Have you ever driven around a neighborhood, stopped by a house for sale to pick up a flier, and they’re all gone? Or if you do find one, there’s almost no information and just a picture or two of the kitchen and a bedroom? Well, we’d like to give a shout-out to John Daugherty Realtors for becoming the first real-estate company in Houston to incorporate Microsoft Tag on yard signs.
When a Tag is scanned, Houston home buyers have instant access to the property description, price, and photos, along with local information such as maps, schools, shopping centers, and nearby restaurants with ratings. John Daugherty Realtors (JDR) even promotes Tag use on its website.
“It’s critical for the real-estate industry to be on the forefront of technology,” says Darren Moore, web marketing/IT manager for JDR. “We have to sell real estate today the way the buyer wants it, not the way we want to sell it to them.”
According to TechCrunch, smartphone ownership continues to march upward, with 42.7 million U.S. consumers reporting they had a smartphone in January 2010 and 55.7 million by August 2010. That’s a 23% increase in smartphone ownership in just eight months. Gartner predicts that mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common web-access device worldwide by 2013.
Tag is a great first step for realtors who want to easily deliver online content to potential buyers. If I were a real-estate agent and wanted to use Tags on my yard signs, here are some things I would add to the content behind the Tag:
- Link to Zillow so buyers can see the pricing of other houses in the neighborhood.
- Include a video tour of the home.
- Besides linking to maps and Yelp, I’d link to Foursquare, so potential home buyers can see reviews of restaurants, shops, and entertainment in the neighborhood.
- JDR’s Tag lets people talk directly to real-estate agents through Twitter and Facebook – a great idea, and I also recommend a link to a customized mobile chat app.
Overall, John Daugherty Realtors has done an amazing job with its Tag usage. The examples we gave are just a few of examples of the customer experiences that can be created with Microsoft Tag.
If you have additional ideas, let us know in the Comments below or on Tag's Facebook or Twitter pages.