The internet has become deeply ingrained in our day-to-day lives. It helps us stay connected, informs us of what’s happening around the globe and gives us access to millions of businesses and services.
For real estate professionals, it also presents the opportunity to engage with clients on an enormous scale. From posting digital listings to utilising design websites, there are endless online tools that can help an agent connect with potential buyers, sellers and tenants.
To help you do this, we’ve created a list of the top real estate online tools you should be using.
Design programs
Canva
Canva is an easy-to-use platform that can help real estate professionals design high-quality marketing material. Create everything from social media posts, listing pamphlets and business cards to presentations and web banners.
With thousands of layouts on offer, Canva takes the difficulty out of designing. Browse through the range and select the template that’s right for your brand. Canva even has templates designed specifically for the real estate industry such as open home flyers which help streamline the process.
Fiverr
If you’d prefer to outsource your agency’s design work, Fiverr is a great place to start. It’s an online marketplace for digital services.
The platform connects you to thousands of freelancers and allows you to order a job with the click of a button. Users can search for services like graphic design, social media marketing, video editing and more.
If you create an account for your agency, you can also register it as a business. This type of account gives you access to a shared dashboard so you can keep track of your team and ensure they’re in sync.
Social media
Once you’ve designed your marketing collateral, you should use this material on social media to boost your brand. Social media is a valuable resource for real estate professionals and allows easy access to potential buyers, sellers and tenants.
Posting properly and regularly to social media can build your agency’s audience, driving traffic to your website and allowing people to easily engage with your business. It also helps to research innovative ideas for marketing so you stay up to date on trends, new practices and solutions.
Facebook, for example, can help build brand awareness and promote your agency’s listings. Real estate agents can upload images and create videos to give followers a ‘virtual tour’ of the available properties. These ‘virtual tours’ can be commented on and shared by your followers.
You can also gauge the level of interest in a listing and encourage engagement by creating an ‘event’ for the property inspection. P
otential buyers can see the details of the property, register their interest in the inspection and receive a reminder on the day of the event.
Instagram is another great social network for real estate professionals. It’s a photo and video-sharing app that makes capturing and posting content easy.
Users can follow your account, engage with your images and even send your posts to friends and family. Add geolocations to your photos and tap into hashtag trends like #trophyhome.
Using these features will help give your posts more exposure on the platform.
LinkedIn is also worthwhile for those in the real estate industry. It allows you to create a profile that acts as a digital resumé. You can connect with likeminded professionals, share your listings and even write blog posts relating to the real estate profession.
LinkedIn presents a good opportunity to build a personal brand and enhance your reputation as a real estate agent or property manager. A good personal brand can help you bring in ongoing business without the need to blow your budget on traditional market.
Hootsuite
If looking after multiple social media accounts seems overwhelming, consider investing in Hootsuite. It’s a social media marketing tool that allows you to schedule and manage all your accounts in one central location.
One of the main benefits of the tool is its ability to keep your social media presence active 24/7 without you having to spend hours on each individual network. Hootsuite also provides analytics so you can track your performance and improve results in the future.
For more advice on creating a social media presence, read ‘Understanding how social media can help build your brand’.
CRMs
Streak
Streak is a CRM program that’s perfect for real estate. It’s available as a chrome extension for use with Gmail, meaning you won’t have to learn new programs or software.
Built for ease, Streak allows agents and property managers to manage and share documents easily. Use the tracking feature to know exactly when, where, and how often an email is viewed. This information will help you understand the perfect time to follow up with a client about a potential sale.
The program provides contextual history and contact details on the side of each email so you know which client you are responding to. All fields can be updated directly from an email. Streak also allows you to track your own performance and calculate the likely commission percentage of a sale.
MailChimp
MailChimp is another great online tool for real estate agents and provides comprehensive email marketing services.
It offers audience insights and data that can help guide your newsletter content and email marketing campaigns. By understanding your audience, you can create more targeted material and enhance your agency’s email engagement rates.
Put simply, the more targeted your content is, the more likely your audience will be to read it.
MailChimp also offers an optimisation service which helps take the guesswork out of marketing. Using audience data, the platform will schedule your content at the ideal time. Along with emails, MailChimp can help you create landing pages, digital ads, postcards, automations and sign up forms.
Internal communication
Open and transparent communication is key to an agency’s success.
Knowing your workload, sharing important information with other team members and planning for the weeks and months ahead is paramount for an organised business.
Slack
Slack creates a space for these important internal conversations to happen. You can organise your conversations by topic, project, team, listing or whatever relevant category applies. It also features voice and video calls and allows you to screen share when needed.
More than just a messenger service, Slack integrates several other apps and services, such as Google Drive and Dropbox, to make working online as efficient as possible.
Project management
Being a real estate professional means juggling several different tasks at once, often for several different clients. Staying on top of these projects is vital.
ProofHub
ProofHub is a feature-rich real estate project management tool that makes handling clients and realty flawless. Using its intuitive and easy-to-use interface you can handle tasks on the go, communicate with team members, as well as track daily work schedule.
ProoHub offers you different views including table, board, Gantt, and Calendar. These let you manage vital task related information, see how things are going with a project, identify potential roadblocks, create dependencies between tasks, keep track of tasks, deadlines and check for meetings with clients or the team. ProofHub also lets you keep track of time spent on a task manually or using a timer. You can also create custom reports to check out project progress and create a plan accordingly.
With ProofHub, connect to your team and clients in real time, no matter where you are through one-to-one conversations or group chats. The Discussions feature lets you organize conversations to bring everyone on the same page. ProofHub makes it easier for you to upload and organize all project files in a centralised location. The online proofing tool makes it easy for you to review, proof, collaborate, and approve them no matter where you are.
Asana
Programs like Asana can help agencies manage tasks and stay on top of their workload. As a work management website, Asana makes collaboration easy.
It allows you to plan and structure work, set deadlines and share project details, all on a visual dashboard.
You can assign jobs to staff and update tasks as they progress to keep the whole team informed of any project developments. Notifications will help keep everyone in sync and focused on the agency’s goals.
Trello
Trello is another fantastic tool for internal communications and project management. It’s a collaborative tool that organises your upcoming tasks into dashboards – think of it as a digital whiteboard.
Each dashboard details what’s being worked on and by who, what specifics need to be included and when a project is due.
You can add images, excel spreadsheets, word documents and additional notes so your team knows exactly what needs to be done. Like Asana, Trello will send you notifications to keep you updated on the progress of all tasks.
Digital listings
Digital listings generate enormous engagement which can help you sell sooner. Websites like Soho make posting properties online easy.
For buying, renting and commercial categories, Soho provides an all-inclusive platform which provides a simple way of attracting prospective buyers. Users can view listings based on relevancy, location, price and the post date. In addition, you have free access to a range of property tools.
Your agency can also be featured in Soho’s ‘Find a Real Estate Agency’ search engine, meaning buyers and sellers can find you easily.
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