Dennis Lynch is part of a father and son real estate analysis team based out of Rumson, New Jersey, called Dennis & Marshall Lynch Real Estate Analysts. In addition to actively working to sell real estate and finding their clients their dream homes, the team also looks at changes in real estate and where the real estate world may be heading.
Right now, many digital trends are dramatically affecting the real estate world and how the industry operates. Read on as Dennis Lynch talks about some of the top digital trends in real estate and why your real estate business needs to implement these trends as soon as possible.
Identifying your ideal customer demographic
Any time you are looking to start using or implementing the use of digital technology to improve your business, you must first identify your ideal customer demographic. Are you looking to sell real estate to first-time homebuyers and young families? Or are you looking to sell high-end real estate to the rich and famous?
Every real estate business is different, and the target customer for real estate agents can vary. Knowing who your real estate customer is can help you to identify the demographics for your ideal client, which ultimately helps you to target your ideal client demographic as you move forward with digital marketing and advertising trends.
Making your website interesting but easy to use
Another important digital trend that is emerging in the real estate world is making a website interesting but easy to use. Having a functional and professional website is a must for any real estate business. But throwing up a website alone is not enough to help you attract clients and ensure that clients like your website. Ask friends and family to take a look at your website and give you honest feedback.
Does your website load quickly? If people are looking for something, such as your available properties, can they easily find what they are looking for? Are there a lot of spelling or grammatical errors on your website? You need to ensure that your website is professional and interesting, yet easy to use and navigate.
Implementing local search engine optimization strategies
One of the lesser-known digital trends that every real estate business should implement is local search engine optimization strategies. When people are searching for keywords such as “homes for sale” or “sell my home,” they are looking to buy or sell in the local real estate market. If your real estate business is not focused on local search engine optimization strategies, your name may not come up in local searches.
For example, if someone is looking for real estate in Rumson, New Jersey, but you’ve only targeted national terms, local buyers may not find your local real estate business. You need to ensure that local buyers can find your local real estate business, or you could be missing out on a ton of business.
Paying for PPC advertising
Speaking of search engine optimization, one of the things you may want to consider doing to increase your search engine rankings, especially in local markets, is to pay for PPC or pay per click, advertising. Pay-per-click advertising was extremely popular when Google and other search engines first started to increase in popularity and people wanted to rank well with search engines.
However, other SEO techniques became more important, and PPC sort of fell to the wayside. However, PPC is coming back hugely and has shown itself to be one of the best ways to currently attract new customers, increase brand awareness, and get local clicks to your website, all while increasing your rankings with search engines.
Leaving your mark on digital newspapers
One of the mistakes that real estate companies often make as they market themselves is ignoring newspaper advertising. While fewer people read newspapers these days, newspapers still have a huge following, and many are taking their newspapers and advertising sections digital.
So if you advertise in your local newspaper, you may also be featured in that same newspaper’s digital version. Always take the time to learn about digital newspaper offerings in your area, and find out what you can do to be included in those digital newspapers. News and advertising are changing, but newspapers are not completely dead, especially since many are going online now.
Making the most of social media
Social media has been one of the top digital trends in real estate for some time, and that shows no signs of letting up. Social media is changing and evolving, and new social media channels are coming into the mix, while older ones may be losing traction.
It is always a balancing act of maintaining profiles on the right social media channels and implementing new channels to continue to expand your reach and find the people who would be most interested in the real estate services you are offering. Paying close attention to new social media sites and following new social media trends can ensure your business is visible on social media platforms.
Ensuring your pictures and videos are high quality
One of the digital trends that are also constantly evolving in real estate is photography and ideography techniques. Technology has made it easier for potential buyers to look at a home without actually being in the home. They can see pictures of the home or watch videos where you show off the home.
However, if your videos and pictures are low quality, they may not be doing the home or your real estate business any favors. It is important that you invest in quality photography equipment, so you can take quality pictures and videos. If you are not producing quality images or videos of the home, you will have less success selling the home.
Hosting online open houses
The way that homes are shown has also changed, thanks to technology and the COVID-19 pandemic. When the pandemic hit, people still needed to buy and sell homes. But people did not want strangers in their homes. Therefore, it became more common to host online open houses.
A real estate agent could be in the home and walk potential buyers through the home, answering any questions that they may have had and zooming in on features that people wanted to see in more detail. While COVID restrictions have eased, the way that people view online real estate may be here to stay. If you are not hosting online open houses or showing homes digitally, you may be missing out on a large pool of buyers.
Opening yourself up to new forms of communication
Traditionally, when someone wanted to buy or sell a home, they would call a real estate agent. As technology changed, real estate agents got cellphones, and clients could reach their agents a little more easily. Technology then changed even more, and now clients and agents can converse over the phone, via text, and over email.
However, as a real estate agent, you should also be on the lookout for new ways to communicate with your clients. In foreign countries, WhatsApp is becoming a more common way to converse compared to calling via telephone. More and more, younger people are using direct message systems on social media instead of email. Always take the time to open up new forms of communication to communicate with your target clients.
Looking ahead to virtual reality
Lastly, now is a great time to start thinking about virtual reality and how it may change the entire landscape of the real estate industry. We are currently just scraping the surface of virtual reality technology, including the metaverse. While no one knows exactly what influence virtual reality will have on our world going forward, it is clear that it will have some type of influence. Therefore, your real estate business should start looking into virtual reality and how you may be able to start implementing it into your advertising strategies.
As technology changes and evolves, the real estate industry will also have to change and evolve. We have already seen that as there are digital trends that are starting to change everything from the way clients are found to the way homes are shown to the way real estate agents get in touch with their clients. Technology changes the world around us, including the real estate industry.
Dennis & Marshall Lynch Real Estate, a real estate company and consulting firm located in Rumson, New Jersey, strongly recommends that real estate agents start looking at digital trends in the real estate industry and ensure they are utilizing these trends. If they are not, they could fall behind their competitors, which can affect everything from the number of clients they have to the number of homes they sell in a year. If your company is not utilizing these top digital real estate trends, now is the time to start working to implement them in your business practices.
This is a Contributor Post. Opinions expressed here are opinions of the Contributor. Influencive does not endorse or review brands mentioned; does not and cannot investigate relationships with brands, products, and people mentioned and is up to the Contributor to disclose. Contributors, amongst other accounts and articles may be professional fee-based.