Businesses must take note of social media
The biggest advantage of technology for the real estate industry is that it enables real estate agents to know more about their buyers.
South African businesses, and in particular the real estate industry, will have to start taking a real interest in technology to be successful in an increasingly competitive environment.
Social media have taken over peoples’ lives and cellphones have become an extension of who they are. Businesses must utilise this to know more about their clients, which will enable them to sell more to them.
Stefan Swanepoel, a world-renowned expert on trends in the property market, recently painted an astonishing picture of the growth of the social media and its influence on business, at a seminar presented at the Usambara Lodge in Honingklip.
The seminar was presented by the international real estate group Keller Williams in Krugersdorp, which recently has established a strong presence in South Africa.
He says that worldwide on Christmas Day last year:
• 17,4 million apps were downloaded
• 900 million facebook users were active
• 2,5 billion texts were sent
• 350 billion emails were sent
A clip by Jean-Claude van Dam on YouTube was viewed by 72 million people – it never has been shown on television, only on social media. If it was shown on television it would be the fourth most successful television show in the world.
Most of this exponential growth is driven by the explosion of the use of mobile technology and the technology that is available for it.
There are more cellphones than people in the world. There are currently 7,1 billion people in the world and 7,3 billion cellphones in circulation. In over 50 per cent of all countries the number of cellphones exceed the population.
Swanepoel says the average person checks his cellphone 150 times per day, which creates a tremendous opportunity to communicate with the client. People with tablets spend an average of 90 minutes per day on it.
One third of households in the USA has ditched their land lines. The number of smart phones will surpass the number of computers in 2014. Not everybody has a computer, but most people own a cellphone!
The latest cloud technology puts tremendous power in people’s hands, but they do not optimise it because they do not know the technology.
Therefore it is imperative that businesses start taking an interest in technology. One must know how to use it to be successful with it.
He warned however that technology does not solve one’s problems – it is only a tool to find a solution.
Swanepoel says it usually takes one generation (20-25 years) before a certain technology ‘explodes’. In the beginning there is resistance, then pricing issues, and then people start to embrace it. And when it happens as is now the case with social media and mobile technology, the speed of innovation escalates even further. The world’s biggest real estate web portal has 55 million unique visitors per month.
According to Swanepoel the real estate industry is one of the last in the world to be automated. What is happening in the United States also will happen in South Africa, as the local market is very similar to the American market.
The biggest advantage of technology for the real estate industry is that it enables real estate agents to know more about their buyers.
“The more you know about your buyer, the more you can sell to them.
“Customer retention management is imperative. The agent needs to know where his customers are, when they are there, what they are doing there, how frequently they are there and what will cause them to do it again. The right system gives the agents access to this information in one place.”
The worldwide eEdge-system that Keller Williams uses, enables agents to link to the client’s facebook and twitter accounts and the information gets pulled through to the database. Hereby the agent gets to know more about the client without the client supplying the information directly. This is based on public information and called social intelligence.
Swanepoel says one the developments of the future is customised advertising.
Information in agents’ database about their clients makes it possible to adapt advertising to the public information available about the person seeing the advertisement.
Referring to the real estate industry, Swanepoel says the latest technology will allow agents to
• create a legitimate database to nurture
• stay in touch with their clients and business associates
• follow up with their clients (they’ll be buying again in 7/8 years)
• delegate tasks to their teams (assistant)
• develop an email marketing system
