When it comes to marketing opportunities for real estate agents, tools abound. An effective marketing campaign will not only generate more leads but also showcase your personal brand in front of potential prospects.
Here, we cover a list of the five most effective tools that you can use as an agent. Each one has a specific role to play in the customer acquisition journey.
Intercom: Customer engagement platform for your website
Live chat is a secret pro feature that many top-producing real estate professionals use to get more leads and increase leads engagement and conversion.
The problem with live chat is that most of the software out there has an incredibly complex setup process, and you need to constantly monitor the traffic to your website and be ready on your phone and email to connect with someone online.
Who likes complex software that makes you a slave to your phone and email? No one.
Intercom.io is an amazing tool for engaging with the visitors on your website. Once you set it up, your website will show personalized messages to every website visitor.
For example, you can set it so that messages pop up in the bottom right of the screen, and you can customize the text for different pages.
This means, if they are browsing properties on your neighborhood page, you can trigger a message that says “Looking to buy a place in [area name]? I am a real estate professional with 10-plus years of experience, and I have helped 50 homeowners find their dream home within their budget.”
Be creative, and come up with different variations to trigger a live chat with the visitor. Then test these variations, and find out which one is the best. Now, in case you are not online, the visitor can leave his or her message, email and phone number so that you can respond back at a later time.
Intercom.io is a complete customer acquisition suite with lots of advanced features and customizations geared toward making your customer acquisition more effective.
Cost: $50 per month
BeFunky: Collage maker and photo editor
Ever wanted to create beautiful collages for your listings? BeFunky collage maker is one of the easiest tools to make beautiful collages and share them.
BeFunky collage maker has a free and paid version. The plus (paid) version allows you to access some of the premium templates, and it’s only $2.49 a month.
The best part about using BeFunky is that you don’t download anything on your computer — the entire software is on the cloud. All you need to do is upload all your photos and select a template to auto-generate your collage.
You can move the pictures around and customize the background color. The platform also allows you to create collages that perfectly fit as Facebook cover photos.
If you are planning on doing a quick feature sheet for a property, use this tool to customize the header image.
It’s also a good tool to generate multiple collage variations from a set of images that you can use for Facebook advertising.
Cost: $2.49 per month
Camtasia: Video editing
People think video editing is complicated. Well, to be honest, sometimes it is. However, if you are using a basic video editing software like Camtasia, you can easily achieve all your video editing needs with little effort.
Camtasia not only has a built-in screen recorder but also comes with an easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor. Files can easily be uploaded to Facebook and YouTube directly from the app.
There are lots of templates for intro, title and transition that you can easily customize to make your real estate videos look more professional.
Here are a few reasons to use Camtasia:
- You can record and share screencasts
- Software is easy to use for basic video editing
- You can edit and brand all your existing videos with logo watermarks and calls to action
Check out this video marketing guide for real estate agents.
Cost: Camtasia has a one-time fee of $149
Vert: Conversion calculator app
Therefore, if you need to quickly and easily make conversions from feet to centimeters or USD to CAD or GBP, the Vert app has got you covered! It’s absolutely free, and it allows you to do instant conversions between different units.
“Wait, isn’t there a free conversion app on my smartphone?”
Yes, there is. However, the reason many agents are using Vert is because it allows you to store your favorite conversions in a separate tab for easy access.
Cost: Free
Accompany for Gmail and Outlook
One of my personal favorite extensions that I use every day is Accompany for Gmail and Outlook.
When you sign up for Accompany and install its Chrome extension, you will be greeted with an information panel on the right.
The information panel shows lots of information about a contact:
- All their contact information
- The name of their company or business
- Details about their company or business
- Any calendar meetings that you have with the person
Now, when you login to the Accompany dashboard, you get an even more detailed look for each contact and all your meetings in a beautiful interface. It’s like a mini CRM — and it’s free!
The reason every real estate agent should use Accompany is because it helps you keep track of who you are talking to, when you’re talking to them and other notes about them to improve your communication.
Again, your CRM can do this, however, I don’t know about you, but sometimes I’m on Gmail, and it’s more efficient and effective to have that information on there as well.
Cost: Free
With these tools you will have an even more efficient year than last year. Let me know what other tools you can’t live without in the comments section below.
Grant Findlay-Shirras is the CEO of Parkbench.com and the Local Leader Real Estate Marketing System. Follow Grant on Instagram and Twitter@GrantFSofficial.
