Real Estate Investing and Mobile Marketing
Mobile Marketing (along with Social Media) seems to be one of the buzz terms in the Real Estate investing industry lately. I have compiled this report to educate real estate professionals on you the real story of implementing a Real Estate Mobile Marketing solution.
What is Mobile Marketing and Why is it Important?
According to the Mobile Marketing Association, “Mobile Marketing is a set of practices that enables organizations to communicate and engage with their audience in an interactive and relevant manner through any mobile device or network.”
It is true that mobile marketing is experiencing triple-digit growth annually. Why you ask? According to the Director of Research at Nielsen Mobile, “People look at every text message they get”, and they do so within 15 minutes. Can you think of any other advertising medium where you are almost guaranteed that every person targeted will see your message?
The most direct and personal of all media channels these days is mobile phones. They enable us to remain connected 24/7. No need to log onto the Internet or roam around town looking for a hot spot. Mobile devices are always on! This is a marketer’s dream is to engage in meaningful two-way conversations with people who are truly interested in their brand, and mobile gives you that direct line of communication — constantly.
Mobile Marketing and Real Estate Investing
Advertising real estate used to be easy. You put up signs in front of the property, held a few open houses and showed up to let people in when they wanted to check out the property. Life was good. Things began to get a bit more complicated as technology progressed. Eventually prospective purchasers wanted to access information about the property from home. You needed a website with property and contact information. As technology progressed you eventually needed to understand social media and be active on sites like Facebook and Twitter.
Now with the rise in popularity of mobile devices (“smart phones” and tablet computers like the iPad), Real Estate professionals are now expected to know and use that medium as well. Technology is progressing so quickly, where do you even start? Don’t worry, I work with (and build) mobile marketing tools everyday, and I’m here to provide you with a brief primer on the essentials of mobile marketing for Real Estate professionals.
Two of the most frequent questions I am ask :
- What Are The Different Types Of Mobile Marketing?
- What is the Most Effective Way to Utilize Mobile Marketing?
Let’s address these very good questions below. I don’t want you to buy an real estate information guru offering which is not only overpriced, but the promoters have no knowledge of. ( This includes Than Merrill)
The Many Types of Mobile Marketing Available
You need to think carefully before jumping in as some of these methods can be costly and time consuming. Make sure you have a plan in place and you understand where your target audience is most likely interact. Marketing is Marketing, and if you don’t already have a internet marketing plan in place, I suggest you hold off for now!
SMS / MMS / VMS (Video)
This is the most common form of Mobile Marketing used by companies to interact with their customers quickly. This is also one of the cheapest Mobile Marketing methods.
Mobile Applications
With the introduction of the Apple App Store on the iPhone, companies have jumped on board with developing their own Application to interact with their customers. Some applications are free of charge for users to download, others come with a small fee. Checkout the Apple App Store for the latest apps for inspiration. I have built iphone applications for making offers, calculating ARV, deal alerts, etc. ( Sims 2.1 promotional crap emails promise your own 5k custom application – ROFL – what they provide is not worth more than 50 dollars and is barely useful to your prospect – more like a tiny website! – big deal)
Mobile Banner Advertising
This essentially involves placing banners on mobile ready websites promoting a company or service. Companies can be selective on where they place their banners, reaching out easily to their target market. Banner Advertising campaigns on a mobile are priced in the same way as computer advertising, on a Cost per Click (CPC) or Cost per Impression (CPM) basis.
Mobile Local Search
Mobile owners are using their mobiles on the move when looking for a company close to their current location. For example, I am in Greenville SC, looking for a shop that sells hiking gear. I enter this into my mobile phone and the search engine returns a list of relevant shops, their location and contact details. I can simply click on the phone number and call the store directly from my mobile. Search engines use the GPS locator which is embedded within Smartphones and iPhones to determine my current location and display relevant results to me.
Mobile Paid Search
Very similar to the standard PC Paid Search but the number of results displayed on a mobile phone screen is up to four (normal PCs can display up to 10). Be careful with this method, as research shows that Mobile users are less likely to interact unless you have a mobile ready site. Run your site through mobiReady to see how your current site will appear on a mobile device – and if the Mobile market is something you are keen to pursue, think about creating a Mobile Ready site.
It is important to understand mobile’s role in the marketing mix. It certainly won’t supplant e-commerce or the wired Web. It won’t take away from print, TV or radio’s branding strengths.
Instead, mobile will enhance other advertising channels, through mobile advertising, mobile marketing and mobile commerce. Adding mobile to print, TV, radio, direct mail, email and other channels will help enhance the range, and track the effectiveness, of those channels. Mobile Marketing is most effective when utilized as a complement to the marketing mix in conjunction with your standard marketing media.
What is the Most Effective Way to Utilize Mobile Marketing?
Here are just a few examples of how mobile marketing can augment or even replace your current real estate listing marketing practices.
New Listings Mobile Campaigns
Certainly in the print advertising but also in a lot of online listings, the realtor or investor is largely placed in a reactive mode, hoping that potential buyers locate their properties. Not exactly an ideal, not to mention possibly costly, situation. Instead, you could send out a text message blast to your database of hopefully pre-qualified buyers, saving time and effort while potentially increasing your chances of a sale.
Time Sensitive Notifications
In addition to the strategy noted above, mobile marketing allows you to take an advantage of highly time-sensitive notifications, like when an open house is starting for an interested property. Since most people have their cell phone with them pretty much at all times, you get a much better chance of catching them via a text message versus other mass forms of communication like an email. Plus, if it’s during business hours, it’s more likely for someone to read/respond to a text message vs. a voice mail.
More Engaging to Consumers
OK, I admit, mobile marketing probably isn’t going to help you close multi-million dollar properties. However, for those rentals, mobile is an ideal solution because the youth demographic is starting to prefer it over other forms of communications. This shift will only increase in the years ahead.
Location Based Services
This is arguably the Holy Grail of mobile marketing and while it’s taken quite awhile to start to come into focus, all signs point to 2011 being a watershed year. Simply put, LBS and other location tracking services make text messaging even more proactive by triggering alerts based upon location. Now, instead of broadcasting a message to a large database and hoping they are in the area of your listing(s), you can hit potential buyers that are in range of coming to your properties right away if interested.
So there you have it, just a few opportunities that are on the market for the ever growing sector of Mobile Marketing. Again, these are just a few examples. Basically, almost anything you are currently doing in your listing advertising/broadcasts can be handled via mobile marketing.