The design software with millions of users is now offering its sharp, creative marketing-asset design tool to the real estate industry, and there’s nothing not to like about it.
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LucidPress is a visual branding and marketing collateral tool.
Platforms: Browser
Ideal for: Multioffice brokerages, franchises, teams
Top selling points
- Highly granular control of branding elements
- Web interactivity
- Multiple languages
- Direct IDX feeds into design interface
- Social media publishing
- Import of InDesign files
Top concerns
Redundancy. Marketing teams and hands-on agent-designers might find some of what LucidPress offers already available on current tools and have solid brand management policies in place. Consider that before diving in.
What you should know
LucidPress is impressive. Its included templates are sharp and modern, and they offer options for everything from resumes and photo books to newsletters and open house banners.
Everything can be tightly controlled by marketing admins and overseers to ensure brands are always properly represented, prompting the company to see a wide-open market in the large-franchise real estate space.
The company has been around for some time, accumulating more than 20 million users and 700 employees, 200 of which are programmers. It’s other major tool tool is called LucidChart.
I came across the software at ICNY20, and having started my real estate career in design and marketing, I recognized its value right away. I remember being given a hand full of static Word and Powerpoint templates for creating proposals and listing fodder. It was bland and easy for me to manipulate — not ideal for brand control.
LucidPress allows template managers to control everything, down to the font size, color and type, even its page placement. The user need only type to ensure adherence to brand standards.
The immediate comparisons are Canva, Jigglar and Placeit — but think beyond quick drag-and-drop design. This a marketing director’s tool, a graphic design resource that can add tangible value to business processes. Real estate marketers have more than 600 templates to choose from, but access to all the tools needed to inspire and support complex from-scratch design. They can import existing InDesign files, too.
Listing brochures can be assembled by a clever on-board IDX feed that positions a spreadsheet of listings next to the canvas. Images, addresses and property details can be dragged into position and instantly formatted.
Paragraph styles, image boxes, logo placement, color schemes and everything else that radiates brand can be locked-down to guarantee message and visual consistency.
Files can be output to an included print partner, as well as sent to any existing print vendors.
LucidPress allows for the import of video files, too. Users need only know a Vimeo or YouTube link. This means that web-published documents can be that much more engaging. In some web-marketing scenarios, it can be a decent competitor to Studeo.
Links to brochures and presentations can be shared the same way any link is shared. Social media publishing is featured, and there are templates for Instagram Stories, too.
Collaborators and different levels of administration can be assigned to documents as needed, and teams and brokerages can white-label their version of LucidPress, a nice touch for encouraging officewide user buy-in.
It’s impossible for brand managers to monitor every desktop, inbox and Facebook account, and in our super-fast, share-everything visual economy, that can mean trouble for those who manage their company’s public reputation. But the virtual guardrails put in place by LucidPress can certainly help them rest easier at night.
Still, perhaps the most impressive thing here is that despite the natural contrast of control and creativity, LucidPress is still a flexible, intuitive graphic design platform.
You can have fun and stay in your lane.
Have a technology product you would like to discuss? Email Craig Rowe
Craig C. Rowe started in commercial real estate at the dawn of the dot-com boom, helping an array of commercial real estate companies fortify their online presence and analyze internal software decisions. He now helps agents with technology decisions and marketing through reviewing software and tech for Inman.
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