These are some processes that Capital Rivers have adapted and will continue to stay-to-date to stay ahead in business automation with the help of Jon Crosby. Jon Crosby who is a business and technology consultant for Launch Consulting in Roseville, California. Crosby leverages his 20+ years in technology to help real estate investors and other businesses streamline their operations through technology integration and automations.
1. Business automations
There is an old saying, “a successful business is nothing more than systems and marketing.” The ability to either scale at will or reduce operating expenses by systematizing manual processes or complex work flows is the key to a successful and scalable business model. While CRE brokerages are generally a product of existing networks and traditional marketing, there is a fundamental shift taking place towards technology and system optimization for all things real estate oriented.
- Lead synchronization: Contact forms, Email and CRMs (customer relationship management) integrations (WordPress, Mailchimp, Constant Contact, Drip, etc. SalesForce, Buildout, etc.). Nurturing leads is critical and sales cycles are all a numbers game. Therefore you need to make sure all your potential leads traverse your different systems and are tagged accordingly so you know how best to engage any potential leads. Leads often start at a website contact form, so making sure they flow directly to your email list and your CRM with the proper identification (tagging) is critical for future engagement.
- Email automation: Campaign automation, drip campaigns, etc. The ability to quickly engage your customers or clients with your latest marketing material or news is essential. By leveraging either custom or built-in email automation logic you can quickly let your growing list of leads and/or email subscribers know about your latest listings, news and opportunities.
- Operational flows: This is business/agency specific, but there are countless ways automations can be leveraged to remove manual process from admins and/or executives, leaving more time to find deals and/or support existing client needs. Some of the most common are: customer/client support requests (internal or external approval workflows); internal requisition forms (new client application forms); accounting (automated reconciliations, automated reporting, hours auditing, invoice validation, etc.).
2. Data science and BI (business intelligence)
“Data is a precious thing that will last longer than the systems themselves.” – Tim Berners-Lee (World Wide Web inventor).
The most precious commodity of any business in the 21st century (and beyond) is data. The ability to quickly access and engage with your data is critical to effective marketing, sales and client relations. CRE data is quickly growing within the largest players but even the smallest agencies can leverage data they already have to tell a better story to future clients and nurture existing ones. Some ways to leverage data in your CRE brokerage are:
- Dashboards (TV-style and C-suite level).
- Weekly automated reports.
- Trends analysis.
- Site demographics and traffic analysis.
3. Chatbots and conversational marketing
“For millennials, chatbots are a natural extension of texting. Millennials, having grown up with the internet and responsive on-demand services, often cite phone calls as being overly intrusive, even presumptuous – thus their preference for texting. ” – Joseph Vinze (Library Hi Tech News)
Conversational marketing (a termed coined by Drift) is defined as “a one-to-one approach to marketing that companies use to shorten their sales cycle, learn about their customers, and create a more human buying experience.” CRE brokerages often have long sales cycles that generally revolve around networking and nurturing leads.
Conversational marketing helps fast track that experience from the website by creating a virtual chat session with a potential lead and purposely directing them to the best answer or contact to help fulfill their current request or question. The ability to instantly transition from chatbot to a real person or schedule a meeting all from the chat session is an extremely powerful tool for generating leads.
Some of the other features/benefits of chat bots and conversational marketing tools are:
- 24-hour support that provides a consistent user experience.
- Qualify leads automatically and feed to CRMs instantly.
- Increased marketing ROI.
4. SEO: “It’s much easier to double your business by doubling your conversion rate than by doubling your traffic.” – Jeff Eisenberg.
SEO: “It’s much easier to double your business by doubling your conversion rate than by doubling your traffic.” – Jeff Eisenberg.
- Technical SEO is the foundation for your SEO strategy as some of its components are literally required for the search engine bots to find your site. They are also generally more straightforward to work on as they are technical in nature and not content driven. Google wants users they send to your site to have a great experience, so it needs to be fast and mobile friendly. Technical SEO includes things such as: mobile-friendly; site speed; robots.txt files and sitemaps; image optimization; and meta-data.
- Content (on-page) SEO is primarily circled around keywords, site structure and copywriting. In our map example, the content SEO is what is drawing the directions on the map to your site, whereas the technical SEO is more like new asphalt for a smoother trip. Read more here: Ultimate SEO Content Guide
5. Mobile app
Mobile apps are fast becoming an extension of many businesses as a way to provide better customer service and retention as well as optimizing operational processes. CRE brokerages can leverage a mobile app for their clients as a means of creating a direct and personal link for listings or ongoing engagements. With this, brokers can spend more time in the field with the key data they need at their fingertips to find the best properties and tenants for clients.
Follow all of our new innovations with all things commercial real estate.
Looking for a specialist to take your business to the next level? Speak with the experienced team at Capital Rivers today.
