According to the Mobile Outlook 2009, published by Mobile Marketer, a leading journal for mobile marketing, media and commerce, location-centric centric services are one of the key drivers of adoption to the mobile web.  Sure sounds like great news for the real estate industry. The study goes on to say that consumers are getting used to getting content online and they are even starting to trust the medium enough to transact banking business.  All good news for the future of mobile.

The emphasis, however, should be on mobile’s complementary nature - it gives legs to other channels, including retail, online, television, print, coupons, radio, outdoor, direct mail and insert media.  It’s a great way to leverage your website or invite consumers to connect to you or through you when they are driving around looking for property information. There are several wireless services now that let you brand a mobile experience for a consumer to search for a property from their phone.  VoicePad, for example allows a consumer to receive property information from any type of phone. Kurio, Mobi Manage and Smarter Agent allow consumers to search for property from their smartphones.

Top of the trends list is the consumer’s growing comfort with consuming news and content on mobile phones, along with exchanging SMS text messages, shopping for products and services, checking email, playing games, conducting mobile banking transactions and searching for retail locations or driving directions. REALTORS can take advantage of this trend by publishing local market statistics via their iPhone, for example, using the new app from the California Association of REALTORS that allows you to pull up monthly market statistics and mortgage rates.

It is important to think about how and where mobile fits in your overall marketing strategy today.

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