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The rise of AI is making it easier than ever to produce oceans of marketing content, but the rising level of background noise makes it essential for brokers and agents to have a long-term strategy for standing out from the crowd.
Rather than adding to the noise, real estate professionals can make the most of the latest marketing tech tools by identifying a niche, building their brands and starting lifelong relationships with clients.
Those were some takeaways from thought leaders in “martech” — marketing technology — at Real Estate Connect New York Tuesday.
Shayan Hamidi
“Martech is where marketing and technology come together — where you can take advantage of tech to enhance your marketing, get better data, better information, create better content, retarget and all of that,” said Shayan Hamidi, founder and CEO of Rechat. “Understand where you can drive value on paper before even touching any tools, then start thinking about what are the tools that can enhance that. Make sure whatever you choose, it’s an ecosystem.”
Rechat is an end-to-end sales and marketing solution that gives brokers and agents a single-point solution for lead nurture, brand-building and sales support.
When it comes to marketing, lead generation and brand creation are “the low-hanging fruit,” Hamidi said. But success in real estate is “more about how well can you clarify your value prop and what you are really great at and communicate that.”
“Does the sheer volume of marketing content being transmitted through tech tools, portal apps and agent-generated social media content make it harder for agents to reach clients?” asked Inman tech reviewer Craig Rowe.
Absolutely, agreed Hamidi and Dalit Jaggi, co-founder and chief operating officer of Revive Real Estate, which helps sellers and agents do strategic presale renovations.
“It’s noisy for us, it’s noisy for your customers, it’s just noise everywhere,” Jaggi said.
“There’s a lot of noise and it’s just about to get worse with all the AI stuff,” Hamidi agreed. “It’s just that much cheaper to create content. It’s called content-free content.”
The way to be heard, Hamidi and Jaggi said, is not by dispensing generic advice but by developing an area of expertise and building long-term relationships,
Dalip Jaggi
“I think real estate agents have a really great opportunity to niche down and be known for something special in the real estate transaction,” Jaggi said. “Let’s say you were like, ‘I support helping people buy their second homes,’ or ‘I’m the real estate agent of the team that specializes in renovations.’ If you are good at one thing, you are memorable, and you’re recognizable.”
“If all you’re doing is just reshaping what’s out there, if you’re talking about the same, you know, rates and what’s happening with the industry that everyone else is, then that’s just noise,” Hamidi agreed. “It’s all about specializing. And it’s all about really focusing on a specific niche, whether it’s a type of demographics you want to serve, type of property you want to specialize in, the kinds of services you want to offer.”
The rise of AI and other changes in the industry mean that “it’s extremely important for real estate agents to start thinking of ourselves as lifetime consultants,” Hamidi said. “And to do that you have to be a part of that journey with them the entire time. So we think about how we drive value at all times, whether they’re in the market or not.”
Jaggi said many agents are using Revive Vision AI — a new tool that uses property photos to assess a home’s current value and potential for renovation — to reach out to past clients and discuss how their options as buyers or sellers may have changed.
“The more you can get into the conversation, the more that you can take this … consultant kind of approach,” Jaggi said. “Now you’re creating inventory that just might not have existed there before. And that’s my biggest message: Right now it’s maybe not about trying to get more leads or get more market share. It’s about, ‘How do I go to my current Rolodex and manufacture inventory?'”
A former broker himself, Hamidi agreed that “one of the major problems in the industry is that we’re all reactionary. I don’t see a lot of people taking a step back and having a three-year or a five-year plan for their brokerage or for their business.”
“I don’t think this is a transactional business,” Hamidi said of the need to make long-term plans and build long-term relationships. “I think this is a business you’re in it for life, and you’re going to be a consultant for life. And you need to show that today. Rates are probably going to come down and the market is probably going to get hot again, and you want to be the person they reach out to at that time.”
