| As technologies evolve, people figure out new ways to apply them to sales and marketing, so expect to discover additional ways to use technology in delivering your marketing materials. (Chapters 4 and 5 cover general marketing techniques to help you get your name out.)Here are examples of some new and emerging technologies to pay attention to: Talking houses: For a few hundred dollars, you place a low-power, battery-operated radio transmitter near the house that contains an audio narration you recorded about the property. (Often, the radio is enclosed in a small box that you attach to the for-sale sign, fence, or railing.) People can tune in to that radio frequency on their AM radio and listen to your presentation. Talking houses can make sense in rural and suburban markets where people drive to each property rather than park nearby and walk to them. If it's raining or your flyer box is empty, the narration can help satisfy a prospective buyer's interest. However, I would always provide a traditional flyer in addition to the audio: People can't take home a radio presentation for later review or write notes on it, as they can a printed flyer. Mobile messaging: Text messages on cell phones and handhelds like the BlackBerry and Treo are increasingly popular communication mechanisms, especially for young people, executives, and traveling sales people. So we can expect to see ads, spam, and other marketing techniques appear in this medium as we have seen happen on the Web and in e-mail. I recommend being careful, however, and not use this medium for anything but short status messages to existing clients. First, long messages or messages with attachments often don't get fully delivered. Second, users of these services pay to receive messages, so ads and unwanted messages cost them money. Both of these factors make recipients very touchy about what they get. A recent federal law in fact requires that you get permission before sending messages to any of these services' users (see Chapter 5 for details).
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