In a very competitive real estate market, lead generation can be extremely challenging. Without the right strategy, you'll be missing a lot of motivated sellers and buyers and lose your chances to be a household name in real estate.
To generate real estate leads, you can employ different inbound and outbound marketing strategies. Among the most effective are buying real estate seller leads, leveraging social media, using Google ads, search engine optimization, segmenting your leads, video marketing, keyword targeting, cold calling, and creating targeted landing pages.
If you want to get started on any of the real estate lead systems mentioned above or you want to learn about less mainstream strategies, this blog post is for you!
A real estate lead is information about a potential home buyer or seller. These potential customers have expressed interest in buying or selling a home with you directly, referred by another person, or generated through other avenues just like the ones we'll share later on.
Note that not all leads are created equal; thus, here are two types of leads in real estate: qualified and unqualified. Qualified real estate marketing leads are those who are ready to sell or buy. They already know their budget and did research on how to go about buying and selling.
Unqualified leads, on the other hand, are leads who aren't ready to buy or sell. These people haven't started the buying or selling process and are not actively seeking a real estate agent.
When generating leads, focus on qualified potential customers. Make a lead qualification system so you can weed out complicated and nightmare real estate sales leads. This will save you a lot of time and energy.
Finding leads in real estate is anchored in two types of marketing— inbound and outbound. As you go along, you may need to combine both systems to find more real estate sellers leads.
Inbound marketing strategies in real estate use content and incentives to attract home seller leads, usually online. Some inbound strategies include SEO, social media marketing, forms, CRM, and digital advertising.
In outbound marketing, you need to have a little knowledge about your target audience. Some real estate lead generation ideas that are considered outbound marketing are direct mail, email marketing, event marketing, and telemarketing.
Still asking "What is the best lead generation for real estate?" Here are 42 best strategies to help you gather qualified realtor seller leads in no time. Note that most of these lead generation strategies for real estate may require you to spend a certain amount.
Buying seller or buyer leads from real estate lead generation companies can help grow your business quickly. For starters, you don't have to go the long route of finding the best real estate seller leads on your own.
These real estate lead generation companies curate a long list of buyers and sellers who are looking for a real estate agent. They focus on lead quality more than anything else, so many agents prefer them.
Although this strategy comes at a price, the commission you'll get will definitely make up for what you spend. Many experienced real estate agents recommend buying leads from a lead generation company to back up referrals and get a steady stream of clients.
You can easily find a lead generation company online. One of which is Property Leads which generates seller leads for realtors and real estate investing companies through SEO.
Since LinkedIn is designed for professional networking, it is one of the best places to attract real estate leads aside from Facebook and Instagram, where there are a lot of personal posts you have to compete with.
Here are some ways to prospect real estate marketing leads on LinkedIn, according to many agents we know:
Many real estate agents don't want to deal with divorce leads because of the many complications it entails. But if you have a lot of patience and empathy, this real estate lead generation strategy might help you close a few deals.
To generate leads from divorce cases, you need to get access to county court records and filings. You may also want to connect with divorce attorneys and the family law community, so you get updates about couples divorcing.
Once you have already dealt with a few divorce sales, you'll be surprised by the referrals you'll get. You can also buy access to databases online about divorcing couples and do cold outreach.
This strategy may not be for the faint of heart but it generates great outcomes once you've started on this path. To make the most out of this strategy, you may also want to get certified as a Real Estate Collaboration Specialist - Divorce (RCS-D).
When you're starting out, you may not see the point of using a customer relationship management tool (CRM) since you're only dealing with a few clients. But eventually, as your business grows, using a CRM becomes highly essential.
The use of a CRM helps you organize your clientele and manage leads or potential customers. Through a CRM that is tailored fit for your business, you won't miss any of the best real estate leads for agents and your workflow will become better.
Some of the most recommended CRM for organization and to generate real estate leads are FollowUpBoss and LionDesk, but you can also use other CRM tools depending on your business needs. You may want to ask other business owners or other agents for a suggestion.
Reviews are very crucial for a real estate agent or a real estate business since they make or break their reputation. Thus, if you want more quality leads to trust you, do your job well and request a great review.
Note, however, that these positive testimonials should be in the right places, so they are visible to a lot of potential clients. Some of your options would be to:
If you don't have time to ask for reviews, you can use Trustmary and other relevant tools.
Google Ads is one of the go-to strategies of many realtors to generate leads. Through this, a personalized ad about the realtor can appear on top of a Google search or be advertised on the real estate sites you'll find on Google.
So how does this work exactly? If you want your ad to be featured on Google, you have to bid on targeted keywords. If the content of your ad i
s very relevant to the keyword search of a user, your ad will appear along with other organic search results and can convert to quality leads.
Important: You need solid knowledge of digital marketing to succeed in running Google Ads. This strategy for generating leads requires careful planning, especially in terms of bidding.
Paid social media ads are also gaining popularity when it comes to real estate lead generation. In fact, it appears as one of the most common real estate lead generation ideas. More than half of our population is on social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, so it makes sense to use them for advertisement in the real estate industry.
Compared to Google Ads, ads that run on social media platforms are fairly easy to create and manage, especially for a beginning real estate agent. They also have a higher success rate.
The reason why advertising on social media is very effective is that it combines personal, visual, and emotional aspects. People are more likely to click on ads that don't really feel like ads because they are found in their personal online space.
If you don't have the budget to run an ad on social media, your online presence can also help you gain leads. Organically building an audience on Facebook, Instagram, and even TikTok can build your reputation. Eventually, you'll become a household name in the real estate industry and people will message you if they need help selling or buying a home.
To establish a strong social media presence, make sure that you put out content that is very relevant to your audience. Your content should be targeted: they should answer the most common queries of your target audience.
If you're up for it, you may also want to create short videos demonstrating what you know about real estate. Most users spend hours consuming short-form videos and if they find yours informative, who knows, they may follow you and consider working with you on their next home sale. You'll gain hundreds of online leads if you do this consistently.
Are you sending newsletters and direct mail or calling past leads because you're running out of real estate lead generation ideas? While we highly recommend retaining your past seller leads, you should also consider lead segmentation to get new exclusive leads!
This means you categorize your previous and current leads into segments so you can craft a specific strategy to push them to make a decision. Here are some of your options:
Creating listing videos is a way to lead prospective buyers to your website. A listing video essentially explains what is in the home listing. Sometimes, it also offers a walkthrough of the property. Of course, potential buyers would be more inclined to consider a listing where they'll get a house tour upfront that's why this strategy is considered best lead generation real estate.
But aside from listing videos, there are other forms of video content that can be used to generate leads. For instance, past client interviews, yearly reviews, agent profiles, Q&A live streams, how-to videos, etc.
These videos can be posted on many platforms like your website, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and LinkedIn.
If you want a positive reputation around your name, you should establish a local presence through community involvement. Attending community events is a great chance to network and get news on properties that would be up for sale. But there are some other lead nurturing strategies you can employ in your community.
While there's no guarantee that this would land you a lead right away, this would make people recognize you. Eventually, they'll follow your social media pages and consult with you for their real estate queries. Again, the key here is to be the household name when it comes to real estate, and the process really takes time.
Engaging your subscribed leads is also a key to landing more deals. What better way to engage them than to create blogs, magazines, and newsletters!
Using these three forms of content, your new leads will be reminded of your existence and your services. They'll be able to recall who you are in times of need.
Another marketing tool you can leverage for your real estate lead generation is your customer service. Remember that the more personalized a potential client's experience is when inquiring about your service, the more likely they are to convert to new leads.
That said, make sure reaching out to you is very easy. Make your potential clients feel at ease when talking to you. If possible, offer a free consultation. Whether you are talking to them personally, through the phone, or by email, show them that you are really invested.
Over time, this will pay off because your previous clients would leave a review on how hands-on you are and how you have helped them in every step of the process. This will be your advantage over other real estate agents in your area.
Doing search engine optimization (SEO) can increase your search result visibility. This, along with putting out great content and doing website updates, will aid your organic real estate lead generation.
Here are some effective tips to optimize your content to get exclusive leads:
If your website has blogs that were pushed down on SERP, update them. This will not only increase your search result visibility but also your authority in the industry.
If you are perceived by many as a trustworthy agent, more and more people will fill out the lead capture forms on your blogs.
Bringing your website together is one of the cornerstones of real estate lead generation and your marketing efforts because it builds your personal brand. Be sure to include a client testimonials page, blog page, community news, and even content upgrade offers to generate more leads. Of course, hire a web page designer to make your website visually appealing.
Most realtors also enable Internet Data Exchange (IDX) for their website, so current MLS listings appear on the site. Put more simply, they'll be able to see all the available homes for sale while browsing your website.
If you want, you can add pop-up ads that encourage users to fill out a lead capture form. However, you have to be cautious when doing this so as not to annoy prospective clients.
Although marketing has already transitioned to the digital realm, you may still want to print on paper. Remember that not all property owners have access to the internet. Some are still newspaper readers who are perplexed by the existence of phones; hence making prints one of the best lead generation for real estate.
Thus, printing just sold or just listed signs
on a newspaper and giving out business cards, flyers, or postcards may still make sense.
Of course, before spending money on print, do an assessment of the community, too. Learn about the homeowner demographics in the area so as not to waste hundreds of dollars.
If you have already established a website and still haven't added a web form for potential leads to fill out, you're missing out.
A web form is an online form that can capture the details of interested buyers and sellers whether you are running a new business or not. It can also qualify leads produced organically through some questions that's why it is tagged as the best real estate lead generation system of many.
As mentioned, a web form is typically embedded on your website. But you can also post on social media or share it when answering inquiries or email follow-ups.
Many users prefer web forms because it's not intimidating compared to emailing or calling you personally. On your end, it makes lead data easier to organize. You can export them to an excel sheet or use a tool to sync it to another business app.
According to recent data, referrals make up 82% of real estate transactions in the United States. This is a budget-friendly and easy real estate lead generation strategy that you should be employing by now.
The referral system in real estate is highly successful because people are wired to believe the people they personally know, especially since we're talking about properties and estates.
To generate referrals, follow these tips:
Attending or hosting real estate events in a community where you want to establish your name is one thing. But attending events that are totally not related to your niche can also do your business some good.
If you only keep on attending real estate events, your chances of finding motivated leads are very slim. Whereas when you broaden your marketing efforts and attend a local concert, book reading event, or yoga workshop, you'll meet new people who want to sell or buy a home or know someone who does.
Just make sure that you only attend events that interest you and refrain from overselling yourself. Don't come up on people announcing you are a real estate agent. Make normal conversations, and when they ask what you do, that's the only time you mention that you're there for.
Cold calling may be intimidating for many, but it sure does generate leads. This strategy in generating real estate leads is perfect to reconnect with leads who've fallen through the cracks or your old acquaintances. In other words, picking up the phone to call can not only generate more leads but also create a relationship with referral sources.
We understand that cold calling to generate leads can make you break out into sweats. No matter how great your cold-calling script is, you may still sound robotic when you do not rehearse. So we suggest reading your script a few times and practicing with someone to see if it sounds effective or not.
If you cannot really do it on your own, hire a visual assistant to generate exclusive seller leads. There are a lot of visual assistants who are experts in cold calling, so the investment would give you a higher ROI.
An open house is opening a property for public viewing. If you are a real estate agent looking for buyer leads, an open house is a good opportunity for you to find some! Not only will you get to know people who want to buy a house, but you'll also get leads on homeowners who have yet to sell their house and are in need of an agent.
Remember that in an open house, anyone can enter the house without an appointment. Which means any viewer is a potential lead. To capture all of them, prepare a sign-in sheet that they need to fill out upon entering your open house event.
Make sure the sign-up sheet asks for the prospect's contact number and email address during open houses. Give out business cards as well, since you may generate referrals this way.
Your sphere of influence or SOI refers to all the people you know or have a relationship with. This includes family, colleagues, friends, acquaintances, and former teachers, among others. These people may be buying or selling a home or may know someone who does that's why they are great sources of pre-foreclosure leads and other lead types.
In order to generate leads from your SOI, keep in touch with them. Reach out to their socials or send them a personal email. Although these people know that you're an agent, they may not immediately think of you when they want to sell or buy a house, so constant reminders of what you do is a big help.
Identify specific seller demographics or types of homes you can help buy or sell. Create a list and send targeted messages. This may include text messages, emails, or marketing materials such as brochures.
Another strategy you may want to try is posting on bulletin boards of local businesses. For instance, if you are targeting people with a specific income, go to a coffee shop they frequent and post an ad. This is called cold canvassing — a form of sending a targeted message that also helps build name recognition.
If you're having trouble creating a targeted list, there are a lot of third parties that can offer address lists for a price.
Experiential or engagement marketing means hosting an event and offering experiences. Doing this positions you as an expert in the industry and allows potential clients to talk to you in a no-pressure setup.
Some examples of experiential or engagement marketing are hosting a tour of your market area, open houses for neighbors with free cocktails, and a discussion with real estate professionals.
This strategy works well because you give potential clients to know you at a personal level and not just as an agent. Of course, this means establishing relationships with the community. You may even host a happy hour to know more locals and increase your chances of getting hired as their real estate professional.
Landing pages vary depending on your goal, but if you want motivated leads, they should be highly targeted to encourage prospects to connect to you.
What we mean by this is to create a landing page based on your real estate niche. If you are after high-quality seller leads, your landing page should be a home valuation page or a free resource about topics on home selling.
Once your landing page has been created, drive traffic to it using paid ads on Google and other social networking sites, posting on social media or networking groups, sending the link to a targeted demographic, etc.
Note that your landing page should feel welcoming. Although you need to establish your reputation as an agent, make sure that you won't come off as intimidating based on your landing page so you'll attract seller leads for real estate agents.
Expired listings are houses that weren't sold in the real estate market the first time. When you visit the local multiple listing service (LMS), you'll see the expiration date on every property listing. Despite being challenging to sell, houses with expired listings are well worth your time and effort.
You should know, however, that when a listing expires, real estate agents are competing for the chance to sell it. If you're not ready for competition for expired listings, this path may not be for you.
To get ahead of the game, check the LMS every day for expired listings. Give the home seller a call before their line gets busy and impress them with your list of unique strategies.
Homeowners who listed their homes FSBO are surely trying to save on commission fees. However, if their listing is already aging and they already went through all the hassles of selling a house without any result, they might get swayed easily to hire an agent.
Even though it is hard to determine when an FSBO seller is ready to work with an agent, it won't hurt to let them know that you are very willing to assist them. But in doing so, don't be too aggressive. Don't shove on their face what they're doing wrong and suggest strategies you'll personally use.
Show the FSBO seller genuine interest in helping them and they would easily convert. Also, respect their decisions on certain aspects of the sale.
Gone are the days when quality photos suffice when it comes to attracting leads. These days, more and more buyers want a virtual tour of a property before they convert to a motivated lead.
This virtual tour doesn't necessarily require a video house tour but a professional 360-degree photo. Potential buyers can just swipe right, left, up, and down to see the whole property as if they're really touring inside it.
A majority of internet users prefer virtual tours and they spend up to ten times their time on websites that offer this. This helps narrow their research for homes and saves them the time of personally visiting the property.
We're sure you have heard of keyword targeting for driving traffic to your content. But keyword targeting is also essential for your listing. It's not enough that you take professional photographs of the property. Your listing description should also be very specific to get a steady stream of highly motivated leads.
If you are selling a house in Boston, the keywords Boston and house should appear a lot of times in your listing description without it sounding weird. You may also use variants of these keywords.
This may be a lot of work, especially if you have listed on multiple platforms, including the MLS, your website, and your social networking sites.
A majority of motivated sellers and buyers seek realtors and properties online. 76% of them use their mobile phones in searching. Case in point, you should optimize your website and listing for mobile view.
A mobile-friendly site reformats itself, so it fits a smaller screen. Not only is the content resized, but also the navigation buttons and images. This relatively improves user experience, website speed, user engagement, and mobile SEO which are key factors in finding organic leads.
One great tip when optimizing your website for mobile use is to go easy on the pop-ups. Although pop-ups can be helpful in encouraging users to take action, they may also frustrate them and drive them away from your site.
A community page is a part of your website that offers specific information on the local community you're working on. Essentially, it includes details about home buyers and sellers in the area and general facts such as the town's history, population, cost of living, and traditions.
Some real estate agents or real estate professionals also opt to add information on the different attractions, restaurants, and events held in that community. Adding all these facts on the community page will drive traffic to the site, and eventually, these will convert into leads; hence it is considered one of the most effective lead generation strategies.
To convert this traffic into real estate leads, you may want to offer the user something in exchange for their personal information. For instance, a free PDF on the local cafés. You then nurture these leads, so they become clients.
Retargeting means targeting website visitors or leads repeatedly until they convert. You can do retargeting as a form of lead generation by installing pixels on your real estate website which track leads, including their actions on your site and how they move around the web.
Ultimately, retargeting improves the overall organic traffic of your site and increases the appearance of your ad in branded search results and your lead conversion rates.
Some of the most common ad platforms for real estate agents offer retargeting for lead generation efforts. For instance, Facebook has retargeting ads, LinkedIn allows retargeting through contact, account, and website, while Google has what they call remarketing. If used correctly, these could significantly increase the number of top quality leads gathered from these platforms.
Although most buyers and prospective sellers use social media for their real estate searches and updates, there are still a number of people who prefer receiving text messages on their phones.
For this reason, you may want to use automated text messages for real estate seller lead generation, along with form submissions and emails.
According to recent statistics, optimized and automated text messages have a conversion rate of 23.3% in lead generation. This is because most text messages can be read within 90 seconds.
To connect with your website visitors through text, set up a click-to-text option. When they've given their number, send them a welcome text and, eventually, send them your offers, links for useful content, etc.
Many potential leads don't actually know what they are looking for or what aspects they need help with, so you need to be able to guide them.
When they visit your website, having a live chat feature immensely helps these visitors because their most pressing questions are answered without having to give you a call.
There are many live chat software you can use. But make sure they are mobile-friendly because, as established, most potential real estate leads use their phones for searching.
If you are able to answer their questions on the dot, the chances of them working with you or converting will significantly increase. You can also hire a VA to reply. Just make sure that they're really knowledgeable about your field so your real estate listing lead generation would be a success.
There's a reason why traditional news outlets don't go out of business despite technological advancement. A good chunk of our population, especially the adult generation, still consumes print. For this reason, you should consider pitching your listing to news outlets locally.
When your listing is published, more potential buyers who aren't digitally savvy will learn about the property and you'll also be contacted by those who want to sell their own home. Being published in print, especially on reputable news outlets, gives the readers a sense of security that you are a legitimate real estate agent.
If you want to target the younger generation in your lead generation, too, you may also pitch your listing to news outlets with digital platforms such as CNN or Times.
If you're selling a property and in need of buyer leads, putting a for sale sign or banner on the front of the house is very effective, especially in areas with a lot of foot traffic. This is an old-school method to attract leads, but it still works in most cases.
Although the National Association of Realtors (NAR) shared that only 9% of homes were purchased and discovered through for-sale signs, it's still better than nothing.
Also, buyers who called because of the for-sale sign are often motivated. These people are usually scanning the neighborhood for properties they can purchase.
For sale signs also inform the neighborhood that your property is for sale. Your neighbors would help you generate leads even without you knowing. They'll start calling people they know who might be interested once they see the for sale sign.
Establishing a good relationship with builders and contractors in your service area is a great way to find leads because they are always in and out of homes. Aside from builders, you can also get in touch with plumbers, HVAC technicians, and electricians because they might be doing repairs to a house that is about to go for sale or they know of a new property that still doesn't have an agent.
To build a relationship with these builders, offer them something in return. If ever they gave you a lead that converted, promise them a certain amount of money that won't hurt your commission that much.
Also, show them respect and treat them as you would treat a family member or friend. This way, you'll gain their trust and you'll receive more motivated real estate leads.
Quick response codes or QR codes can also be maximized to generate real estate leads. You can add a QR code to your business card, so when the recipient scans it, they can be redirected to your social media sites or your realtor website.
It's fairly easy to generate QR codes online, so they're often used to supplement print materials in real estate marketing. You'll see QR codes printed on brochures, display boards, for-sale signs, etc.
Of course, the use of QR codes won't be effective in generating leads if you do not link it to a targeted page. If you are selling a property, you may want to redirect the code to your website detailing the property listing or to a gallery where users can experience a virtual tour.
Hiring celebrities and influencers to promote products and businesses is not a new marketing strategy. But with the help of social media, this strategy has seen increased efficacy.
Social media influencers often have a massive niche following, so tapping them to promote your services or your listing can give you lots of potential real estate leads, both qualified and unqualified. However, their services come at a price.
If you have the time, you may want to be the influencer yourself. You can start a TikTok, Instagram, or Facebook account sharing general information on real estate. Eventually, people will learn about your name and they'll recall who you are when they are ready to buy or sell a home.
Sometimes, generating real estate leads the old-fashioned way still works wonders. While most real estate agents you know are busy doing TikToks and reels, start door-knocking to fill your CRM with free leads. We get it, this is a lot of work, but if you are a beginner in the field, this is a good way to build your personal brand and introduce yourself to the community.
You don't even have to prepare a long script once you do door-to-door real estate lead generation. Just say matter of fact why you're there and if they're not interested or don't have plans to buy or sell, leave them your business card. Once they're ready to make a real estate transaction, they'll recall who you are and they'll find you.
There are many real estate predictive analytics companies that can help you sort through volumes of data through smart algorithm in order to gain insights into the communities you serve, your buyers, and of course, your sellers.
To put it more simply, these companies use machine learning to predict transactional and historical data to identify the behavior of your consumers. The result of this predictive analytics will then be your basis for how you'll generate leads.
According to Marketing Profs, most consumers prefer to do business or shop with members of the local chamber of commerce. That gives you a good reason to join one!
Many chambers will actually promote you on their website for a nominal fee. They'll also publicize events you'll be holding on their newsletters!
Even if you are a novice real estate agent, finding leads won't be difficult given the real estate generation ideas we shared above. You can always try more than one strategy to find more buyers and sellers.
If it gets too overwhelming and tiring, just buy leads from pay-per-lead platforms or lead sellers online. It'll save you time and energy and you have more chances of actually finding leads with fewer complications.
Here at Property Leads, we offer high-quality motivated leads generated from SEO. Our leads also have little to no competition, so our conversion rates are quite high!
Fill out our form below once you're ready to get paid leads from us!
30 N Gould St Ste N
Sheridan, WY 82801
(207) 309-3949
sales@propertyleads.com
