The real estate industry of the UAE is ever evolving with tons of opportunities in investment-friendly policies and world-class infrastructure. Recent industry reports reveal that the UAE industry has witnessed a soaring growth in the third quarter of this year, surpassing AED184 billion in total sales by the end of Q3 2022. This is projected to rise at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 8% from 2022 to 2027. Even with the limited availability of state-of-the-art properties, the country’s real estate market will continue its growth trajectory, owing to the rising demand and higher prices. As a result, real estate businesses are exploring novel ideas and techniques to stay competitive in today's cutthroat market, in order to meet this soaring demand.

Mobile marketing: A simple, yet advanced strategy

Currently, the world is rapidly moving towards digitalization, resulting in large-scale transformations across multiple aspects of life. The evolution of smartphones is an ideal example, which has spawned new digital sectors and provided several industries with a competitive edge. Industries, including the real estate sector, are leveraging the latest advancements such as mobile marketing to their advantage. While not entirely new, this approach is currently being adopted across all the sectors, due to its various underlying benefits. Mobile marketing is an advanced strategy that uses a variety of techniques to promote businesses to users. These include the use of social media platforms, video and image advertisements within applications, and more. Several realtors across the industry have effectively incorporated mobile marketing strategy into their operations. Apart from the success, the technique also enables real estate companies to retain a sizeable amount of its customers.

An ideal illustration of mobile marketing includes the advertisements that pop up while using tablets, smartphones, or other mobile devices. It is quite impossible for real estate agents to be present round the clock on site and clarify doubts and queries from the clients. Therefore, new, and inventive ways must be used to promote unique strategies like mobile marketing for real estate.

According to several industry reports, the majority of individuals who intends to purchase a new residence, surfs the Internet for their research. Given the number and widespread usage of Internet, the Middle East has observed an increase in this trend recently. The Global Media Insights Internet statistics revealed that 9.98 million UAE citizens, or 99.01% of the nation's total population, presently use the Internet. The report also highlights the 9.80 million smartphone users in the UAE, who spends approximately 4 hours and 35 minutes online. This suggests that mobile devices make up 58.51% of all Internet usage in the country. Realtors can capitalize on this to promote their business as this percentage is only anticipated to grow.

Owing to the wide variety of social media platforms, websites, and mobile apps offering their own distinct and specialized mobile advertisement alternatives, the mobile marketing ad formats, its customization, and styles can differ. Personalized SMS campaigns such as Agent Mobile App Invitation automatically send text messages to your database members wishing them [well] on their birthdays or anniversaries, sending holiday greetings, brochures, coupons, or SMS contests. Mobile marketing can offer clients and potential customers who utilize smartphones with customized time and location sensitive information when executed properly. This enables customers to receive the precise information they require, at any time.

Taking into account the aforementioned factors, companies need to execute the strategy accurately in order to witness remarkable results, including exponential increases in sales or leasing revenue. Businesses fail to obtain the anticipated outcomes owing to the misaligned marketing priorities and budget limits. Having a proper spending expenditure and utilizing mobile marketing more effectively, with the help of cutting-edge technologies like QR codes, beacons, blockchain, NFC, and artificial intelligence in the real estate business, is one of the main ingredients for improving the company’s marketing ROI.

This indicates that the percentage of realty firms using mobile marketing is only projected to rise in the coming years, since it has proven to be a more effective communication tool to reach the right audience, as most of the population own smartphones.

As more and more investors flock to the UAE owing to its world-class infrastructures and opulent lifestyle, the demand for rentals and residences has risen tremendously, resulting in high competition in the real estate market. Given that the majority of the customers use their smartphones or tablets to research while purchasing a residence, making sure that the realtors have a strong online or mobile presence is crucial at the present. Additionally, it gives clients the opportunity to communicate and interact directly with the company's real estate agents, improving and developing relationships with both potential and current customers. The primary goal of the real estate companies should be to adapt quickly to the digital transformation in order to ensure maximum revenue and competitiveness.