The January 2010 Real Estate Agent Confidence Report (a survey of real estate agent experience with current market conditions) summarizes the mood in the real estate industry with the following observations:

• “Because of the high unemployment rate, it is very difficult for buyers to hope to buy a house for 2 to 5 years”
• “11 percent unemployment and rising gas prices are killing our market.”

While a number of real estate brokers and professionals have been forced out of the industry as a result of the current economic downturn, many are still holding on and some are thriving even in these times of economic downturn.

So how can you, as a real estate broker or agent, survive and even thrive in this brutal market? The few brokers and/or agents that thrive in this market are doing the following:

• Sure to get the most out of your marketing dollars
• Ability to collect high-quality leads without spending too much
• Guarantee of a dynamic prospect capture process 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
• Ability to instantly track calls from your prospects
• Ability to create ongoing conversations with your prospects or customers
• Personalize your messages and speak to your customers when they need to, knowing that the broker’s message is accurately presented on your customers’ mobile devices
• Automate the campaign management process
• Create and view campaign analytics
• Create a database of potential opt-in customers

Increasingly, real estate agencies across the country are using mobile text marketing strategies to quickly notify their clients with personal messages about new listings or information about closed deals. They are integrating mobile marketing into their traditional advertising strategies and improving their response rates as a result!

The New York Times has described mobile text marketing as “The most powerful advertising medium ever invented.”

Mobile text marketing offers unique targeting capabilities that are unmatched by traditional means of promotion and advertising. With the right mobile marketing provider, your prospective buyers will be able to get detailed property information on their mobile phone with detailed specifications, prices, virtual tours and your contact information.

Here’s how it works: Pick a primary keyword (for example: JOESREALTY). This entitles you to an unlimited number of additional sub-keywords. Next, you’ll assign each property a specific subkeyword. If you have 10 properties, your child keywords will range from JOESREALTY_1 to 10.

When someone responds to your ad and sends a text message:

Step 1. A potential buyer sends a TEXT MESSAGE with the property’s KEYWORD to our SHORT CODE.
Step 2. The system generates an SMS to the buyer with the description and details of the property.
Step 3. The system can also generate another SMS, with a lead qualification question.
Step 4. The system sends the agent an SMS with the details of the lead.
Step 5. The system captures the contact information of the sender for follow-up or contact campaigns

Choosing a competent provider:
• Make sure you choose a provider with a reliable and trustworthy web-based platform to handle mobile marketing and short code alert programs.
• Your provider should also have packaged, ‘out-of-the-box’ solutions that give you the reliability, real-time compliance and flexibility you need to deploy.
• The appropriate package should include one or more “Keywords” that you can use to build your permission-based marketing database and to market your products and services. Simply choose the keywords you want to represent your company’s products, services or campaigns and use them in all of your marketing ads.
• The system must have a database control center where it will capture subscription contact information and send tracking or other marketing campaign information.
• Finally, the prospective supplier must have a proven, easy-to-use system and a proven list of existing national and local companies on board.
• You must be able to test “in real time” with the existing real estate client how the system works for them.

Not surprisingly, the real estate industry in this market is relatively concerned with gathering high-quality leads. If an agent doesn’t have good leads, after all, he or she won’t make any sales, there won’t be any prospects to sell to, and you put your business at risk of failing.

In the current recessionary environment, it is critical that real estate professionals quickly incorporate new, more profitable lead generation strategies into their ongoing marketing efforts.

Mobile text marketing technology is helping real estate agencies across the country quickly notify their clients with personal messages about new listings or information about closed deals.

Learn more about how mobile text marketing could help your business.