It’s not surprising that agents are having a hard time generating real estate leads due to the inclusion of more tools and technology to rely on. After all, lead generation was everything about offline efforts before. Particularly lead generation can be a challenge in a competitive real estate market. It is important to take a moment to see the big picture, to recall the core strategies that hold your game plan together.
If you are new, you shouldn0t have that many problems adapting to the newest lead generation strategies relying on digital tools. But if you have been in the business for a while, you can have a bit more difficulties.
However, in general, you need to utilize both options to bring sales-qualified leads your way since lead generation is more than one or two strategies.
For real estate, you have more approaches and strategy options than other niches, and we will review the most common and important ones so you can start working around them.
By the end of the article, you should be able to have a clear path of how to approach your goal. This means that your lead generation process should be clear and go smoothly.
Segmenting Your Leads for Insight into Your Database
Although most people who get your promotional emails and newsletters are existing leads, it will give insight into your system as well as allow you to generate leads. This is lead segmentation. There are a few criteria that you can use to segment your leads:
- How “hot” and “cold” they are (how often they interact with your content, website, social media, etc.)
- Demographics or, better still, buyer personas.
This knowledge will allow you to tailor your outreach to your segments, including emails, educational materials, and the frequency and nature of contact with clients. Overall, you will have a better insight to work in your strategies.
Hot leads might need a personalized push to get them moving, but an email drip better serves cold leads. Segmenting will help you reap the greatest benefits and save time.
Social Media for Awareness & Traffic
Social media image has become an integral part of modern marketing.
These are some of the best platforms to invest in when it comes to real estate:
- LinkedIn.
- Instagram.
- Twitter.
- Facebook.
LinkedIn is the best choice as it’s more focused on professional networking. However, Instagram and Twitter can bring in a lot of traffic and awareness.
You can keep your Instagram strategy relevant by using beautiful visuals and simple posts.
Facebook ads are another effective way to generate leads. You can target existing leads with the Custom Audiences feature.
A Facebook group can be created around your company to allow clients to share their experiences with other homebuyers and to give potential leads an idea of what might be in store.
Ask Those You Have Influenced
It doesn’t have to refer to new people you just met. Instead, this influence part involves friends, family, teachers, coworkers, hairdressers, and baristas. Just anyone you know, and you have made enough contact with.
When you ask all of them to provide recommendations to people they know about your services as a real estate agent or to your business, you can notice a great increase in your efforts.
Reach out to them regularly to gain leads. Sending a message, a personal email, text, or Facebook Messenger, Instagram DMs, or Facebook Messenger is all ways to reach out.
Although your friends might know that you work in real estate, it doesn’t guarantee they will remember to contact you when it comes time to sell their house or recommend you to someone they know.
You may be perceived as only doing rentals and not selling, or that you only serve one area when you have the entire city. Your family may need reminding.
Don’t be too assertive when asking for leads. But you shouldn’t be shy. People should know that you are always available to answer their questions.
You can make them feel at ease by letting them know that you are available to answer any questions they may have. Get to know people and connect with them.
Although you may not immediately see a return, don’t lose heart.
Get to Use Your Neighborhood
Using this strategy is when you have focused your efforts in a specific area or neighborhood to improve your name recognition. This can be done through community involvement and mailers.
You can increase your chances of someone calling you when they are looking for a real estate agent.
New agents may find it difficult to use their neighborhoods in rural areas. This shouldn’t stop you. Some people prefer to work alongside newer, more hungry agents than those who are more experienced.
Send postcards to introduce yourself and provide market data. Your brokerage may give you a limited number of cards free.
Magnetic mailers can be purchased to give leads a reason to display your contact information.
Embrace Networking
It can be fun to network and generate leads for real estate.
Networking focuses on building connections and not only with your neighbors but rather anyone you find a good match for you.
This means it is important to network with people in the real estate industry as well as those who don’t have any connection with this field.
- Participate in concerts, art shows, and other events.
- Be active in your alumni associations.
- Join a committee at your child’s school.
- Volunteer with a local charity.
- Participate in fundraisers.
It is a great networking tip to attend as much as possible. Make it a goal to get out at least once per week.
Market data and trends should be reviewed before attending an event.
Attending a networking event is not a guarantee of generating a lead in real estate. As with all things, networking takes time.
Leads grow from the way that you follow up after an event and develop relationships. Always send an email to people you meet to let them know that you enjoyed their company and provide your contact information.
Hosting an Open House
Potential buyers can visit an open house without an appointment when an agent opens the property to the public.
Anybody who comes to the door is a potential buyer. You must make an effort to capture leads at open houses by more than just leaving a sign-in sheet and a pen near the door.
Engage with visitors from the moment they arrive. Even if they are just curious neighbors, make them feel at home. Be prepared to give your visitors a few options for getting their email addresses and phone numbers.
Also, you should have printed copies of your market information and business cards along with your contact information. You can even use a QR Code generator to encourage people to save your contact information to their phones.
Open houses are face-to-face auditions before potential clients. It is one of few chances for you to meet someone face-to-face and have the chance of being their exclusive real-estate agent.
They can be hosted by other agents of your brokerage, even if your listings are not yours.
Remember that selling the open house is your first priority if you have one. If they have made it clear that they don’t want to attend the open house, they can move the conversation on to similar listings.
To ensure you have the ability to keep every lead that comes in, confirm with the agent.
Search Engine Optimization Is Almost Welcomed
There are many people searching engines for answers to real estate questions in your area at any given moment.
Search engine optimization (SEO) allows you to place your website in search results and answer common questions that demonstrate your expertise and trustworthiness. This will allow you to capture new leads. High-quality leads.
Although SEO isn’t the easiest way to generate real estate leads, it can be a long-term strategy that will consistently bring in new, highly qualified leads with minimal effort.
To ensure you have success in this lead generation strategy, you can consider all these aspects that need your attention and will be required for proper SEO.
- Targeted Keyword Research.
Without a good understanding of keywords, SEO cannot help you grow your real-estate business.
Start with a free tool like Google’s Keyword Planner to search for keywords and find out about their search volume as well as competition.
You want keywords with high search volumes and low competition. Local and hyperlocal keywords are best for real estate SEO. Although the search volume may be lower, it will still attract people who are searching for agents in your local area.
- Do an SEO website audit.
An SEO audit is a great way to begin optimizing an existing website.
A paid tool like Ahrefs or Moz can be used to audit your website. If you decide to do a DIY SEO website audit, ensure you are familiar with technical SEO in order to be able to take the results and make any necessary adjustments.
You can find a Fiverr or Upwork SEO expert if you don’t have the technical skills or don’t want to spend hours looking through code.
It’s easy to find a real estate professional SEO and see their portfolio and customer reviews before hiring.
- Create Your Google My Business Page.
Google My Business (GMB), a Google tool that allows you to appear in search results, is completely free.
You can upload your contact information and photos and encourage past clients to leave positive reviews.
GMB has a higher conversion rate than real estate landing pages, and businesses that are found on it have a greater chance of converting than other real estate landing pages.
- Google Analytics to track your progress.
To get the best SEO results and traffic to your website, you must have a clear picture of your visitors’ behavior.
Google Analytics will allow you to track which websites receive the most organic traffic and convert the best. This includes your specific pages.
- Optimize your images.
Images have been shown to increase user engagement by 550%. They are essential to creating the best content.
Uploading images incorrectly to your website can slow down website speed and make it difficult for visitors.
An image compressor and an HTML block can be used to optimize each image prior to uploading. However, a website builder is the easiest and most efficient way to optimize every image on your site.
Placester was created for brokers and real estate agents. It makes it simple to optimize images and ensure that your website’s technical side is well taken care of.
- You can check how your website performs on mobile devices
You’ll most likely view your website on your desktop while you are creating it. It’s very likely that most of your website visitors will use a smartphone, though.
Use Google Page Speed Insights for mobile device speed measurements.
- Organize your website structure.
Your website structure simply describes how all your pages link together. Before you build your website, plan your website structure. Your primary pages on your website, such as your homepage, contact page, and blog sections, should be established.
Instead of linking back-and-forth between pages, send your audience to those pages that are most likely for them to take action.
For example, subscribe to your email list so you can nurture them as real estate seller leads. Your website navigation strategy should be clear and simple.
- Make a blog content calendar with keyword crushers.
Websites that have regular, fresh, and unique content are more likely to be found on search engines. This is why blogging is so important in real estate SEO.
Instead of staring at a cursor and wondering what you should write, create a content strategy by using keywords research.
Once you have completed your keyword research, you will need a list with general, local, short-tail, hyperlocal, and long-tail keywords.
Search volume for short-tail keywords like “real estate agents” will be higher than that of long-tail keywords like “real estate homes in Miami.” You can use the low competition and search volume of long-tail keywords to plan content that will crush every single one of your competitors.
This strategy, in general, will consist of a blog post that focuses on a specific, short-tail keyword. Next, you will add more content about the topic using long-tail keywords. This will increase your search engine rankings.
- Add Internal Links.
Search engines use Links as signals of authority. Search engines will rank pages that link to specific blog posts on your website more quickly if they can find them.
You should incorporate internal links into your blog post strategy. When you publish a blog post, make sure to go back to some of the related posts and add a link. If you want to direct your website visitors to a landing site, link to it in each new blog post.
- Make the most of meta titles and descriptions.
Search engines can understand the meta descriptions and meta titles on every page of your website. Although readers will not see meta titles, they can be displayed in Google search results as this.
Meta titles and descriptions don’t rank websites pages, but they are essential for SEO. There is only a limited amount of space available on search results pages, so it is important to make the most of every opportunity to help Google rank your website and to attract searchers.
They should be concise and clear about what your content contains. You can take the title of this blog as an example. It is concise and goes directly to the point without losing a deeper meaning if possible. Readers would not be able to understand the content, and search engines wouldn’t rank it for keywords related to real estate SEO if you make it much more complicated and longer.
- Write clear titles and headlines.
Although it is tempting to make your website stand out with clever headlines and titles, you should not confuse website visitors.
Your blog titles and headlines communicate with readers just as metadata does to communicate to search engines. While you can and should express your personality through your content, keeping page titles and headlines simple is important.
- Add schema markup.
Schema markup can be used to help search engines determine if your website matches a user’s search query.
This adds more context to your website’s content, making it more easily recognizable by search engines. This allows search engines to provide a more detailed summary of your page. It also improves search results and increases your chances of ranking higher.
Schema markups, for example, help to important flag information on your websites, such as your location, contact information, and the niche clients you serve.
You can use it within your individual pages to help search engines identify upcoming events such as open houses or listings for sale.
You can add schema markup to a WordPress website by either downloading and installing a plugin or manually creating tags with HTML code.
Advertise on Search Engines & Social Media
You can include paid, and free leads in your real estate lead generation strategy. But you’ll be more successful if your lead generation strategy incorporates both paid and free leads.
You can generate organic and paid leads using search engines and social media. Paid advertising can be used to generate more leads in a shorter time or combined with other strategies for long-term results.
You can make the most of your online advertising by thinking of it as virtual farming. The ultimate goal is to build your brand recognition and not to sell every lead immediately.
These channels can still be great sources of leads if you create content that is engaging with potential customers.
Online advertising is one of the most effective ways to generate leads, and it can be cost-effective if you know how to work around it properly.
To give you an idea of how much you can do and where you can use paid ads, look at the options below:
- Instagram and Facebook advertising: You can create ads to target specific areas, people with particular interests, or people that you would like to work with. You can promote special events on social media and drive traffic to your site via social media. Advertising on these platforms lets you reach people via Messenger, Instagram Stories, and the News Feed.
- Search engine marketing: The most popular services are Google Ads or Microsoft Advertising. These allow you to target keywords and feature your listings on the search engine results pages (SERP). They can also be set up in a way that looks like the rest of the search results.
- Google My Business: Your information (such as your name and phone number along with a link to your website) will fill the entire right sidebar. Just like we mentioned earlier.
- These are local community pages: They can be linked to internet exchange data (IDX feeds) and display homes for sale within a particular target market. These pages are a great tool to add to your listing strategy.
- NextDoor: Another social platform that allows neighbors to chat about local issues, find lost dogs, and discuss other concerns. You can also promote yourself through pop-up ads that scroll through the content. The monthly cost is between $100 and $1,500.
Final Thoughts
Although real estate leads may not have immediate results, you can be sure that they will grow your business over time.
After all, your business won’t be anything if you don’t generate real estate leads, but also make sure they are sales leads and not only random ones.
We know this is a lot to take on since all the strategies above aren’t simple but rather complicated in their own way.
However, when you build or create your lead generation plan, you can integrate all of them and notice how each other connect.
When doing so, things can be easier for you and the possible sales team when expanding your brand.
It doesn’t matter if you focus on buying leads or building one-on-one relationships. Generating leads is an essential part of building a business or your brand as an agent.
The Local Lead Generation Process for Your Real Estate Business
All right! So, everything is about building properties and generating leads. But how does the process actually take place? Are there other steps I need to know?
The steps I mention below are what students from our local lead generation program follow to generate leads for businesses like yourself. So I’ll help you see what we do. And how if you join our program, you can simply generate leads for your own business (unless you want to start a side hustle and build a laptop lifestyle business).
Essentially, our lead generation can be divided into four steps:
The first is prospecting. You need to take the time to do market research on a niche (industry) and determine how many phone-driven businesses are there.
Keep in mind that this is local research as you need to know how many companies need leads. For example, you may search for “plumbing services Youngstown OH.”
You will find dozens or even hundreds of businesses trying to get themselves in front of the customers by ranking on Map Listings, organic results, and even Ad.
The second step, building. When you find a niche (plumbing, tree services, a software company, real estate…), you will need to start building your digital properties. You don’t need to be an expert in HTML or coding. It can be easy with the right tools.
The third step is now taking time to rank your lead gen website. With the site done, you need to work on SEO strategies and start dominating those Google search results. If you’re new to SEO, it stands for Search Engine Optimization.
To keep it simple, it consists of the entire process of growing a company’s visibility on search engines like Google and generating organic traffic. And remember this, local lead generation is part of the strategies.
Moving on to step four, once you rank the site, you will start getting your ROI and profits. You only need to rent it out to a local business interested in the leads the site generates. You can offer a couple of free leads to their move on with the actual pay per lead.
To review steps 1-4 above, I described it to a normal student who is building a lead gen business to help local service providers generate more calls. But replace the student with you as the business owner. And replace sending the leads to a business to simply siphoning the leads to your personal business.
By the way, fun fact, about 20% of our students in our local lead gen program are actually business owners who went through the program. And they use the skillsets we teach to generate leads for their own business.
An Example of Lead Generation: Home Advisor
You must be thinking, “if lead generation sounds so good so far, how come I haven’t seen any company?” That’s the thing; there are many out there. You just don’t know they are dedicated to it.
HomeAdvisor is one of the best examples you can find on the Internet as it is a top lead generation company that has spent millions building its brand but also earned even more zeros for this same reason.
They started small as everyone else but invested in building their brand awareness to make people who are looking for home services go to their website and find what they need. They are over 75% of people’s first choice when they need those services.
If you don’t get HomeAdvisor that much or need a refresh, users need to submit their information to request a service and get a professional or expert who can provide it.
HomeAdvisor’s job is to share your information, which makes you a lead, with local companies so they can contact you and offer the service you’re requesting. For sharing this lead information, HomeAdvisor gets paid by the companies. This happens for every single lead they send to multiple businesses.
Business owners who don’t have marketing skills or don’t even know how to have any online presence will always rely on those pages to list their services. They will save time and effort, but companies like HomeAdvisor can make them spend lots of money as leads aren’t exclusive (one lead is sent to multiple companies after all).
Using Facebook Ads aka Paid Ad Platforms: Do They Generate Leads?
They DO generate leads. If not, no one would use them.
However, you need to remember two facts:
- Paid ads or platforms can be expensive.
- They don’t generate “natural” leads.
Whenever someone sees or clicks in one of those ads, over 80% of them did it by accident or are trying to close/report it.
Why? Because they aren’t looking for those services. At least not at the moment.
What those ads do instead is interrupt their time on the platforms. Users aren’t there to find companies or businesses unless they are searching for a specific company’s user, and for that, there’s a search bar. This is why it is hard to convert them to actual customers who will show interest in the companies’ services. Also, you’re limited by a budget.
When using lead generation, everything is organic. You aren’t forcing others to pay attention to your business but rather being there when they need you. This is why Google’s organic traffic will always beat paid ads, and the reason companies continue investing in it, which is a lot cheaper as well.
What Is Local SEO?
Don’t worry… I didn’t get it at first either. Following the short explanation, local SEO focuses on scaling businesses’ visibility on search engines. However, this is only for those who serve their communities face-to-face.
What does this mean?
Experts and professionals like painters, plumbers, and dentists (but not only them) offer their services to their local customers. Why? Because they can’t deliver them unless they are located in the same area of their customers.
To make sure those businesses get more leads, you need to rank them locally by claiming the business listing on Google to place them on Map Listings. Local SEO also involves online reviews, citation management, and how you manage your entire online presence in the local area.
If you are going to bet on lead gen, you need to adapt yourself to today’s world: The Internet.
Keep in mind that although traditional channels and methods like billboards, warm calls, and pamphlets still work, they aren’t part of your tools. Whenever someone needs a service, they go to Google and search for it.
“Dentist in Miami” or “plumbing services in Orlando,” etc. And you can keep coming up with services or professionals people need and look for. Thus, you need to make sure you’re using Google to get the companies in front of their clients.
Users will always click on the first search results (those near the top), and many of them will be either Ad links (people paid to place their websites there), Map Listing, and then you get websites. Almost all of them are your goal and where you should always aim to place yourself.
Can My Real Estate Business Utilize a Local Lead Generation Strategy?
If you want customers, you better know you need it. Following the previous explanation, lead gen is all about placing businesses in front of their customers, choosing them over their competitors.
Put it simply – it’s all about closing deals and having clients for those companies to make money. The main difference with the usual methods companies use for this is how lead generation approaches different channels to get them in the right place of the market to get customers.
Those channels are all focused on the Internet as most people are searching for products but also services across the net. The issue is that the Internet is way too broad, and businesses don’t know how to place themselves. They usually try, but they get one common result: losing money and time.
How Powerful Are Organic Real Estate Leads from Google?
For companies looking for customers, it’s everything. For you? Pretty much the same. When you build a business with digital properties, you get to make thousands of dollars a month.
This isn’t a “get started today and get rich tomorrow” thing, but it is HIGHLY scalable, and ROI + positive results are guaranteed. Learning a fairly decent and very needed set of skills to create your digital properties and start ranking them on Google is required.
I have invested in several online businesses over the years, and if there’s something uncertain, whether you will get your ROI or not, even more than the actual profit.
However, this business moved my earnings from five figures a year to a month in ONLY passive income while sitting comfortably at home.
On my laptop. Anywhere. Anytime.
You can look at one of the first sites I built back in 2016, and it continues making me over $1.000+ every month. The best part is that I don’t need to touch it or the rest I’ve built over the years, just like this digital property.
What Makes Lead Generation SO Alluring?
Here it goes: you can work from home.
The main issue with regular business opportunities is how much you need to invest in staff, equipment, or rent to have a place to sell your products or offer your services.
We all know the hassles of traditional businesses that involve regular expenses, which are extremely high. Can you afford it? I don’t think so, and even if you can, is it worth it? Now, it isn’t only about the money. You also need to put in a lot of work, and it isn’t only during the first couple of months or years. Usually, it is as long as you continue running it.
You can save yourself those headaches and bone-breaking tasks and expenses with lead gen since it is more about generating leads with digital channels—mainly websites.
Websites can be VERY cheap to build, and with many tools online, you get to do it in a couple of hours instead of days. Any virtual or digital business is scalable and won’t need constant maintenance.
So, let’s summarize this:
- You save money in regular expenses with traditional and most online businesses as what you need is yourself and digital properties (websites).
- You can bet on passive income.
- There’s no need to hire more people to get started.
- You can generate leads in multiple industries, which allows you to work on any niche you want.
How Can I Get Started in the Local Lead Generation Program?
Anyone can start and learn. That’s the beauty of this business model. I knew nothing about SEO, Map Listing, and everything I’ve mentioned so far. It is all about learning the skills, gaining experience, and deciding to take the step.
Remember that this business model will never get old as business owners are always looking for leads. They need to do business and scale their companies. Why not do the same while helping others and still making money?
You can start with this local lead generation course highly recommended for anyone wanting to grow in the business. It is a close training that will take you through each step and make sure you are able to get your ROI, profits and take control of your life.
You will be added to an incredible lead generation family ready to help you 24/7 when asking questions on the group. Anyone is welcome who’s willing to put in the work. Click here to watch the lead gen webinar.