The Real Estate Agent With The Technology to Succeed: The 'Democratization of Data'

Real estate professionals are more than experts about the properties they represent and the clients they advise. They are also champions of technology, advocates for new tools and resources to elevate their online visibility and more effectively market to prospective buyers and sellers.

To do that job well -- to have a distinctive website, one with its own high-quality design and easy navigability, which simultaneously captures data about individual clients -- traditionally requires a substantial investment in multiple developers, programmers, analysts and account executives.

For it is that very job, with its emphasis on personalization (each site should have its own identity and messaging) and scientific marketing (every professional should lessen the scattershot approach to communications, which is costly and hard to evaluate), which promises to transform the real estate industry into a more targeted and successful undertaking.

Gone will be the hit-or-miss approach of TV advertising, billboards, radio spots, flyers, magazine inserts and mailers that are as expensive in price as they are incalculable in their collective influence. Gone will be the cut and paste style of website templates that make each real estate professional look like a generic version of one another, as this business depends on the skills -- and character -- that every executive possesses. Banished amidst all this detritus and worthless paper will the orderly arrangement of digital files, calendars and systems.

This transformation is part of a much broader phenomenon, where the "democratization of data" will enable real estate professionals to have a much better sense of the interests, search terminology, queries and locales of potential clients throughout a city, county or neighborhood.

I offer this prediction -- no, I present this current reality -- based on my role as Founder of Ocoos, where I provide real estate professionals (and leaders from other industries) with the liberty to build their own websites, oversee real-time traffic and better appreciate the analytics of the Internet in general.

The benefits for this audience are several: The consolidation of so many services into the "three M's" of the Web (management, marketing and mining) unleashes access to options and information, which were once the exclusive province of Fortune 500 corporations and multinational brands.

This ability to streamline administrative duties, or to have a virtual concierge oversee the entire spectrum of online responsibilities, means real estate professionals can spend more time with their respective clients; it means they, the men and women who pride themselves on their availability and individualistic approach to working with buyers and sellers, can prove -- in words and deeds -- that they are, without a doubt, the trusted leaders they purport to be.

Intelligent and Informed: The Rewards of Technology

The overarching theme to this discussion is about the value of market intelligence and relevant information.

These assets are the true rewards of technology, in which a real estate professional can confirm that a specific service makes his or her job more productive; that a trio of offerings are just the beginning of a more global revolution involving the analysis of material that will make messaging more personalized and marketing more professionalized, so to speak.

The latter is the essence of the way real estate executives will review -- and seize the opportunities related to -- cultivating existing client relations and establishing a bond with new customers.

From there, we will see a more adept group of real estate professionals: Men and women, empowered by data, to remake their industry for the better.

This event redounds to the good of all, for the sustained betterment of every client and executive, now and forevermore.