Embrace real estate tech and stay top-of-mind

Digital marketing, online branding and web visibility are crucial to today’s real estate professional. Whether you are looking to attract buyers or sellers, landlords or tenants, or simply attempting to elevate your brand awareness among key stakeholders in the real estate ecosystem, the internet is central to staying top-of-mind and growing business opportunities. Thus, it is exceedingly important to enrich your online presence and expand your real estate technology tools and capabilities to stay ahead of the curve. Real estate searchers rely on the internet first for information. House hunters, property owners, investors, businesses and tenants turn to their desktop and web-enabled phones or mobile devices to browse company websites and real estate platforms. In large part, searchers are browsing photos, multi-media, property and neighborhood specifics, and looking to discover pertinent information on their next new home, office space, retail location, or investment property. By extension, online surfers are implicitly evaluating real estate firms and professionals while scrolling through related content, profiles, listings, reviews as well as accomplishments and affiliations. And more and more, these micro-moments, where clients and colleagues find real estate opportunities and real estate service providers online, are happening at anytime and from anywhere. They may even be preceding your next client meeting or showing! So shouldn’t you have the strongest, most visible web presence possible? In fact, the internet is empowering people with more information than ever before, as mobile has moved to the heart of the global economy. Consumers and professionals rely on mobile devices to accomplish tasks better, faster, and smarter. For instance, many of us look to our phones and tablets for answers to simple questions or to complete basic assignments or errands, such as purchasing goods and services or communicating quickly with family, friends, colleagues and vendors. Increasingly, we are also using our mobile devices to obtain information on more complicated life events, including topics like healthcare, finance, and real estate. Mobile capabilities are, therefore, streamlining the way we live and work and bringing us all together at the touch of a button. Resultantly, businesses are challenged to adapt to today’s mobile world. A recent example comes from tech giant Google. In September, Google introduced a new logo and brand identity family. Google blogged about its new logo, explaining how the company was refocusing its brand identify to align with the reality that mobile is now at the center of the digital world. Google acknowledged and embraced the fact that users now access search “across many different platforms, apps and devices…” Google explains that the logo change reflects this new reality and “shows you when the Google magic is working for you, even on the tiniest screens.” See the entire post at http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2015/09/google-update.html. How is Google’s business decision relevant to real estate professionals? Well, you could say that Google’s actions highlight that businesses must evolve in today’s mobile-first world. Real estate pros are reminded to remain diligent in our efforts to stay visible and relevant online. We are tested to seek out and learn to use new real estate technology; including mobile-friendly tools that can help our real estate business grow. Google is a global technology leader. At the time of this writing, Google’s market cap exceeded $400 BILLION. Yet, Larry Page, Sergey Brin and the Google team continue to learn, adapt, grow and evolve. Here, Google identified a key trend, embraced the shift to mobile technology and - even after 17 years of success – worked to adjust and adapt current business practices and brand identity to user and consumer habits. In real estate, we are no strangers to identifying trends and picking up on market dynamics. And, the real estate industry has quickly taken notice of new leaps in real estate technology. Now more than ever, the real estate community has embraced the possibilities that modern real estate technology has to offer. Along with increased web visibility, professionals are using the internet to access better data, save time through improved feature sets, and take advantage of expanded connectivity and marketing capabilities. The real estate profession is taking up new technologies and exploring ways to add mobile tools and applications to our daily routines. Young or experienced, highly accomplished or new to the industry, (like Google) we as real estate professionals are all constantly challenged to evaluate, innovate, and evolve with our clients’ needs and wants. And, in many cases, today’s real estate technology offer us powerful tools to get better informed, to gain insights and efficiencies, to reach more clients and colleagues, and to stay ahead of the curve to generate more business. At Agorafy, our team is working to build a new, modern online real estate marketplace based in the shared values of better technology, transparency, and improved data for everyone. We are interested in helping real estate firms and professionals spotlight their extraordinary expertise, accomplishments and assignments.  We are here to partner with the real estate community – online and offline – to elevate professionals, help solidify relationships and facilitate more business opportunities. Thus, we are constructing a home for NYC’s real estate community - an elegant, mobile-enabled, user-friendly platform that seamlessly connects real estate stakeholders from across the web. A virtual marketplace built to accommodate users from the real estate industry and the public, alike. With Agorafy, you can search, market, research and connect, all around real estate. Quickly search and filter commercial, residential, and investment sales properties in NYC’s five boroughs. Showcase your buildings, property listings, assignments, as well as your company brand and professional expertise. Find available properties, research market conditions, and review detailed property information. Then, connect with interested parties, clients and direct contacts from any web-enabled device. Check out agorafy.com and test out the new “Agorafy New York Real Estate” App, which is available for free download on iOS and Android devices at the App Store and Google Play. Together, we can continue the real estate industry’s technology evolution to everyone’s benefit! Richard Du is the founder and CEO of Agorafy, New York, N.Y.