Marketing New Construction Real Estate

I am a pretty hard core geek when it comes to gadgets and especially cell phones. For the past few years, I’ve been tooling with a few Windows Mobile phones. I’ve done everything (flashed, overclocked, ect) to them to push the limits of their usability and functionality.

Recently, I had an opportunity to buy an iPhone. I was a little reluctant considering the release of the new iPhone is a few weeks away.

Long story short, I’ve been using the iPhone for about a week now. I must admit, the phone does live up to it’s hype. I am surprisingly impressed. The hardware side is comparatively (to other high end phones) good but the impressive part is the thought that was given to the user experience.

1) Simplifying and keeping the user interface simple: When you interface with the native iPhone apps, everything that you do is limited to just a few options. It also only shows you options and buttons that apply to what you’re doing.

When you choose an option, the phone takes you down a specific path until you complete that task without introducing additional options. This keeps the user focused to complete their task at hand while being able to keep the interface clutter free.

2) Attention to details: Apple did a great job to think out every little detail and then going the extra mile to provide a solution. Take for example the soft keyboard. Coming from phones that had full hardware Qwerty keyboards, switching to a touchscreen keyboard was something that I thought I would not like. Although it takes a little getting use to, I actually type faster now. Check out the little video of the design of the keyboard to see the thought that was put into this.

We are in the process of designing the new version of the Agent Shield back end. The iPhone has really help, inspire and influence the design of the new back end. We are shooting to release it in the next couple of weeks. Enjoy the video.

To gain an edge in today’s overly competitive market, we have to think beyond the usual marketing avenues of the past. As Web 2.0 develops and evolve, it has created some new technologies and marketing principles that could be applied to the real estate market.

Crowdsourcing is leveraging the mass collaboration enabled by Web2.0 technologies to achieve business goals. Applying the principles of crowdsourcing can be a very powerful tool to accelerate the sales of new construction properties.

To illustrate. The best marketing tool of any new development project on the internet is it’s website. Developers spend a large investment time and money to create an amazing website/marketing tool. Currently, the website can only be used by a handful of people (usually the in-house sales team) as a marketing and sales tool.

Realtors will not send their clientele to the new development website. With the in-house sales team’s contact information on the website, there’s a huge potential for the Realtor to get cut out of the transaction. With only a few people using it, the website’s market penetration is very limited and thus the development’s exposure to buyers is limited.

Imagine what would happen if that new development’s website was provided to the 2 million+ Realtors in the US and the millions more around the world to use as a marketing and sales tool? It would exponentially accelerate the development’s exposure, reach and velocity of sales. Real estate agents are the crowd!

With the invention of Agent Shield’s Web 2.0 technology, the crowdsourcing principle can be applied to accelerate the sales of new construction properties.