RealBird Blog

The Evolution of Real Estate Marketing: How QR Codes are Changing the Game

For real estate agents, staying top-of-mind is critical in a competitive market. While traditional marketing like print ads and bench signs have their place, QR codes offer a great new marketing opportunity. Providing instant access to information, QR codes help agents connect with potential clients in innovative ways.

What is a QR Code?

QR codes are barcodes, scanned by smartphones, that instantly take users to online content. One of the industries that adapted QR codes during the pandemic are restaurants for contactless menus. Real estate also has been benefiting from it massively.

Benefits of Using QR Codes for Real Estate Marketing

• Gain valuable metrics and insights on engagement to refine marketing approaches
• Easily create personalized experiences that resonate with your target audience
• Integrate seamlessly into both print and digital marketing materials
• Reduce printing costs by using digitally generated codes
• Easily update, customize and personalize codes as needed

Marketing Uses for Real Estate QR Codes

Listings and Virtual Home Tours

• Provide instant access to listing details, photos, 3D tours and videos

Contact Information and Social Accounts

• Offer a centralized hub to get in touch and follow real-time updates

Online Scheduling and Appointment Booking

• Allow clients to book appointments 24/7 based on their availability

Lead Generation

• Capture contact details from interested buyers and sellers

Reviews and Testimonials 

• Showcase authenticity and knowledge to build trust with prospects

Directions to Listings

• Provide turn-by-turn navigation to open houses and showings

Where to Feature QR Codes

Print Materials

• Business cards, flyers, brochures, yard signs, print ads

Digital Assets

• Email signature, website, social media, online ads, videos

Email Marketing

• Email newsletters, drip campaigns, promotions

For today's real estate professional, marketing requires an omnichannel approach. By integrating scannable QR codes across print and digital materials, agents can connect with audiences in new and innovative ways. QR codes offer an affordable, trackable and highly personalized marketing tactic to help cut through the noise in a competitive market.

What is the RealBird Real Estate QR Code Studio

Part of the RealBird real estate marketing platform, the QR Code Studio enable agents and brokers to quickly create large, custom QR codes that are colorful, on-brand with brokerage themes and allows high converting customizations like photo overlays.

If you are an real estate agent, broker or property manager looking for a comprehensive, custom, eye-catching yet easy to use QR code generator, look no further: Sign up with the RealBird Real Estate QR Code Studio

WOW: 8 foot by 2 foot custom banner by Kiamichi Realty for their RealBird mobile real estate website

This is very cool. Rob from Kiamichi Realty just sent us a few pictures of their brand new 8 foot by 2 foot banner that they created for promoting their mobile real estate website:

We blurred out the SMS phone number so that we don't create additional charges for them through this post but you can still get the idea: Nicely design banner with large call-for-action message asking prospective clients to text the special RealBird keyword "M" to access Kiamichi Realty's mobile real estate information. They also added the a large QR code. If you have a QR reader on your phone, go ahead and scan it to see their mobile site in action.

Both mobile access methods redirect prospects to Kiamichi Realty's RealBird mobile real estate website showing their featured listings, their property search and the contact information with links to their social networks as well. The SMS text messaging platform also captures the prospect's phone number.

The picture below shows how large this banner is. Also note the cute dog - called Pedro - in the corner, relaxing after a job well done ! 

You can visit Kiamichi Realty's website to learn more about their services and read their RealBird success story on our testiminials page.

If you are new to RealBird, you can read about the RealBird mobile real estate marketing platform here. 

Great job Rob and team ! Thank you very much for sharing the pics with us !

-- The RealBird Team
www.realbird.com 

Unifying the RealBird mobile user interfaces

By looking at our web analytics of the last few months, we noticed a solid month-to-month growth in smartphone access on the RealBird property marketing platform. 15.4% of visitors on the RealBird members' sites were using smartphones in November 2011 and the number has been growing ever since. As of February 2012, it is up to 18.6%, up more than one percent from January's 17.5% and there is no sign of slowing down.

We have been planning to unify the RealBird mobile user interfaces for a while, but this trend convinced us that the time had arrived for implementation and we just launched the first set of updates today.

See below the summary of the new features, all of them are automatically applied to RealBird PRO property websites:

1. We are now "deep linking" into your RealBird Mobile Real Estate Site to show the property details. 
2. "Deep linking" now applies no matter where your visitors come from: via your SMS text keyword marketing, your QR codes, or following a link on social media or blog posts, from any sources as long as the consumer is using his or her smartphone to access your listing information
3. When the mobile listing information is "deep linked" to (vs navigation from your RealBird mobile website's homepage), the header of the details page is slightly different: your mobile property page shows the "Home" icon on the top left, "Info" as the header and a "Nearby" button on the top right. The "Home" icon links to your RealBird Mobile Website's homepage, where visitors can see your other listings, start a property search or read your blog posts. The "Nearby" button links directly to your RealBird Mobile Search form so that they can find other properties and send inquiries about those to you. 
4. We also added a second call-for-action link - called "Schedule Showing" - below the primary photo. It opens the same inquiry form as the previously and still available "Request More Info" button at the bottom of the mobile listing page. We've noticed a great deal of improvement in visitors-to-lead conversion, ever since we added the "Schedule Showing" button to the regular single property websites, so we decided to add it to the mobile version as well.
5. Finally, "Draft" listings (unpublished RealBird listings, saved as Drafts) are shown on the mobile devices. This is only applicable for deep linked property pages, so they won't show up in your featured listings list if the mobile user starts the navigation from your RealBird mobile website's homepage.

This last option - i.e. showing draft listings - is a very powerful marketing tool for Expired and FSBO listing interviews. You can now set up a "Draft" listing on RealBird for your prospective sellers prior to the interview. And because the property site has "Draft" status, it won't be syndicated, search engine indexed or shown on your public RealBird widgets. However you can create its own SMS text keyword, QR code and demonstrate your mobile marketing capabilities for your prospective sellers. Just ask them to scan their own QR code on their smartphone or text the SMS keyword to the phone number and they can see the instant result. Wow them with your mobile marketing services. When you win the listing, you can log back into RealBird and you can "Publish" the draft property website easily. Just a quick note: in case of expired listings, make sure you don't use copyrighted materials: e.g. the previous agent's photos, notes etc.

Let us know what you think?

Thanks and Enjoy !

-- The RealBird Team
www.realbird.com 

 

 

Summary of new RealBird features launched in 2011

Today is the last business day of 2011 and we thought it is the good time to summarize the main new RealBird features that we launched in 2011. 

Switched the RealBird Property Search from Google Base to Oodle data

As you may recall Google suddenly announced in January '11 the discontinuation of Google Base. Because the RealBird Property Search was based on data from Google Base, we had to find another solution. We successfully ported the application to use real estate data from Oodle, soft launched in March and made it available for all RealBird members in June. The new search application has been working great ever since and has delivered thousands and thousands of buyer leads to RealBird members.

New listing inventory widget replaced the old version, with color themes and custom transition effects

We retired one of our legacy sidebar listing inventory widgets and replaced it with a brand new one, which can be configured with custom color theme and custom transition effects.

The first version of the RealBird Mobile Real Estate Website was launched

In March, we launched the first version of the RealBird Mobile Real Estate Website service with vanity domain name and QR code support. Within weeks, thousands of mobile sites were set up by RealBird PRO members. It also received coverage from Inman News.  

The second version of the Mobile Real Estate Website added Property Search support

Soon after the initial launch, we also completed the mobile user interface for the RealBird Property Search and added to the RealBird Mobile Property Website service. Update to the platform (and the new desktop IE support) also made it possible from then on to embed the mobile real estate website on regular blogs and pages with the handy RealBird widget, including the inclusion of the QR code and a call-for-action message.

Default Property Website Theme editor added

One of the powerful features of the RealBird single property websites has always been the versatile theme editor. We realized however that even with the easy-to-use interface, it has been an unnecessary hassle to set up the custom design for each listing one by one, so we introduced the same powerful theme editor tool as a global configuration option. In other words, RealBird members can now set up a default custom design once and all new property sites will inherit this theme.

Introduced 3 Facebook Real Estate Page applications

Just in time for Facebook's application platform overhaul during the summer, we released three Facebook applications for different RealBird services. You can now easily add your listing inventory widget, map-based property search and your mobile real estate website to your Facebook business page.

Diligent SEO work brought major results: video thumbnails of your property websites are now shown on Google

We've been always focusing on SEO best practices, but 2011 brought some break throughs: Finally, over 1 million pages on RealBird has been indexed by Google and to our great surprise, RealBird became one of the few real estate information providers whose pages have been enhanced with video thumbnails on the Google search result pages. This is a very positive and stunning SEO news and together with the high ranking of the RealBird property websites, it represents a major improvement in visibility for our members.

Tighter integration of your RealBird featured listings and map-based property search

We also introduced a small, but powerful feature for RealBird PRO members. The RealBird map-based property search can now be configured to show your own featured listings as "sticky", highlighted icons on the map. We call them "sticky" icons, because they are shown on the map independently from the actual search criteria, as long as their location falls within the current map boundaries. This a great, non-intrusive advertisement of your own properties to home buyers using your map search.

United Kingdom coverage added to RealBird

We also extended support for most of the RealBird services for estate agents in the United Kingdom. With this launch, RealBird now provides online marketing services to US, Canada and UK agents and brokers. 

Brand new, major redesign of the flagship RealBird single property website platform launched

It's been a long time coming and finally, in October, we launched a major redesign of our flagship RealBird Listing Publisher property website platform. The system has many, many improvements and new features, while remaining fully backward compatible: new layout design, improved SEO, improved load speed, deeper social media integration, better lead capture, more automatic integration with 3rd party services such as Walkscore, ability to add more custom pages and content and many more features. We were very happy to receive an overwhelmingly positive response from all of our members regarding this major update.

New Craigslist property ad generator released

A revamped Craigslist property ad generator was launched in November, making it much easier for RealBird members to create a Craigslist ad with unlimited color theme options. Craigslist is one of the most popular classifieds ad platforms and this new tool makes it way easier to create much better looking ads for your RealBird listings. 

SMS keyword property marketing added to your mobile marketing toolkit

Just in time for the holiday season, we added a new listing marketing service to the RealBird mobile toolkit. We integrated RealBird with the leading SMS technology provider, Twilio and introduced SMS keyword marketing for your properties with an amazing, automatic lead capture feature.

Last but not least, 7,616 real estate professionals joined RealBird in 2011. This is our highest yearly registration number ever and we thank you all very much (long time and new members as well) for trusting your real estate marketing on the RealBird platform. 

We Wish You All A Very Happy & Successful New Year !

-- The RealBird Team
RealBird.com 

Facebook Page Apps: Map-based Search and Mobile Real Estate Website

You can now create three distinct Facebook Real Estate Page Tabs with RealBird PRO

1. one for your Featured Listings
2. one for your Map-based Search and 
3. one for promoting your Mobile Real Estate Website
   with live preview and with a call-for-action including your QR code

See the examples below and link to the tutorials:

Map-based Search Facebook Page Tab

See a live example on Janie Coffey's Coral Gables Real Estate Facebook Page

or on our RealBird Facebok Page

Mobile Real Estate Website Facebook Page Tab

See live example on Janie Coffey's Coral Gables Real Estate Facebook Page

or on our RealBird Facebok Page

Featured Listings Facebook Page Tab

See live example on Janie Coffey's Coral Gables Real Estate Facebook Page

or on the RealBird Facebook Page

How to add these modules to your own Facebook Page

We wrote 3 step-by-step tutorials, one for each modules. You can find them on this page. At first glance it may look long due to the screenshots showing each step, but it is really simple:

1. Add the Static Iframe Tab application to your Facebook Page
2. Copy and paste the code (mobile site, map-search or featured listings photowall) into the config box
3. Rename and rearrange the tab link

SEO benefits:

According to the whitepaper we posted earlier and also based on our own experiments, Facebook Page Tabs (and also status updates) are now fully indexed by Google and Bing.

Picking the correct label for those sidebar links and adding the right content may increase your visibility in search engines as well. It's similar to adding multiple pages to your website and blog to target long tail keywords. Adding multiple tabs with the proper headers, tab labels and tab content can help with your Facebook SEO as well. Based on our tutorials, you may want to set up several neighborhood map searches and properly name the tab links accordingly. It is a good Facebook SEO practice and also great for engaging your fans.

Should you have questions on how to use these new features please do not hesitate to ask.

Thanks

 

-- Zoltan 
RealBird.com

 

 

The RealBird mobile real estate websites are now Internet Explorer compatible. But why does that matter?

We launched a small upgrade yesterday that makes your RealBird real estate website for smartphones Internet Explorer compatible (from IE 7 through IE 9). This is a compatibility update in preparation of our upcoming features update, but I thought I share the functional implication of it. It's pretty cool, so read on:

Due to the new compatibility with all major desktop browsers - including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari and Opera - you can now embed your vanity city Url of your RealBird mobile website in webpages and blog posts that targets desktop users. The user interface now renders equally on all major smartphones and desktop browsers, providing you with one more way to market your listings, your blogs posts, and soon, your property search. Just simply create an iframe HTML code with your RealBird mobile site's Url and paste that code into any webpage that supports this basic HTML tag. It's that simple. See a sample code below the example.

Example (courtesy of Mike Conner) e.g. click "Our Properties" to see Mike's current list, then click through any of them to see the details. If you have a smartphone handy, scan his QR code below and see how it works on mobile devices. 

Scan me with your smartphone to bookmark
our mobile website at http://Olympia.RealBird.com

IFrame code example:

<iframe src="http://Olympia.RealBird.com" width="95%" height="500" style="width: 95%; height: 500px;"></iframe><center>Scan me with your smartphone to bookmark<br/>our mobile website at <a href="http://Olympia.RealBird.com" target="_blank">http://Olympia .RealBird.com</a><br/><img src="http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=qr&choe=UTF-8&chld=L|0&chs=140x140&chl=http://olympia.realbird.com/" style="border:0px;"></center> 

You can use this code as is, just make sure that you change the highlighted olympia subdomain (4 places !) to your own RealBird vanity city domain name.  

There are many options and best practices to make this a great marketing vehicle. We'll add a full tutorial soon and we will also include a code generator in the RealBird member area, but you can already embed your own by creating the simple iframe code manually as described above.

Please note that this feature requires RealBird PRO membership, which costs only $99/year for unlimited everything :) 

Should you have questions on how to use this feature before our official code generator is launched, just email or call us. Or if you have added this new widget to your website or blog, please share your live example with us. And of course, stay tuned, much more is coming ...

Thanks and enjoy !

-- The RealBird Team

http://www.RealBird.com