Real Estate Investor Magazine South Africa Real Estate Investor Magazine - May 2017 | Page 34

SELLING
Real Estate Marketing
The Future is Now
BY TRACY BARTLETT
N
ot too long ago, for a company to be taken
seriously, it had to have a website ahead of
everything else. These days one not only needs
a mobile-responsive site but having a stand-out app is
fast becoming a necessity – even in real estate.
This digital shift is due to the global surge in demand
for smart devices that has revolutionised the way people
live, communicate, assimilate information and even
shop, and Google believes that consumers are quickly
moving towards utilising a single device.
Some of the stats
For the first time ever, Google is getting more mobile
search requests than desktop searches and their
research shows that, on average, users carry out around
220 tasks on their smartphones per day, compared to
140 on a desktop or laptop. A GSM Intelligence report
projects that smartphones will account for almost 95%
of Africa’s data traffic by 2021, up from just below
80% in 2015, with the number of smart devices on the
continent increasing from 160 million in 2015 to 540m
by 2021.
The migration to mobile also means companies have
to change their approach to consumer brand interaction,
especially in industries as competitive as real estate.
Technology in real estate
The property industry has to keep pace with lightning-
speed technology changes, because the latest “it” thing
is where their market plays, interacts and consumes
information.
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MAY 2017 SA Real Estate Investor
Research by the US National Association of Realtors (NAR)
reveals that 90% of home buyers search online at some point
during their home buying process, and 100% use the internet to
research a specific home once t