behavioral triggers on your website and other digital marketing tools. By leveraging personalized automated follow up messages, you won’t have to worry about following up with a lead in a timely manner with the right information, or stress about them fall through the cracks because the system will do it for you.
Technology has evolved and sophisticated our systems and business. They allow is to work more effectively and efficiently while reducing errors and labor. Through these benefits, you can reduce the expenses, time, and energy required to run your business so you can focus on meeting more clients and closing deals.