If you’ve been a realtor since the turn of the millennium, then you know that the rules of business have changed in the last decade. With the explosion of mobile marketing in the past five years, you have to make sure your business is keeping up with the latest real estate marketing technology. Most prospects have a smartphone and a tablet these days, so you’ve got to get up to speed with the newest tools of the trade – or risk falling behind.

Even for veterans of the real estate business, an open house can appear dreadful. Home buyers often seem to have difficulty getting out of their own homes during viewings, often wary of inviting strangers into their homes and wanting to gauge interest for themselves. Realtors have it the hardest: trying to get the sellers out and get the potential buyers in can feel like herding cats.

When developing a real estate marketing strategy, coming up with innovative ideas can be quite a challenge; especially since your target market is often quite niche. There may be only particular buyers in the market for the type of properties you offer, but with a little focus and ingenuity, you can identify and target the right kind of clients.

Mobile marketing is darn-near tailor-made for real estate, with most agents glued to their smartphones and many home buyers using mobile devices to house-hunt. Let’s look at five reasons why mobile and real estate work so well together:

Social media is constantly evolving, and Facebook is still a reliable way for businesses to market themselves. If in the real estate business and looking to get more out of your Facebook page, check out nine tips for real estate social media marketing:

IVR, or Interactive Voice Response Technology, is something every real estate agent should utilize. Why? Rather than spending most of your budget on marketing hoping the phone will ring, or losing sleep because you don’t want to miss a call, you could use IVR, a simple yet highly-effective tool more commonly known as the “call capture hotline.”