Real estate lead generation strategies
The importance of lead generation is clear—it helps you collect your prospects’ personal contact information to help them enter the sales funnel and eventually become paying customers. This information can be collected in several ways, including through a form on your website or click funnel, email, phone calls, and even in person.
But how to generate real estate leads will depend on several factors, including your time and budget. A few real estate lead generation strategies for how to get leads in real estate include the following:
Be active across social media
Real estate agents must learn how to promote themselves to increase lead generation with marketing. Social media is a great place to connect with other professionals and stay on top of local real estate market trends while meeting new prospective clients. You can join communities or groups to network with others in the real estate industry or use social media advertising to connect with potential home buyers or sellers.
Social media ads are a good place to start if you want to generate real estate leads without spending too much of your budget. Facebook and Instagram ads are cost-effective, and you can measure everything from impressions to conversions.
In addition, with social media ads, you can target individuals based on specific demographics to increase clicks to your website or create lead gen ads where users can submit their contact information from social media.
Even if you don’t use social media ads, you should remain active on social media to generate leads on LinkedIn, Facebook, and even Instagram. You never know whose sister, aunt, or mom is in the market for a home.
Create email marketing campaigns
Lead generation strategies are used to help you collect personal information like emails. However, you’ll lose out on potentially valuable customers if you don't nurture leads. Once you have emails and other personal contact information, you can begin nurturing leads and building relationships to convert them into customers.
Your emails should contain useful information and link to blogs and other pages on your website where visitors can learn more. Depending on how soon your customers want to buy or sell a home, you can segment them and send them the most pertinent information. For example, when you develop your lead generation form for your website, you can add a field that asks, “How soon do you want to buy or sell a home?” with multiple choice options to help you categorize your leads.
Using the right CRM platform, you can set up automations to segment leads and send personalized emails with the right information at the right time. For example, if a prospective buyer isn’t ready to make a purchase, you can send them blog posts about the process of buying a home. Meanwhile, if someone is ready to sell a home within the next three months, you can send them sales emails to convince them to choose you as their realtor.
Develop a brand
If you truly want to stand out from the crowd, you need to develop your brand. A real estate agent is their own brand, so it’s worth setting up a professional website with service pages and more information about your process and what clients can expect.
Even if your business thrives on referrals and word of mouth, you should still give prospects a place to learn more about you. The best real estate websites include service pages and testimonials to build trust, but the types of content on your website may vary depending on your specialties. For example, if you prefer only working with sellers, you won’t need a page for homebuyers.
You can use your website to generate real estate leads passively while you work on other types of marketing and advertising. However, your website isn’t the only factor in developing a brand. Your brand is how you stand out from the other real estate agents in the area, including key messaging and why you’re better.
For example, if you specialize in helping first-time home sellers get the best offers on their homes, you can advertise your goals and include testimonials from real clients. You want to be known for whatever you do, and the best way to do that is to market and advertise your specialties.
Form local connections
Real estate agents own local businesses and the more people who have met you and know you, the better the odds of them hiring you. You can start with individuals you know in the community and attend local events like open houses to meet new people and find qualified leads.
Many real estate professionals rely on referrals, so any time you meet someone new, always give them your business card in case they know someone looking to buy or sell a home.
Build strategic partnerships
Building partnerships with companies in your same niche but aren’t direct competition can help you grow your business. For example, many real estate agents build relationships with mortgage lenders, bankers, and insurance companies to get more referrals.
Of course, these partnerships should be mutually beneficial. For example, a realtor might partner with a mortgage company. In this case, the mortgage lender will send the realtor’s contact information to prospective buyers, while the real estate agent will promote the lender to the buyers they know.
Traditional advertising
Traditional marketing is still effective, especially when paired with a digital strategy. For example, many real estate agents find success advertising on billboards, benches, and buses or in local newspapers and publications.
However, you can let your traditional marketing efforts enhance your digital marketing by sending prospects directly to your website to convert to leads. For example, if you advertise in a local magazine, you could add a QR code to your graphic, where prospects can fill out a form to enter your sales funnel.
Build credibility with PR
Since you’ll be responsible for so much of the home buying or selling process, customers need to know you’re someone who will put their best interests first. You can build credibility and trust with prospects before they become leads by investing in local public relations (PR) and becoming a thought leader in your industry.
You can become a thought leader by reaching out to local publications to let them know you’re available to help with any articles about real estate in the future. In addition, you can search for local online publications that might be interested in a guest post about a topic you’re an expert in.
