Artificial intelligence (AI) has been at the center of many disruptions in recent years. Machine learning, deep learning, natural language processing, and other forms of AI have given us the best of automation across industries – from self-driving cars to digital assistants to AI-powered image recognition.
And for real estate, an industry that has often managed to stay untouched by many of the recent tech disruptions, AI is finally bringing that much-needed disruption to the industry. Intelligent platforms are increasingly being used to streamline property management, find cost-efficient vendors, and improve customer service via AI-powered chatbots.
For small businesses in the real estate industry, AI can also be a game-changer in the marketing department. With tons of data from renters, buyers, service providers, property owners, and potential clients, businesses in this industry can use AI-powered tools to boost their marketing efforts and stay ahead of the curve.
Here are a few ways real estate businesses can use AI to take their digital marketing efforts to the next level.
AI for Lead Generation
Chatbots are among the earliest implementations of AI. Over the years, they’ve developed from simple customer service applications on websites to intelligent interfaces that can handle different types of customer queries semi-independently. Intelligent chatbots use machine learning to perform real-time data analysis to enable potential customers, for instance, to find the perfect piece of real estate.
Additionally, they can be used to capture leads anywhere they’re used, including your blogs and social media platforms.
For instance, imagine a customer who’s landed on your Facebook page looking for advice on renting or buying a storage lot or some other property. Your chatbot can come alive as soon as they initiate contact, asking them for more details about their query. And even if they leave the chat after a second or two, you’d have captured that lead for a follow-up later.
In addition to chatbots, there are many other ways you can use AI to generate leads. For instance, Narrow.io, an AI-powered social media tool, can help businesses capture relevant leads on Twitter. The tool combs through Twitter with intelligent algorithms to find users and conversations within your niche, making it easier to capture leads and boost engagement.
AI in Content Creation and Marketing
Over half of real estate clients who actually go on to buy property begin their journey on the internet, according to a 2016 survey by Zillow Group. And a big part of that has to do with content.
Blog posts, ebooks, infographics, social media posts, and other forms of content have a direct impact on your engagement and brand promotion strategies. However, discovering what content your audience might be into, creating it, and marketing it across different channels still remain the biggest roadblocks for real estate marketers, which is where AI comes in.
Marketers in this industry can use machine learning during the early stages of content creation to discover content that would resonate with the right audiences. For instance, your real estate business can create relevant content on Facebook or Instagram based on property demand within a specific area, something that an AI-based tool can help you discover.
AI can also help real estate businesses to predict what type of content will be useful to audiences, which helps take out the guesswork out of content planning.
Image Recognition
The real estate industry is heavily dependent on visual cues. Most potential buyers and renters must develop an emotional connection with the property, something that requires visually stimulating their online experience. As such, images are an important part of real estate marketing, which is why over 83% of buyers would want to look at photos of the property before coming down to view the property.
It’s also the reason why the ongoing work on AI-powered image recognition by Google and other companies means so much for the real estate industry. Visual search is one of the fields in image recognition that has the potential to disrupt real estate marketing.
Visual search and AI-powered computer vision basically enable potential buyers and renters find properties that have visual characteristics closest to their preferences.
For instance, say a potential client is looking for a house with wooden floors, an open plan kitchen with floor tiles, and a backyard swimming pool within a specific neighborhood. With AI-powered computer vision, clients can choose from a range of visual results instead of simply receiving listings according to limited, text-based results, helping them make better buying decisions.
There are a number of effective – and inexpensive – tools that you can try out if you want to get a feel of AI-powered image recognition, including PicScout’s Visual API and Restb.ai to enhance your marketing strategy with AI.
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