Success in the real estate business is not easy. The entry barrier for a real estate agent is low. And hence, almost everyone can get a license and be a registered agent. This is why you need a proven real estate leads generation strategy to keep growing.
A real estate agent can be a lucrative business. But, there’s a lot of competition that you need to deal with.
That’s why we’re going to show you some ways to generate more real estate leads for your business and beat the competition.
What is Real Estate Lead Generation?
First of all, lead generation is to collect your potential customer and get their permission for you to contact them in the future.
And, real estate lead generation refers to the sales and/or marketing process of getting the contact information for someone who wants to buy or sell a house (a lead).
While most real estate agents are trained to be great salespeople, closing deals consistently. However, most of them forget about the importance of consistent lead generation for their business.
Like other businesses, getting leads is the most important thing for a real estate agent as well. Else it is easy that one day when the pipeline goes dry, you don’t have enough property listings to sell and a lack of customers to sell to.
Hence, that is why you need to consistently generate new leads for your real business. Technically, we call this MTL (market to lead) and then LTC (lead to cash) when you convert them into a buying customer.
First and foremost, we’ll show you a new concept of how to duplicate yourself by building a sales funnel so that you can generate new leads while you’re sleeping.
And then, we will also show some different traffic generation methods to fill your sales funnel.
Building The Real Estate Lead-Gen Sales Funnel
When you have thousands of things to do daily, contacting your potential customers, and homeowners, and also bringing them to view the property, in most cases, you will forget to generate leads.
And this problem is faced by most real estate agents. So, the secret behind this will be sales funnel automation where you can generate leads 24/7 automatically.
You just build the sales funnel once, split test and optimize the design and copy. And let it works all on its own.
The more automated the process is, the less you’ll need to work on lead generation. And all your focus on will be serving the clients you’re bringing in.
But how do you automate your lead-gen process?
The first step is to build a sales funnel for your real estate business. A sales funnel is a series of pages to guide your dream customers (sellers and buyers) towards giving you their contact information.
For this purpose, we recommend using the Reverse Squeeze Page Funnel. A Reverse Squeeze Page Funnel consists of two pages and a follow-up process. (which is very critical for agents).
The first page, the squeeze page, is where you offer a free gift (lead magnet) and provide values for the visitors in order to ask them to give you their email address or phone number. And the second page is simply a “Thank You” page.
Get your FREE Reverse Squeeze Page Funnel by clicking here!
Here are a few ideas for “free gifts” or lead magnets you could offer…
- Guide for property first-time buyer
- Guide to selling a property
- Checklist for selling a home.
- Which city is the best to stay
- Guide to moving during a job change.
- Access our best & exclusive listings
- Free property valuation
- Guide for picking an investment property
The key here is to provide value to your visitors so they can give you their contact details. Be very careful here, you don’t use the same lead magnet for all your visitors.
Homeowners and home buyers shall go through the different sales funnel and be shared different offers.
Also, you want to make sure that the value and lead magnet that you provide is having very high perceived value.
When someone enters their email address to claim your free gift, this tells you that they are someone who’s interested in buying or selling their home
Now, you might think building a sales funnel is not my profession. I had never built it before. Do I need to hire a web developer for this?
The answer is NO.
We are recommending you build a sales funnel only, not a full website. And the sales funnel only consists of two pages, with a few elements on each page only. The key here is to use a clean and simple page to share your message with them.
Removing anything that will distract them.
You can try ClickFunnels free for 14 days and start building right away! With pre-built templates for you to get started.
We strongly recommend starting and building your sales funnel today and start sending traffic to it. For complete digital marketing techniques for real estate, read our post here. A must-read for everyone even if you just want to bring your business online.
A sales funnel allows you to capture contact information automatically for people who are motivated, but maybe a little shy or sceptical. In your sales funnel, you can even add a button there for them to Whatsapp or Call you directly.
So, instead of being a hunter that is hunting for homeowners and buyers, they are the ones who are raising their hands and looking for you.
Now, while using a sales funnel is the best way to generate leads online, you can too try the other 5 ways below to generate more real estate leads.
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1. Finding Real Estate Leads On Craigslist
Craigslist is known as one of the top platforms for finding almost anything. And this includes real estate leads, for both buyers and sellers.
Why?
When people want to sell their real estate, they will try to post it online by themselves to reduce their dependency on a real estate agent. You know why, to save the commissions for the agent.
This is why the success rate is not that high for a seller listing on Craigslist. But there are still opportunities there. You need to look for two types of people.
People who are rushing to sell their house, maybe due to some emergency that they need the fund, or even because they are migrating to another place. They need to get rid of the house as soon as possible.
People who had been listing their home for months or years on Craigslist but haven’t sold it yet. They might now consider working with an agent to close the deal and get rid of the unit.
Fortunately, finding these people is not that hard. You can just go to Craigslist.org and click on “real estate for sale”
Just click on the post and contact the owner, who knows they might be interested to work with you.
Also, it might also be worth your time to occasionally check out the “housing wanted” section to see if you can find motivated buyers.
Now, you’ll notice that you can filter properties by owners. And you should do this as you don’t want to get the real estate listed by another agent.
Click through all of the pages to get to the oldest posts. These are the potential listings that you can work with as they are not getting any luck selling by themselves. They are most likely to work with an agent.
Scroll through these listings and send a message to the ones that seem the most promising.
Consider leaving a message like this:
Hey [name],
Good day to you.
I saw your post on Craigslist about the property at [address]. I’m a local real estate agent here in [city] and I’d be happy to help you sell it. You can contact me at [phone] if you want to chat about this.
At the same time, I have a free guide that teaches people how to get sell their property fast. Here’s the link: [link]
Now, you can see how I structure the message.
First of all, explain your profession and let them choose whether to contact you. This is to build the stage and reputation so they can consider whether to work with you or not.
At the same time, you can get them to visit your sales funnel and sign up to be a lead where you can communicate with them in the future.
2. Finding Real Estate Leads On Social Media
Social media are great platforms for generating real estate leads.
You can do two things with a social media account. The hard way and the easy way.
People always say if you don’t have the money you better have time.
- Work your way in – Create your content and build your reputation on social media and groups. Be the leader or trustable person in the real estate market.
- Buy your way in – Buy ads from the platform, create your ads and target real estate owners or new weddings or buying and selling real estate. With this, you can target homeowners, real estate investors and potential buyers.
Either way, your social media should be the entry point where you can direct them to your sales funnel and then, from your sales funnel, convert them to a lead.
Then, you can then follow up with those leads via text, email, or phone call.
So, pick one of the techniques here. Work your way in, or buy your way in.
I suggest that you do both. Both can work well together.
3. Finding Real Estate Leads Through Local SEO
While you are the real estate in your town, how sweet it is that when someone goes to Google and searches for “real estate agent in [your city]”, your sales funnel or link appears to be the first few results.
That person then clicks on your link, directed to your landing page. This is where he learns about your business, opt-in to your list and gets your lead magnet. And the best case, they give you a call to check about what you can offer and then become a customer.
Google has a lot of real estate lead-gen opportunities. But remember this, if you are not ranking on the first page or even the first five on the search result. Most probably you will not be seen at all. People are impatient to go to page 2 or 3 to look for results.
And how you should do this with the long tail keywords that not many people are ranking for. If you are trying to rank for the keywords “local real estate” or “buying a house”. Chances are you will not rank at all.
But if you add in the location like “real estate in {your city}” or “buying a house in {your city}”, the competition is low and easier to rank on page 1.
And the best part is since you’re only operating in a specific area, you can localize those keyword phrases — “local realtors in [your city]” or “buying a house in [your city]”.
So…
How do you rank in local SEO
Well, first you need a website to rank. And each page of the website, you need to plan the content to focus and optimized to rank on the keyword phrase. And this includes your homepage, blog posts and most importantly, your sales funnel. (You can do keyword research for free using Ubersuggest)
Here’s how you should optimize your page to rank:
- Include your target keyword phrase in the title tag, meta description, and URL slug for that page.
- Use the keyword phrase within the first 100 words of the page’s content.
- Make your page better than what’s already ranking. This means having a fast load speed, mobile responsiveness, and more valuable content than other top rankings.
And here are some rules of thumb to keep in mind…
- SEO is a long-term lead-gen strategy. Don’t expect results for at least a couple of months in low-competition markets. In highly competitive markets, it might take 6 months or a year for a page to start ranking.
- Make sure that you only optimize each page for one keyword phrase, otherwise, you’re unlikely to rank for anything.
- Don’t try to rank different pages for very similar keyword phrases — “local realtors” and “local real estate agents” for example. Otherwise, you’ll cannibalize your own rankings. Google is smart and knows what you’re talking about with some nuance, so try to focus on unique topics for each page you’re trying to rank.
4. Finding Real Estate Leads Through Direct Mail
Direct mail is one of the most popular methods for real estate agents to generate leads for decades. And they are still using this till now.
Why?
Direct mail is very effective.
Just send regular mail to everyone in your area. Just like sending the email newsletter. You want to build your reputation and fame by doing this. Not to sell anything at this stage.
The only thing you might want to include in your sales funnel link for them to sign up and claim the free lead magnet. This might be one of the best ways to motivate them to complete your mail.
For example, if you get a lead but aren’t able to contact them via email, text, or phone call, try sending them a mailer. It’s a more personal tactic that might connect with different people.
Additionally, send mail periodically to people who are in your ideal zip codes — make this a generic mailer that builds brand awareness.
That’s certainly not such a bad idea on homes that’ll net you a big commission.
5. Finding Real Estate Leads Through Door Knocking
As a final lead-gen tactic, we’re talking about door-knocking. Going old school.
This is most probably the last option you will take. That’s why we put it at the end. It’s time-consuming, and not efficient to visit them one by one. Mostly getting rejections or being scolded.
But that doesn’t change one simple fact door knocking can be very effective for building relationships in the community and getting your agency off the ground.
You see, who knows the local community the best?
The community.
They are chatting around in the community and know the first-hand news of what’s going on. Who is planning to list their property or whose son is getting married and planning to buy a house nearby?
You want to build a little rapport, give them the ability to contact you, and be on your way — that’s it.
Here’s a simple script to consider…
Hey! I hope you are all good. My name is [name] and I’m a new real estate agent serving the community.
Now I don’t want to interrupt whatever you’re doing right now, but is it okay if I just leave my business card with you? If you or a friend has any real estate needs, you can just give me a call.
Most people will agree.
And to get creative, you might want to include a QR code that links to your sales funnel and a “free gift” on the business card you hand out to people. By this, you give them another way to follow you.
What’s nice if they share your sales funnel link in their WhatsApp group when someone asks about a reliable agent?
What’s your real estate lead-gen plan?
Now we had shared why the sales funnel is critical to be part of your lead generation. And how important it is to create an automated lead generation system for your business. You definitely should consider it.
If you plan to start out, experience the best funnel builder for free with a 14-day free trial here.
At the same time, you can choose either lead generation strategies shared to grow your business.
Enough for me sharing the tactics. And now it’s your turn. Decide your strategy and build your successful real estate business today.
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