Real Estate Leads: How Can I Get More?
Ask any real estate agent or broker, what is the one thing they can’t ever get enough of and they will tell you it’s leads. Leads in real estate are the life-blood of brokers and real estate agents. Without a constant stream of new incoming leads your real estate business will eventually fail.
Real estate leads come from many different sources but mainly consist of referrals from friends or past clients, leads from print advertising, and online web site leads. And while any lead is welcomed by a real estate agent, they each have their own set of requirements in order to obtain them.
Leads from a referral or past client
Usually this type of lead is the strongest of the bunch because study after study have proven that people are more likely to trust a friend’s recommendation over going with a complete stranger to buy or sell their home. Although referral leads are generally the strongest, they are definitely not always the easiest to obtain. Experienced agents will tell you that you quickly run out of friends and family members that are looking to either buy or sell a home. Think about it, in order to get this lead you have to:
- Have either a family member or relative who is looking to buy or sell a home
- Find the exact home they are looking for within their budget
- Be able to close the deal to turn them into happy past clients.
Print advertising leads
Ask yourself when was the last time that you bought or sold something based on an ad you saw in a newspaper or magazine? Personally, I cannot recall a time when this type of advertising led me to a transaction. Don’t get me wrong though, this form of advertising can be useful to help establish your presence in the local area. Due to the recent decline of magazine and newspaper industries, this type of advertising would be my last option.
Online real estate leads
You always save the best for last! In 2010, when the National Association of Realtors released their profile of buyers and sellers report, it clearly showed that the majority of prospective home buyers turned online first in their search for a new home. The key takeaways from that report indicate that without a strong online presence you are missing a lot of potential new leads that could turn into closed deals. The two main types of leads you can receive online are:
- Organic leads – come from people finding your web site online when they search on Google, Yahoo, or Bing.
- Pay Per Click leads – you pay Google, Yahoo, or Bing to show your ads when a buyer is looking for homes in your area.
What type of leads should I focus on?
Here is a quick overview to help understand how to start receiving more leads online. The first thing you will need to get leads online is a functional web site and second, your web site has to be found when prospective buyers are searching online for a new property. You can accomplish this in a couple of different ways, but the two we will focus on today are, being found in the organic search listings and being found via pay-per-click advertising.
There is a lot of competition online for new leads so unfortunately you cannot just buy a web site and hope buyers will find you without doing any work to it. In order to be at the top of the list when people are searching for homes in your area, you need an aggressive online marketing strategy. A competent real estate lead generation company will use a good combination of going after the organic listings using SEO (search engine optimization) best practices and have an experienced PPC (pay-per-click) advertising campaign manager to produce a constant stream of new real estate leads.
Visit http://leadperformer.com to get started with your online lead generation!
Do you have any experience with an online lead generation company? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below:
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This was a great article, enjoyed the mix of looking at both digital and print in the considerations.
Thank you for the comment Gary!
A good balance of digital and print advertising will usually generate more real estate leads.
Hi Chris – I enjoyed the article. I’d be interested to know if you have an opinion on forced registration. For more than a few reasons, I’m not for it but many realtors and web developers have a different opinion. I haven’t been able to find any data more recent than 2009…and even that’s sketchy!
Kerri recently posted..Vancouver Real Estate Falling Into A Buyers Market?
Thank you for the comment Kerri!
I understand your concern about the forced “squeeze” page from a user standpoint… but you have to ask yourself what is the main goal or your web site? To provide information for free or to capture leads and sell more homes. If you are looking to increase the amount of leads that you get from your web site, then a squeeze page can dramatically increase the amount of leads your site brings in.
Will some customers be turned off by it? Yes, but you just have to think that if they are unhappy about giving you their email address to view a property they are interested in, then were they that serious about buying a home in the first place? We both know that the home buying process is no easy task and you basically have to provide your life history on paper to get through underwriting.
The leads you are going after with a squeeze page are the buyers that understand that giving up their email address to view a home they are interested in is just a small part of the process and they will probably be further down the home buying funnel and easier to work with going forward.
Just my 2 cents… I hope this helps! =]
Great article Chris.
There are so many real estate agents that do a poor job of SEO that you can even type in ‘Agent Name’ + ‘Realtor’ into Google and they won’t show up in the top 5 results. It makes it difficult that even if a friend mentions an agent’s name to a friend they won’t even be able to find their website and contact them.
If an agent is going to spend the time to make and maintain a website, they should be willing to spend the time to make sure people can find their website.
Thanks for the comment Jason!
Unfortunately you are right about most agents not knowing about or wanting to learn about things that make themselves more visible online. There are a select few who understand that in order to generate more leads online and close more deals, you really need an aggressive online marketing strategy. I always recommend a good balance of PPC, organic SEO, and social media to help boost your online rankings.
Great article, I’m the marketing coordinator for Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Executive Partners and our agents needed ideas to generate more leads. This article is something that I think will be beneficial to them.
Thanks for the article.