Jul 15 2022
8 min read
Oct
Last Updated: October 12, 2022
10 min read
Real estate is a cut-throat line of trade, and your business reputation plays a visceral role. Consumers will not trust their big bucks with an agent who sits in a shabby one-room office with a couple of run-down advertising placards.
You need to grab the attention with some kick-ass marketing. And that means upgrading― first and foremost― your real estate marketing & advertising placards to digital signage.
We are used to seeing screens in retail stores, restaurants, and even at bus stops. But when it comes to real estate, we often miss to notice how effective the tool can be. In this section, let’s take a look at why digital property signs have a significant bearing on your sales.
1. HD screens evoke visual bliss
Take a look at these two advertising signs. Which one do you think would appeal to a buyer?
In real estate, “looks don’t matter” is mythology. The look, glamour, and refinement of your properties (and the quality of the property images) is the first thing to attract your target customers. High-definition visuals on digital displays can work like magic and get property-hunters talking about your ‘On Sale’ projects.
2. Real estate digital signs are multipurpose
Using digital sign software, it is possible even to turn your television into commercial signage. The software imparts versatility to your real estate digital signage. You can show property videos and run live news bulletins at the same time.
The passerby stares at your screen to check the news, and suddenly, an affordable two-bedroom apartment catches their attention. Boom! You get a call the next day.
The screens in your office lobby can display welcome messages to visiting prospects and, at the next moment, show internal news bulletins to your employees.
3. Can be used for targeted & experiential marketing
Although experiential marketing is a term often used in the context of retail customer experience, your real estate business can take a hint from it. It means marketing your offerings using a positive and unique experience for your potential clients so that they recall your brand for a longer time.
In real estate, screens can bring Artificial Intelligence into play. You can do innovative marketing through highly-targeted AI-based property suggestions to people who pass by your real estate digital signage.
4. Software makes it easier to update
Have you woken up one day and seen your face on the advertising poster spray-painted by teenage vandals? Ah! That’s a bummer.
Now you need to replace your real estate sign.
There is a week of constant rain; your plastic signs die a slow death.
Now you need to replace your real estate sign.
You are moving into a new office; your new address needs to be updated.
Now you need to replace your real estate sign.
There is no end to it. And each time you replace your signs for even a teeny-weeny mistake or alteration, it costs you money and time.
Not with digital screens.
With display content management systems, you can endlessly change your marketing copies, update your announcements in real time, and even schedule your signage content for auto-publishing.
At the very least, a standard real estate sign costs somewhere around $20-$80. For additional customizations, you have to pay extra. For more words, you have to pay extra. For complex graphics…yes…pay extra.
If you add these costs (don’t forget to include the cost of time), you will see that digital signage is much more lucrative.
Screen licenses for even the most whizz-bang digital signage software like Pickcel start at an affordable price range of $13.50/month.
Digital signage is a one-time investment that gives huge returns. The typical longevity of even the most basic grade of displays is 3-5 years. I leave the math to you!
Here’s an exercise for you:
Check how much you spend annually on your real estate signs.
Multiply it with 3.
Compare the same with our sample cost sheet of digital signage ownership.
When we say ‘real estate digital signage,’ it is essential to point out that digital signage may not always be used for marketing & advertising by the real estate agent.
Many real estate developers offer outdoor digital signage as an amenity in their real estate projects. That’s because digital screens find round-the-clock use in both commercial and residential life.
Let’s see some of the things digital signage can show in different real estate scenarios:
Whether it is a shopping mall, a tech park, or a giant coworking space― digital signage finds multiple purposes in places of business.
Digital wayfinders
Large commercial spaces with ten blocks and hundreds of offices can easily confuse a visitor. Digital wayfinders are screens that can guide the entrants through area maps, direction signs, or even an interactive “walk with me” assistant similar to Google Maps.
In real estate, interactive digital wayfinding kiosks that allow visitors to self-search their way inside the premise are known to impact the visitor experience profoundly.
Ad spaces for companies
Your commercial estates will be frequented by many corporates, shops, and service providers who are always hunting for a mass communication medium. Whether it’s a DooH sign on the lawn or a digital poster at the foyer of a building, these spaces are valuable for all your real estate leaseholders & tenants.
Retailers can use your digital real estate signs as marketing & promotion platforms. Corporations can use these screens to announce hiring drives and showcase their CSR initiatives for better corporate branding.
Self-check-in booths for visitors
Self-check-ins and check-outs are highly convenient tools for both visitors and hosts.
A tablet or a kiosk at the entry gate in large commercial real estate can get visitors to fill in basic personal information, entry times, visitation requirement, etc., and then generate a soft token (on the visitor’s mobile phone) through a visitor management app.
On the back end, the app informs the concerned host or office receptionist that someone is waiting to see an XYZ person with an ABC purpose.
General infotainment for visitors
Not everyone visiting a commercial building is always in a hurry to meet someone. If you notice, the lobby sofas & chairs in these buildings are almost always occupied with people staring down at their phones, reading newspapers, or simply staring blankly into the ceiling.
Yes, these people are waiting.
But they are bored. And their patience is to run out soon.
That’s why a bit of infotainment on digital signage adds a pleasing experience.
You can turn your screens into digital reader boards and show a wide range of content, such as, live news feeds, weather feeds, RSS feeds, social media feeds, informational YouTube videos, or relevant text messages.
Residential estates have mostly communication requirements. Accordingly, the digital signs in these types of projects serve a slightly different purpose. Let’s have a look:
Digital building directories
Whether it’s the food delivery agent knocking on the wrong door or a new homeowner seeing an unknown guest, we have all been there at some point.
That’s because most housing developments have dilapidated building directories (if, at all, there are any.)
Digital building directories bring the convenience of updating the names of the occupants as soon as there is a transfer of home ownership, a new tenant moves in, or new members join the housing committees.
Digital notice board & Digital Posters
We know how clumsy pin and cork notice boards can be. It’s usually just a pile of pamphlets gathering dust, and nobody really notices the “notice.” That’s the reason so many real estate buildings nowadays use digital signage to replace those pinboards.
You can also put up bright, colorful posters on your screens to spread the news about events, celebrations, blood donation camps, free health check-up drives, or carry out health & hygiene campaigns.
Sophisticated communication of messages and announcements makes way for more engaged building members. Notices get read, and updating a bulletin doesn’t take much elbow grease.
Real estate developers and sellers are amongst the first line of beneficiaries who can turn their business around with a versatile asset such as digital signage. Let’s see some of the ways these stakeholders can use digital displays:
In architectural planning
Digital signs find heavy purpose in the realtor’s office as a tool to visualize the architecture and construction plan of a property.
Large video walls or flat panel displays are used to watch the aerial drone shots of the plot, live construction status and simultaneously communicate instructions to the line manager of the grass root workers.
Digital catalogs
Builders & real estate agents can make a solid first impression on potential home buyers visiting their office by running a slideshow of their star real estate projects on a large digital signage screen, right at the entry gate or in the waiting area.
Pickcel’s digital catalog app can be a great asset to designing eye-catchy visuals for such real estate digital signs. It is a free built-in tool within the Pickcel software that offers tons of customizable templates that can turn a bunch of property images into a magnificent e-catalog.
360 degree virtual open house
Open houses are the busiest days for real estate agents. Answering so many questions and handing out champagne glasses to all the visitors is NOT an easy job.
Many agents nowadays try to reduce the pressure of Open Days by on-demand virtual open days. Buyers who don’t have the time to attend face-to-face open house events can visit the agent’s office later and take a virtual 360-degree tour on a tablet. They can get a near-real experience of walking through a property. They can rotate and scrutinize every corner and make an informed decision.
The best thing about virtual tours is that your buyers can virtually walk throughout the whole neighborhood, check the nearest bus stops, school buildings, and restaurants, and get the hang of the vast area that encompasses their property. They can go back and forth twice, thrice, or as many times as they want.
Internal dashboards for employees
These days, a number of business intelligence & data visualization tools help real estate sellers make data-driven decisions. Larger-scale real estate developers and agencies have tons of KPIs to track sales, monitor their place in the market, and review employee performance.
These internal dashboards can be easily integrated with digital signage software applications like Pickcel, and the information can be broadcast company-wide to keep the staff fully aware of the business situations and their role in it.
Happy customers
As I said at the start of this article, the real estate business runs on reputation and brand loyalty. And nothing gives you the benefit of people’s trust more than the word of happy customers.
So next time you close a deal, don’t just leave a flower bouquet for the new homeowners. Make sure to ring them up and ask for their testimonial. Click a snapshot of the new occupants with their property and put their reviews on your office digital signage (don’t forget to ask for their permission, though!)
Digital signage has taken over the advertising world. And your real estate business needs as much advertising as the next iPhone model. That doesn’t mean you have to replace every small yard sign with a digital screen. But make sure where it matters, a screen is communicating your message, not a plastic sign.
The best part about digital signage is that you ask for just marketing & promotion, but you get so much more than that. You can improve the internal communication at your offices or leverage digital signage as an amenity in your real estate development projects.
Do you have any screen (TV, tablet) available? Then I totally recommend you to try out the Pickcel software for two weeks completely free of cost (without any credit card details). Just register and get started! You will see, practically, how digital signage impacts your business.
With Pickcel’s free trial, you can unlock a host of free digital signage apps like weather feeds, stock market data, digital catalog, visitor management app, Google Traffic, Google Reviews, Bulletin board app, and much more!
Take complete control of what you show on your digital signage & how you show it.
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