Learning real estate lead generation strategies is an essential skillset of a successful real estate agent.
An effective and well calibrated lead generation funnel can provide you unlimited number of qualified traffic and leads that can in turn cut your waiting time for closing deals. Another advantage is you can pre-qualify your leads to what stage they are in the buying process, thus, allowing you to allocate your precious time to those that is near or close to buying.
That is why, more and more real estate agents are learning this new found skillset.
Lead Generation for Real Estate?
But before we jump right into our lists of real estate lead generation strategies, let’s talk more about what exactly lead generation is in real estate.
Lead generation is a marketing term. It is the process of attracting people and converting them into people who’ll be interested in your products and services. For the real estate industry, this would cover anyone who is interested in using your services to rent, purchase or sell their house.
You can just picture out what it means to have more of these leads. If you have plenty of them, the better your odds are of closing a deal and looking for more interested prospects. Therefore providing you with a steady stream of income and new prospective clients.
But how to get real estate leads online?
Well, agents can generate free leads organically when they focus on building their business and professional network. However, organic leads are still not a guarantee but with paid real estate lead generation services, one is able to receive an instant boost in their business.
For example, these softwares that can support your real estate lead generation strategies and companies like Zillow. They are able to provide you leads and the tools to help you nurture your leads throughout the process.
Recommended Softwares for Your Real Estate Lead Generation Strategies
Here are the softwares that you can use in the implemetation of your real estate lead generation strategies:
1. Infusionsoft
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Infusionsoft is specifically designed to aid small businesses build effective customer relations while generating leads. It highlights marketing automation, social media, email and lead generation tools that are easy to use. There are also personalised coaching services that’ll help you get started.
However, this software does not have A/B testing available. And will need some amount of experience to make full use of the software.
2. Pardot
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Pardot is designed for business-to-business marketing and sales automation in mind. It is a great fit for agencies seeking to improve their Salesforce CRM insights and efficiency. Although A/B testing is available, however, trying to restructure incorrectly done campaigns needs work.
3. Marketo
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Marketo is an online platform for email marketing for companies of all sizes. It’s focus is to preserve your already existing customer connections. It provides marketing automation, sales insights, website development and budget management with analytical and social marketing modules.
It has powerful features that deliver long-term goals and personalisation advancement. However, the landing page builder for your website will still require a template builder but it is a small matter compared to the other features that it offers.
4. Zurple
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Zurple is a real estate lead management software platform that allows you to track lead behaviors and optimize follow-ups.It has an automatic sorting behaviour and allows follow-up optimization plus data and street view listings.
5. Sharpspring
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Sharpspring is a lead generator software that features a fully re-brandable platform, website tracking and a built-in CRM system. It offers easy to convert and attractive landing page templates. It also provides a build in call tracking for your offline leads.
READ ALSO: Effective Tools and Digital Marketing Strategies for Real Estate Industry
How to Select a Software That Will Support Your Real Estate Lead Generation Strategies
There are countless more real estate lead generator software available on the web. And to select the right one that meets your needs and requirements, you can start by looking at the following:
- Problems and challenges the tool is coming to solve
– why do you buy a tool or software in the first place? Isn’t it to boost your productivity and profitability? It can also be to track leads and manage your relationships and gain insights on your closing rates and opportunities.
So before you do decide on the tool you are going to use, discuss what it is that you want solved for your business operations.
- Implementation
– You might also want to do a free trial for your software and note whether the tool requires a testing and training period. This is crucial since if the software is too complicated, it might become a problem instead of your employee’s productivity.
- Price
– Nothing much to discuss as you are aware of your own financial capabilities. Don’t always go for the expensive ones as they might not be the ones you need. Return to the reason why you are looking for a tool in the first place and weigh your options from there.
- Customization
– Is your real estate lead software flexible enough to handle all your real estate processes?
- Reporting capabilities
– Lastly, is the tool you are using something that has a comprehensive and clear reporting capability?
15 Effective Real Estate Lead Generation Strategies
While lead generation does come with its own set of challenges, like finding the best software and sites to use and various customer experience strategies. The same rules to marketing still applies to a variety of industries but lead generation is crucial for a real estate marketing strategy.
1. Social Media for Brand Awareness
Modern marketing has increased its reach exponentially with digital transformation. Social media image is now an irreplaceable component of most of the real estate lead generation strategies and campaigns.
You might want to check some of the most worthwhile platforms that you can invest in to grow your network:
Of course, LinkedIn is the top choice as it is geared towards professionals and the platform can offer you to attract a lot of quality traffic. Of course, Facebook Ads should still be part of your campaigns. They are cost effective and allow you to target specific leads, groups and companies.
But remember that content curation can make or break your lead generation success. Are you sharing valuable content? Sounds too vague?
Let’s dig deeper, do your future customers know that you can rely on your skills to deliver an exceptional experience throughout your house buying or selling process?
Today, customers prefer to get to know companies, and agencies through their online content instead of their paid advertisements. Use guides for your future blog posts, videos and infographics to help them answer some of their pressing questions.
Lastly, do not forget to track your interactions and content engagement with them in order to determine which content you can use to deliver most value.
READ ALSO: Real Estate Digital Marketing Trends That You Should Consider for 2020
2. Video Marketing Strategy
Did you know that videos attract three times more visitors to a real estate agent’s site? And it doubles the amount of their time spent there.
But how can one incorporate video into my marketing strategy?
- Client interviews
- Q&A live streams
- How-to and general information videos
- Agent profiles
- Yearly reviews
- Videos of local community events
The elements we’ve mentioned above are merely bonuses for your video content. However, the most important kinds of video for real estate are their listing videos. These videos feature the best sides of your listings inside and out.
But don’t wander too far. You don’t need any professional equipment. A cell phone camera, steady shots, quality-voice overs or narrations, and a basic editing software is all you need to create an immersive and informative experience that’ll capture your prospects interest.
3. Live Chat
Don’t underestimate the impact of live chats to the visitors to your websites. They might not want to fill out forms or call you but they will always be happy to engage in a live chat to get their questions answered instantly.
Throw in a box for their emails so that you can send your answer or response to them while adding their emails to your lists.
You can use plenty of Live Chat apps available such as FreshChat, Intercom, and Drift or the famous Messenger App on your website, too.
4. Virtual Open Houses
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Another free ral estate leads idea is to run an open house. An open house doesn’t have to be about selling, but an action that’ll get you a list of potential and interested buyers.
The first step is to attract visitors and make them aware of the event. You can use your email campaigns, door hangers, flyers, postcards and social media which will contain the highlight of your listings.
On the day of the event, you can use sign posts on streets to direct people to the open house. Who knows, maybe you’ll catch the eyes of other passerbys.
But don’t forget that it is crucial for you to capture the names of your visitors. Make sure that you get their contact details and a formal sign-in sheet as people enter the open house.
Or you can also engage in conversation and ask for their details informally. But don’t let these leads run cold and follow-up, email, message and call your leads after the event.
5. Virtual Tours
If you want a smarter and modern way to attract your potential buyers. You can bring your listings right to their phones, desktops and computers by offering them a virtual tour.
A professional 360-degree virtual tour is a superb way to showcase houses on websites, social media and Google Maps. It is a time-saver that’ll definitely help you stand out from the crowd and catch the attention of potential buyers who are outside your current demographics.
6. Leverage Customer Positive Feedback
The best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing at all. So when you let your results speak for themselves, it is a great way of establishing your reputation. Don’t underestimate the power behind a customer review and testimonials.
When you want to establish a review page on your website, share testimonials on major real estate platforms such as Zillow, Trulia, and Realtor.com. You can also create videos with customer feedback with these platforms to boost your credibility.
In addition, you might also want to use a referral program for your existing clients to become representatives of your network. Referrals can help get the word out about your customer’s experience while utilizing their positive experiences which will essentially serve as a major PR role.
And best of all, referrals are free. All you gotta do is maintain a good relationship with your contacts so that when they have a friend or acquaintance who wants to sell their property, you’ll be top of their mind.
Real estate leads for new agents tip, if you are just starting out on your business. Build your contacts through friends and family until your client list can grow.
7. Buyer Leads Segmentation
While there have been a lot of people you’ve sent your newsletters to and promotional emails. Are you organizing your email campaigns in criterias that can help you segment your prospects?
The criterias means that you are checking in on how “hot” or “cold” your prospects are interaction with your content, website and social media?
Are you paying attention to their demographics?
How about your buyer persona?
As much as you can, create tailored contents for your prospects. Segment your emails, are you sending out educational materials? Are you frequently contacting your clients?
If you have the data with you, use it. Use your insights and analytics, and invest your resources wisely through segmentation as you’ll be reaping bigger rewards while saving your energy and time.
8. Community Service to Establish and Strengthen Local Presence
We’ve mentioned this element in the previous real estate lead generation ideas. For a realtor, your community is the best way to establish your presence and reputation.
An agent can benefit a lot from getting to know their neighborhoods in which they work and sell. So don’t be shy in getting involved in your community, maximize the ROI of these events by implementing a lead nurturing strategy such as:
- Sponsoring local events such as park fairs or school concerts
- Volunteering or helping organize charity events
- Giving presentations on topics of expertise at a community college
- Hosting a podcast
9. Create Content to Nurture Leads in Your Subscribers List
What are the types of content that are most effective when engaging your leads? Newsletters, Community Magazines, Blogging.
How can you make use of them?
NEWSLETTER
An excellent way of providing information regularly to your subscribed leads. With it, you can offer your insights on interest and mortgage rates while providing them your best listings.
COMMUNITY MAGAZINE
It includes information on upcoming events in the neighborhood while providing helpful real estate information and industry statistics.
BLOGGING
Blogging is a solid digital resource that can be used to integrate a page of your website without any problem with whatever medium you use. Your goal however must provide information to prospects about tips on buying or selling a home in the market along with your own personal touch.
READ ALSO: Digital Marketing Strategies for Real Estate Industry
10. High Quality Content and Local SEO Optimization to Increase Organic Search Engine Result Visibility
As you know, creating quality content will always win over targeted keywords that lack substance. However, this alone cannot increase your search result visibility. You must apply local SEO improvement and constantly update your pre-existing content.
For one, you can turn your attention to your Local SEO as it is one of the important real estate lead generation strategies.
Be sure you do the following:
- Created Your Google My Business Profile
- Set up on-page local SEO signals
- Started Link Building
- Listing Yourself In Online Directories
- Managed Your Online Reviews
- And Engaged With Social Media Users
While content attracts traffic, you’ll need to up your visibility by checking off those elements we’ve mentioned above.
Lastly, if you have already published your content. Update them from time to time. Old blogs do end up pushed down on the search engine results page (SERP). So don’t forget about your previous published works and update them to enhance your visibility in search results.
11. Personalized Customer Service
The first step in the buyer’s journey is figuring out how you can provide the best customer service possible. In real estate, people just want to make sure that their investment goes to the right place.
So you might want to offer a free consultation or even quotes as a great way to build your potential client list. Make it your job to make the process of your clients that they’ll be able to easily reach out to you when you need them.
Whether you are over the phone, or in person, show them your level of investment to them with a personalized experience to further encourage them to take the next step in their purchasing decisions.
12. Improve Website Performance and “Likability”
The problem that most real estate professionals face when improving traffic to their website. Is that they aren’t optimized to capture emails and generate a contact list.
They aren’t using custom landing pages that’ll convert their readers into leads. But it’s actually quite simple, as realtors and brokers have access to many different types of landing pages to capture leads. Here are some examples:
- Book an appointment landing pages
- Home valuation landing pages
- Community landing pages
- Buyer guide landing pages
- Luxury listing landing pages
Always make sure that your conversion path is clear. Social media is about connecting to your audience but you need to make sure that you’re still leading your prospects to a valuable destination.
13. Follow Up with a Nurture Campaign
Perhaps one of the main reasons brokers struggle with real estate lead generation is that they’re convinced they should be able to convert a customer with a single advertisement or conversation. However, the truth is that it can take between 5 and 12 “exposure points” before someone feels comfortable doing business with you.
Learning how to get real estate leads through social media gives you access to a platform where you can constantly follow up with potential customers, and work on developing your brand relationships. Every time your employee advocates post a blog that someone likes, or comments on, you’re making another important connection on the path to conversion.
As you continue to learn more about your audience on social media, you might even consider linking your social strategy to a drip email system that persistently reminds your audience what you can offer and how you can help them.
14. Thank You Cards
One of the warmest and most personal forms of marketing is the Thank You Card.
Each year, you are in contact with thousands of people and most of them will mention how they are not interested in your offers. However, after each cold call, try dropping them off a simple thank you card to keep things personal.
Yoan think about the amount of ROI you get from a cheap Thank You Card. You could just write a handwritten thank you card like, ‘Hey Smith, it was great talking to you. Thank you so much for your time. I look forward to the opportunity to work with you.’
And then place your business card in there and seal it up. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t but you get the idea.
15. For Sale By Owners (FSBOs)
For Sale by Owner (FSBO) is a term that corresponds to the owner selling a property without using an agent or broker. This is to avoid selling their home on their own to avoid paying the real estate agent for commission.
But how does this help a real estate agent?
Well, your goal here is to convert these owners into free sources of revenue.
The trick is to start the conversation through listening and offering something of value. Keep in mind that the seller might have been disappointed by an agent before this is why they are doing their sales alone.
Take the time to listen, get to know their motivations. Offer insights and advice on the market. And offer them your help to find a buyer.
You can expect that you’ll be turned down the first time. But check in on them after a few weeks with a simple and friendly follow up. Because it will take a few weeks before they are open to the idea of working with you.
It’s Not What you Know. It’s Who You Know
Real estate networking is about meeting like-minded people in an effort to exchange referrals, advice, experience, contacts and knowledge. Regularly attend industry events and workshops, make your name and brands synonymous with the local real estate industry as it will help you reach a wider audience.
Following through the real estate lead generation strategies and its related activities takes a lot of patience and ability to transform your small improvements on a continuous basis. While you can’t always win in these deals, refine your process as you will assist you in your maturation and interest as an investor.
Converting leads and clients will take a lot of time, energy, and patience. But do it right, and the rewards will be worth it.
What are some of your favorite real estate lead generation strategy techniques? Let us know in the comments below.
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