It’s entirely natural that realtors will often evaluate whether or not they put their valuable time into an effort based on dollars and cents outlooks, and if you’re a real estate agent in Canada you’ll get our drift here. Not all real estate clients are equal, and while even the most successful and well-established agents will be happy to work with clients of all sorts it’s also not unnatural to have more a fondness for working with clients who are selling a home as opposed to buying one.

Now some will quickly connect the dots to conclude that’s because there is usually more commission earned by a realtor who has helped with the sale of a home for his clients. That’s fair enough, and it’s true for the most part. The value of the home has everything to do with that, but we can get it if some agents are going to be put more focus on strategies for generating seller leads. We’ve said it before, but we know that other paid real estate leads in Canada providers would likely tell you the same if you asked – there’s no one best way to generate real estate leads.

Indeed the most successful real estate lead generators take a multi-track approach to drumming up new clientele, and we’ve also talked at length here about how older and more traditional approaches like door knocking and volunteering at community / civic events can also be very helpful for the aim. The last part of that is particularly noteworthy if you are one more Canadian realtors who is happier to have home seller clients when possible, and so here we’re going to look at strategies for generating seller leads in much more detail.

Here are 17 proven effective ways for digging up leads on clients who intend to sell their home. Do you have what it takes to impress upon them that you are the best local real estate agent to help them sell their home? You will need to give off a certain confidence and put your expertise on display, but that’s the subject for another different blog entry here. Let’s get into it.

Strategic Reevaluation

These days finding home seller leads is increasingly difficult, and yes the fact there are too many realtors in any given area of the country does have a lot to do with that. Moreso than before, most people will already have a realtor in mind or when that’s been introduced to them before when they’re starting to think about putting their home on the market. This can be true even

for experienced real estate agents. In the event you’re in a rut with all of this it may be time to reevaluate your strategies for the best way to generate real estate leads, and with a specific focus on people who are likely to be selling their home.

What we’ll have here for you with this entry are practical and creative ways to help you focus your efforts more effectively and come up with better strategies for generating seller leads. Implement a few of these tactics smartly into your client prospecting efforts and you may well find you have more of your ‘preferred’ clientele to work with – people who have decided to sell their home AND decided you are the Canadian real estate agent they want to work with.

1. Leverage Existing Network to Ask for Home Seller Referrals

It’s important not to overlook the more obvious choices when it comes to smarter marketing and self-promotion of yourself as a service professional. No matter what type of service you are providing, including helping someone negotiate the sale of their home for their maximum return and satisfaction.

A new realtor may have a smaller network to work with, but it is a network none the less and that’s where you need to start here. Lean on the people you know and have worked with previously. This can be your past clients, lenders, and others in your sphere of influence, and these most agents will be using a real estate CRM suite of some sort to keep track of everyone who’s in that network and where their professional expertise lies.

Here’s a stat to keep in mind with all of this; apparently in 2022 36% of sellers who used a real estate agent was put into contact with that agent through a referral. You won’t get referrals if you don’t ask for them, so you need to be assertive and go out and ask if whoever it may be knows of someone who’s thinking about putting their home on the market and isn’t working with a realtor – yet.

2. Use Social Media to Build your Personal Brand

Social media like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube are great for helping realtors create a strong online identity for themselves and build up their personal ‘brand’, if you will, as a means of standing out from the thousands of other realtors who would like those same clients you have your eyes on.

Social media channel activity and promotion is most effective when it’s paired with your real estate website where share value-add information and expertise on your local market to build your credibility. There are a lot of possibilities here though, and getting into all of them would be an entry all its own too probably. Explore and try new approaches, there’s a lot to learn here.

3. Provide Custom Local Market Updates for Existing Seller Leads

There is always going to be more value than you’d imagine in your existing database, or at least that’s the case most of the time for realtors who have been working in real estate for a number of years minimum. It’s a good idea to email up-to-date summaries of active, pending, and sold properties to would-be clients when they match their search criteria.

This is definitely part of strategies for generating seller leads too, and again here we can’t recommend using a real estate CRM highly enough for this aim too. Plus you’ll find that a good real estate email marketing software can enhance your email marketing efforts and ensure maximum engagement.

4. Have a CTA (call to action) Offering a Home Valuation on Your Website

You may need to work with a webmaster if you’re not the builder of your site, and it’s not common for real estate agents to build their own website. But if you are going to use this CTA it will be most powerful among real estate lead generators if it can be linked or otherwise connected to community pages as well as contributing to better SERP (search engine results page) rankings when people search for realtors in the area of the country where you are working as one. This is a really easy way to start a conversation with potential seller leads and provide value to them.

5. Drive Traffic to Home Valuation Landing Pages

You can easily create these types of microsites specifically designed to attract seller leads with a home valuation CTA. They should be directly integrated with your CRM in the same way your main website is and you can control the metadata, including the H1 tags to boost your organic rankings.

Take advantage of Google Analytics, Google Ads conversion ID, or Facebook here too and to track pixel to track conversions on the site. This is among the best ways to generate real estate leads because it can capture key information about their home plus their timeline for selling if they have a defined one – something that can distinguish a hot lead from one that’s only warm. This is then captured in your CRM as a seller lead, and you can choose how your leads are routed from there.

6. Utilize Google Seller PPC Campaigns

Most common is to locate these pay-per-click ad campaigns with a seller site on its own domain, and so we recommend running seller lead campaigns at the municipality level to ensure you’re geo-targeting an area that’s large enough to the point that you can expect to generate at least some home seller leads from it. You will need to be casting a fairly wide net, and an even wider one depending on where in Canada and in which part of which Province you are working as a real estate agent.

7. Use Your CRM to Build a Follow-Up and Lead Nurturing System

There are going to be occasions When a seller lead’s timeline is several months into the future, but that doesn’t mean you should automatically be back-burnering them. Instead you can use a combination of tags, action plans, drip campaigns, and real estate marketing automations in your CRM to develop automated ways that keep you in touch with them organically but without coming on too strong as realtor who’s desperate for new clientele.

You can also build a follow-up plan based on the lead’s engagement level. One example might be automatically enrolling a seller lead into an action plan once they’ve visited your site a certain number of times. The action plan can have call tasks and automated texts and emails to ensure you’re being timely with when and how you reach out.

Using AI tools is possible here too, you can automate initial engagement with the lead to help qualify them and alert an agent when the lead is more likely to be converted into a new real estate client. AI tools are also good for positive re-engaging of older seller leads without requiring a whole lot of you.

8. Create Seller-Focused Content

It’s the simple fact that prospective clients who might list their home for sale with you will be more likely to engage with content related to the selling of homes. So it may be that blog posts on how to prep your home to sell or a landing page with tips on the home-selling process can be much more effective when it comes strategies for generating seller leads .

Seller-focused content that is written well and made available through the right channels can help augment the other ways you’re targeting these leads. This content can be used as landing pages for ads, in email marketing, on social media, and to attract visitors to your website.

9. Use Cold Calling to Prospect Expired Listings and FSBOs

Being right on top of expired listings from your MLS and any FSBOs (for sale by owners) listing can be a similarly solid approach for creating real estate seller leads. It is possible that leads from expired listings might have poor experiences with other agents dulling the enthusiasm they have for working with a new realtors and perhaps even deciding to put their home back on the market altogether.

You need to define how you will convince them that working with you will be different. Having trouble making enough calls throughout the day? Increase your efficiency and productivity by using an automated real estate dialer. These can be good for connecting with a larger volume of prospects and maximizing your outreach efforts.

10. Build a Networking Group Built Out of Local Service Providers

Real estate is yet another business where it’s all about who you know. And if you’re a realtor yourself then the best people to know in this capacity are people who work with homes in a similarly service-oriented capacity. The painters, carpenters and contractors who sellers are bound to call. Forming personal relationships with these companies can be a great way to become aware of homes about to go on the market before anyone else.

In addition, once homeowners hear you’re someone with the right network and plenty of local market expertise you may well be the realtor they contact when it’s time to sell.

11. Work Open Houses to Generate Seller Leads

Every approach to strategies for generating seller leads is going to require plenty of proactivity and get-up-and-go on your part. So suggesting you get up and go to open houses is right in line with that and it can also be a big part of having success with home seller lead generation.

Open houses are perfect opportunities to meet people who are ready to sell. Whether they’re serious about listing their home or are just curious to see what competition in the area is like, these are great places to have organic and very natural first meetings with a potential client.

12. Leverage Facebook Ads

We can’t even list out all the ways there is to utilize Facebook for home seller lead generation, but one strategy that’s a little beyond the standard approaches is to focus on specific interest groups that can help generate leads for you. For example, a FB group for young parents where you’re more likely to be in contact with young couples who have children making their families bigger and they’re looking for a bigger home because of it.

Use Facebook to find these people and start building real estate relationships. You may be surprised how much good can come from being even just a little engaged through targeted Facebook real estate ads.

13. Provide Assistance for Distressed Homeowners

It’s never a desirable scenario, but there are times when homeowners are forced to sell. And in some instances they may need to sell quickly. Often this because of unfortunate circumstances. You can and should still contact these people if you’re made aware of them. Just tread lightly and be understanding and empathetic when working with this segment. Put your focus on listening to their needs and helping them sell their home and get through this unfortunate situation where they are at a disadvantage with selling their home.

And more to the point, be very forthcoming with anything and everything you can do to minimize any such disadvantage their in. If you can improv the outcomes for them and make the sale of the home as agreeable as possible all things considered you WILL have satisfied clients, and as we know it is satisfied clients who recommend you as a realtor to others they know.

14. Convert Renters into Sellers

Renting out a home can be a good way to maintain and build equity despite whatever reason the owner may have for not living in the home at that time. But it can also be one heck of a hassle, and unfortunately that’s especially true in Canada. There’s maintenance, administration, collecting the rent, and also evictions in worst-case scenarios. You can do well by explaining these costs to potential clients, and helping them understand that in some cases it may actually be in their best interest to sell the home instead.

15. Join a Team of Experienced Listing Agents

Networking with listing agents nearly always provides mutual benefit, and especially when it is a group of realtors who each come to the tablet with their own areas of local market expertise, this is part of strategies for generating seller leads too and can even be a quick and easy way to get more leads fast. Sure, it won’t be a good fit for those who’d rather work on their own, but if you can work well with others and you have an interest in the mutual gains you’d provide for each then this is something to consider for your real estate lead generation approaches.

16. Make Contacts with Home Flippers / Real Estate Investors

Buying and refurbishing old homes is increasingly popular with real estate investors. And it’s quite likely there are entire neighborhoods in your city where this is happening. Be quick to move on this if you become aware of it and reach out to these individuals in the attempt to convince them you’re the right agent to realize the sale of their property. They’ll likely be motivated to sell fast and frequently, and again consider the satisfied client / referral angle here.

17. Host an Event

People of all sort tend to like to socialize, and that’s why some realtors will host or arrange events that can be subtly used to promote their services when in the midst of a gathering of people that may have any number of prospective clients attending based on demographic factors, location, and so on. The more people who leave talking about it — and you — the more likely you’ll be recommended to others when they decide that now they’re ready to put their home on the market.

18. Be Creative

All realtors will use print marketing collateral like cards and so on to hopefully stay front of mind with people who aren’t selling their home right now but may be in the not-too-distant future. You can and should do the same as part of what successful real estate lead generators do, but you should try and be as creative in possible in making your marketing and promotion collateral stand out from the ones other realtors use. A different and unique tag line may be a great place to start, but there’s much more you can do too and this is one area of all this where you can really think outside the box and find unique and creative ways to see to it you’re the real estate agent they’re most likely to think of.

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Remember that the strategies and tactics you choose to try here should be given at least something of a longer leash when it comes to you starting to evaluate whether they’re working or not for you with getting more home seller leads. Often it’s a combination of good old-fashioned prospecting and relationship building and paired with by strong marketing and technology implementation that will be contributing to real estate lead pipelines most effectively AND most frequently. And, of course, always be open to trying new things.

Finalizing is a term that’s become quite the buzzword in business of all types over recent years, and in many ways it has superseded closing when it comes to turning a lead into a sale for by and large and anyone who does sales of any sort. It’s been particularly well adopted in real estate too and as it pertains to real estate leads here it really does highlight how a there is a real chasm that has to be crossed when you go from receiving a lead to having those persons by or sell a home.

That will mean convincing them to work with you as their real estate agent. The fact there are far greater numbers of active real estate agents than there is sufficient homebuyer and home seller business to go around means plenty of others will be aiming to do the same thing. Does this mean that realtors have to know how to present themselves in the best light in every way? Absolutely, but there’s more that goes into the best ways to generate leads for real estate. You do need to be persuasive in ways that break away from the norms where most realtors approach clients the same way.

But it is true that the more leads you are able to drum up, the more likely it is any given number of those leads will turn into real estate clients for you. It’s for this reason so many realtors are using paid real estate lead generation services like the one we make available here. But let’s go ahead and assume that any realtor who is going to pay for leads will want to be sure they are doing the best they can and having maximum success with their efforts to convert online leads.

So what we’ll do for our blog entry here this week is go into real detail about the best real estate lead conversion strategies for 2024, and hopefully as someone who may be new to working as a realtor in Canada you can find good ways to incorporate them into your efforts too.

Conversion Rates Focus

Every agent tends to be a busy agent, and that may be true even if that realtor isn’t enjoying a steady income from their career at that time and of course it is at times like these that you want be converting as many leads as possible. Is that more difficult for those who are newer to the business? Absolutely. Like anything you become more proficient and it is understandable if in the beginning feel practically impossible to understand the numbers behind your marketing efforts. Calculating conversion rates for real estate leads is crucial in 2024 in the same way it has been for years previous .

We’ll also assume that most realtors will know what a conversion rate is, but if you don’t then the conversion rate is the rate at which your real estate leads are turned into clientele who participate in a home sale or buy a home and either results in you earning a commission. Fairly straightforward, and to calculate the conversion rate you go through a basic equation working with the number of leads generated and the number of leads who became clients.

As an example, if you generated 500 leads for June and 25 of them became clients, your conversion rate would be 5%. Simple enough, but big decisions shouldn’t be on how to spend your marketing finances to get better conversion rates. Instead, you should focus more on improving your lead conversion rates for 2024. Keep in mind as well that different marketing channels will have different conversion rates.

This creates a reality where some leads are worth more than others, and to determine which lead is worth more you need to put another equation to work. It’s also relatively simple; divide the total revenue gained from a specific marketing channel by the number of leads gained. Because even as little as a 1% gain can have a profound effect on your business, and anything that adds incrementally towards that will make some marketing channels immediately more valuable than others when it comes to better lead conversion rates.

Be Channel Choosy

It makes so much sense to invest more readily in a marketing channel that has better lead conversion rates. You need to work on your follow up, communication, and relationship-building to improve converting leads to customers. Is there a national average for realtors and how often convert leads into clients? Apparently there is, and what we’ve learned there is that 3-5% is standard for conversion rates. But this is based on the agent’s market, so it possible the average rates are lower and maybe even much lower.

That may be discouraging to some, but even without those low numbers the important takeaway for you is that converting leads into clients doesn’t happen often at all and this emphasizes how important it is to be as good at it as you can possibly be.

So let’s swing around now and talk about the main reasons leads that might have been converted end up staying unconverted, and a part of it does reinforce the fact you do need to be about which marketing channels you choose to put your time, money, and focus into.

One of the primary reasons for failure here is that the realtor’s follow-up is poor and the would-be clients is majorly dissuaded by that initial impression made on them. All too often it isn’t your online leads that are inferior and it’s much more in the way you approach these prospective clients with that all-important first impression.

If after months of effort your lead nurturing tactics aren’t generating leads and seeing them converted, then it’s time you made changes to your approach. The best advice is to take a look at your entire process to determine what you can do to improve. It may be that you are too focused on short-term success, and if so then your correction needs to be to understand that real estate is all about long-term success.

The ones who are most successful are growing their sphere of influence, nurturing relationships slowly over time, and establishing themselves as a trusted advisor long after a sale is completed.

Misidentifying Most Valuable Leads

Research done in 2020 indicated that 1st-time buyers made up 31% of all home buyers, a dip from 2019 33% and for 43% of recent buyers. As it relates to real estate leads the first step that they took in the home buying process was to browse properties for sale online, with another 18% of those buyers reaching out to make first contact with real estate agent. That leaves another 82% of those participants available to be contacted by a realtor.

Many of them will be contacting a realtor who has been referred to them by family, friends, or coworkers. Referrals are the way most buyers find their agents too and while you can generate real estate leads online, it’s often not as effective as nurturing relationships with past clients – the same people who will be most likely to refer you. The people you’ve already worked with are much more likely to convert again or provide referrals.

The point here is to not neglect your most valuable leads. Follow up with clients after the sale and it’s not to difficult to do that and not comes across as being overly pushy or anything of the sort. And as we know there are many different off-line ways of getting leads in real estate.

Focus on building a relationship first and the business will follow. And understanding that a larger marketing budget isn’t necessarily the solution. If you want a more guaranteed-beneficial way to put money into your client generation efforts you may be best to put that into real estate search engine optimization for your website.

Gaining Clients from Real Estate Leads in 2024

All sorts of tips for agents abound online, but most will be squandered if a realtor doesn’t know how to convert leads into clients. You need a plan, and you need to have experience making those conversions and the understanding you need to get better at it.

There are some tips that can apply to all realtors no matter their personality of how they like to build clientele. We can start by saying that timing is often an integral factor, as most people will choose to work with the first realtor they speak with. Long story short – the quicker you respond to a lead, the better when it comes to real estate leads. The best overall strategies will include a plan for initial response to leads as well as ongoing contact.

Next you’ll need to know how to best stay in touch with clients that are warm leads but not hot leads where the people are ready to make a real estate move nearly immediately. This is best done by staying at the forefront of their minds, and you do that by having a follow-up system in place. Many realtors will use e-newsletters that former clients can opt to receive and if they do then it’s a way of keeping you as that realtor that is at the front of your mind .

It will also be best if you are able to have a distinctive value proposition. The best approach for real estate leads and real estate lead generation is a multi-pronged one that focuses on having a unique value proposition. Start with the standard introduction to your prospective clients, but then shift your focus to the clients and it’s here that you want to be as catering and complimentary as possible.

Being especially upbeat about their home and its value is a great launching point that you can’t go wrong with. There are other approaches you can try to, but once you establish that identity with them then you will next need to evaluate your clients and try to determine where they are in the sales cycle. Because part of effectively converting real estate leads into clients is being able to accurately access where they are in that.

As is the case again here, it is something that you get better at with practice. But something you can be very proficient with right away is showcasing your local neighborhood knowledge. This is a huge part of organic lead generation and especially with ensuring people think of you when they’re asked to recommend a good realtor for acquaintances to work with. Be focused on providing relevant local information, and if that can be paired with individual property information then it can help you demonstrate a level of expertise that few agents can match.

Earn Testimonials

If being able to convert online leads better as a realtor is a priority for you then you can get a lot of support from having many former clients leaving online testimonials for you. It is always true that potential customers hold testimonials in high regard, seeing them as means of confirming that you understand what you are doing. You need your leads to trust you and feel they have nothing to risk. Most realtors are all too happy to put these reviews and testimonials on their personal real estate website and they can go into social media profiles too. But once you have these online real estate leads, what can a realtor expect to happen next? After receiving responses to your online campaigns or using real estate search engine optimization strategies, you may find that this can go one of two ways.

We talked about not neglecting leads, but let’s put a similar emphasis on the need to follow up immediately. You never want to make leads wait, and there has been consumer research that the initial interest level of a prospect drops considerably after an hour. It is truly important to follow up immediately with prospects. One idea is to direct online leads to a company email to which several people have access.

This will ensure quick handling of leads and will increase the chances of converting them to clients, but from there they will need to be qualified. So what is the best way to qualify real estate leads? You again start by knowing which stage leads are in you will know where and how to invest your resources to convert them to clients.

And a part of qualifying the lead first is to make the good 1^st impression that we talked about a number of times already here. And even if a lead is warm and you reach out promptly and properly the potential client may genuinely just not be ready to take the next step yet. But if the lead has shown interest in your service then you definitely don’t want lose the opportunity to keep them warm.

Be Attentive

An equally essential part of converting real estate leads into customers is optimally listening to them. Rather than rattling of any standard sales pitch, you should instead pay attention to their problems and needs and that means you need to have good critical listening / understanding skills. It’s your job to educate the prospect to become aware of the problem and how you can help them solve this.

Moving forward from there it helps a lot if you have a strong understanding of the conversion process. It is good if you can use analytics software to show how many leads are entering your CRM system at each stage of the sales funnel and how many are converted to clients who buy or sell real estate through you.

Data needs to be presented clearly in a dashboard with a CRM in order for you to see which levels of your sales funnel are leaking leads. Done properly it lets you to reach out and focus on those leads. Finding out how to convert online leads to customers takes you one step closer to your goals. And once that point arrives you will do well to have real estate lead conversion scripts that work and are ready to go.

There’s no such thing as a perfect script, and not every script works for every agent. However, having a decent one can do wonders for your lead generation and that is because scripts

• help you gain confidence with leads
• Promote learning new sales approaches quickly
• Allow scaling of your real estate business, and that’s even more true if you are operating as a team

Here’s a good example of some standard verbiage for a real estate leads script:

‘Hi ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­—–. This is Ken with —–. You related to me that you are having challenges with ———. I have considered your situation and my experience in this market leads me to believe ——– is likely the best course of action to overcome this challenge and provide the perfect solution.’

Not long ago research findings published at salesforce.com showed that focusing on helping the customer results in an increase in lead conversions by up to 70%. With some prospective clients an approach that prompts them to volunteer their perspective right away is better, and here’s an example of a real estate client contact script like that.

‘My understanding is that you are looking for a 3-bedroom home in the ——- area as near as possible to —— school. Is that correct?’

It’s simple, it’s unassuming, and it’s a direct question that will necessitate a fairly clear response from them most of the time. Experienced agents will also know that it’s easy to score and convert leads from open houses. Open houses are also a good place to earn referrals. An open house-related script might go something like this:

‘Hi, my name is—– with —–. The purpose of this communication is to let you know of an open house event going to be held at (address) ——- this —— from —– to ——–. Do you know where this is, and might you have any interest in attending this open house?’

Making some type of positive personal connection is what you should be aiming for with any lead. Many times an initial phone call script is the best way to achieve this. Learn the scripts by heart isn’t necessary, but what is necessary is an understanding of the underlying principles that make them effective at converting online new home leads.

If you need any more convincing on this then how about hearing that as much as 80% of leads are lost due to poor or no follow-up efforts. So a reliable real estate lead conversion plan is needed, one where for the first 10 days you focus on following up on leads with phone calls, texts, and emails.

Here’s an overview of what that might look like

1^st Day

Respond quickly once the lead contacts you, starting with a self-introduction. Let the lead know how you found them and why you’re very likely the best fit as their real estate agent. Ensure you come across as knowledgeable, helpful, and trustworthy while not seeming needy at all. You can contact the leads through email or phone calls.

2^nd Day

You may not have heard back from the lead by this point, but that’s not a concern here as it’s fairly common. Stay informative and trustworthy with your tone in the communications, and be clear in how you can help the lead buy or sell their home. You can contact them through email and text.

3^rd Day

Converting unresponsive leads is best done by staying persistent. Far too many agents will think a lead has gone cold after a day or two, but that is rarely if ever the case. That lead may still be interested in buying or selling a home. Send a short and concise follow-up communication here (often email is best, but text message is a possibility too) and this can be a good way to get a response without being annoying.

4^th Day

Here is when you start to suspect that you conversion scripts are not working well. Make small changes here though rather than making wholesale changes to them – at least for the time being, and one thing you can try is switching up the time of day you send them messages. Reach out in the evening if mornings aren’t working and vice versa. Just send an email as a reminder that you’d still like to offer your service and assistance if they need them.

5^th Day

At this point it may be that the prospective client is busy or isn’t ready to start the buying or selling process. Either way, focus on staying at the forefront of their mind and a means of doing this can be to call them on this day and send a text as well.

6^th and 7^th Day

This is not the time to pressure any lead too much. It’s wise here to give phone communication a rest for a couple of days, but you can stay positive and helpful in a short email sent on either of these days

8^th Day

Take the opportunity here to remind the lead of your value. Aim for an upbeat tone when doing this and mention that you have useful information you think they’d like to have. One idea can be to send a text message in the evening when the lead has likely seen to everything they need to do that day.

9^th Day

Here it starts to becomes possible that a different approach is needed this time. See it as a good time to showcase your unique skills as an agent, and you can state to the lead how you can help them with the buying or selling of their home. Plus, if they are hesitant to move forward then that’s perfectly fine and you are ready to help when they are ready. You may also mention that your negotiation skills can help the buyer save money and the seller net more money.

10^th Day

This 10^th day is final day in the conversion plan, and what you can do here is contact your lead by phone. You may also send a text before lunch and call in the evening.

Everything said there is no debate that converting real estate leads is an essential part of every real estate business. Well written seller landing pages will also help you generate leads, along with starting you on the path where you build a reputation as a realtor and start having your business grow organically along with what you’re able to do with your efforts to generate leads for real estate and pairing it with effective real estate search engine optimization.

The technology that people utilize for marketing these days is really quite something, and it’s not surprising that real estate agents are keen to maximize what they can do with it when marketing homes they have for sale on behalf of clients. Much if not all of it is built on the Internet connectivity that we’ve all been enjoying for 20-plus years now. Visuals are everything in real estate marketing, and that won’t come as a surprise considering prospective homebuyers are always going to want to envision themselves living in a home and a community. And making good use of visuals of different sorts can also be a means of collecting home seller leads too.

We’ve talked at length about proven means of generating the best real estate leads here, but paid real estate leads like the ones we offer here at 4GoodHosting aren’t where you start with this necessarily. They are best seen as a means of augmenting a realtor’s existing status as a realtor who is very visible to potential clients when they begin to search for a professional to work with when buying or selling a home. Naturally, the best and most effective way to do that is to have your name out there and then have a long list of satisfied clients who will be happy to vouch for you as an excellent realtor.

A big part of this can be people referring you to others they know who are preparing to put their home on the market, and you can gain seller leads for real estate agents when former clients rave about the different but super effective means you used to market their home. Sometimes all that is required to sell a home is to put it on the MLS and host open houses. With other properties there will be much more promotion required to convince would-be buyers to place an offer.

One good example of this where new technology is used to great effect is with drone video and aerial photography. There can be a lot to be gained in showing an elevated or ‘bird’s eye’ view of a home as compared to only taking standing height ground level photos of it. In particular it can be very valuable if there is a real harmony between the home and the property it stands on. The way exterior detailing like patios or other fixtures or landscaping adds to the appeal of the home can be better highlighted too. That’s what we’re going to look at with this entry.

Great Images from Up High

Real estate drone video can be very persuasive when it makes a home and property look that much more attractive to a prospective buyer, and as we mentioned above home seller leads can come from them later on as people speak highly of your use of drone video in real estate. Agents do know that to generate home seller leads they must show the clearest and most flattering property pictures they can.

In some instances that’s not possible with a smartphone or even a higher-end DSLR camera if you’re only taking ordinary photos of the exterior. In the past it would have been impossible to take photos or video from a very elevated view in the sky, but no longer. We’re now seeing that the use of drone property photography has taken the real estate industry by storm, and this is a trend that we’re probably going to see gain even more traction. Here are some industry statistics to consider related to this:

1. Homes with aerial images sold 68% faster in comparison to homes with standard image.
2. 73% of homeowners say working with an agent that uses video to market homes is preferable.
3. 83% of home sellers will want to work with an agent that uses drones.
4. Drones are used 3.5 times more by high-volume agents than low-volume agents.
5. Drones speed up the sales process for commercial and residential properties.

Realtors can then add to the emphatic nature of their property marketing efforts when they use those pictures when creating ads on Facebook or Google, and they will almost always see increased engagement because of them. But as it relates to the best real estate leads realtors need to be a cut above the rest when it comes to delivering the best residential and commercial real estate drone photography, so let’s now turn to a discussion of good real estate drone video and photo tips.

Start at the Start

A good starting point for better flying drone photography and video is to make sure you have the best drone for your needs. Battery life, the resolution of the camera, and pre-programmed flight modes can all be valid considerations and you should weigh all of them from the perspective of how do I get the perfect real estate marketing videos or drone property photography shots. As is the case with many new products it may be possible to get a good quality used camera drone as this is one product where new enthusiasts often upgrade their drone in short order.

You can and should start with preparing the scene. Make sure the home exterior is made to look its best and that the property is equally attractive. Naturally, you will want to choose a day with good weather and clear visibility too. The next thing you will need to do is master your drone and find the best settings for the type of video you want to take, as seller leads for real estate agents aren’t always easy to come by and if you’re going to put the time, effort, and expense into this then you certainly need to do it right.

Try taking your drone to a park near your home for an hour or so and get used to flying it and taking video at the same time. Apparently most people get the hang of it pretty quickly, and you may want to keep the drone at a low height right in front of you while you master the basic controls. In addition to what you read in the owner’s manual you can also likely find good flight instruction videos for your drone on YouTube.

You’ll need to get to know the drone flight modes too, and most of the good ones have intelligent flight modes that make all of this impressively user friendly. The next thing you’ll need to is take some test flights taking photos and videos, and one thing that is always true is that lower in the air is generally better than higher, although if there are other geographical features (like coastline for example) nearby then you can spend a portion of the time taking video higher in the air.

Aerial map photography can be good for home seller leads and it’s good tomato them part of listing presentations online, giving would-be buyers the option of clicking on the video and watching it. But again, to get the best real estate leads you want to stay low so you can get an idea of the property and surrounding land. Another part of the advantage of having real estate drone video is letting you add visual descriptiveness to you narration of the video.

If, for example, you’re describing how the home is a stone’s throw from a nice beachfront park it will be very helpful – and much more persuading – if you’re able to clearly show just how that’s the case and what an attractive beachfront park these folks will have close by if they start to envision themselves living there.

Estimate Expenses

Generating seller leads for real estate agents is something that those agents will have to weigh in an expense / return sort of equation, and in many ways that is true of any expenditure a person makes to further their business. As this relates to using an aerial drone to get good real estate video the national average that realtors can expect to pay for aerial photography is between $250 and $350. As mentioned above though, you may be able to find a reasonably priced used one in good condition if you’re willing to be patient and scour online seller platforms like Craigslist, Kijiji, and Facebook Marketplace.

There will be other points that can factor into all of this though, including location, equipment, competitors, as well as the services and finished products required. In many instances the realtor may become proficient with operating the drone and getting the video but they still need pay for editing to create high-quality, high-resolution photos and video. Prices will also vary based on whether you aim to capture an event, produce commercial images, or create images of a special viewpoint.

With that in mind, you may want to assume more expense up front rather than later and that can be true of nearly anything related to home seller leads in real estate. Higher-end gear typically produces a higher-resolution and higher-quality project, and if you are a realtor who is regularly representing clients with homes for sale then it’s advisable to get better equipment when using drones to video real estate.

The perspective that even 1 home sold in part because of the buyers being smitten with the on-high footage of the home can make the purchase of drone worth the expense is a legitimate one here. And of course if that’s the case then it is very likely that won’t be the first time the better videos of homes on your real estate website create sales results that have your drone more than paying for itself.

Drone Video Tips

It is highly recommended that you first master the operation of your drone, and once you start to compare your video with others you will likely see that it is best to go slow for the most convincing cinematic experience designed to cater to prospective buyers. You can always speed up a shot in post-production to make that drone footage look like a high-speed fly-by. As you become more proficient with the drone and camera you’ll develop more of a sense of when and where you should be zooming in on the home too.

We talked about learning how to edit video well too, or paying to have a pro edit your videos so that they have the full promotional effect you want from them. Getting good drone shots and editing video can be two very different skillsets. And if you still need convincing about learning to do this yourself you can consider a 60 to 90-second real estate drone video can cost between $400-$450 if you were to have the entire service done for you. Keep this in mind as well as you consider what we talked about at the end of the previous paragraph here.

It’s been shown that realtors who incorporate multimedia components into their personal real estate websites well enjoy more follow-up inquiries from individuals or couples who have an existing interest in putting in an offer on the property. Your use of drone video footage for selling homes and coming up with the best real estate leads can definitely be one part of that, and you can make sure you always have a video available for every new home listing you feature on the site.

This is something that an established and more successful realtor with a bigger operating budget to work with, but if you are newer to the business and money is an object then you should consider getting the video yourself. The need to be good at it will be even more profound when you are idealizing your video as a means of both selling homes AND drumming up home seller leads as satisfied clients speak of your real estate drone video proficiency to people in their circle who are now also thinking of selling their home.

There are also smarter ways to edit and treat real estate photos and videos, and as you turn the learning curve with flying a drone and getting video of homes from above you may also start taking an interest in how to do that too. And don’t be surprised if drone video footage becomes a part of how you capture memories with your own family on vacation and the like.

Sign up for Real Estate Leads here and receive home seller leads and home buyer leads that are delivered to you exclusively. You are the only realtor who will receive these leads, and they will provide information on people in the area of the country where you are working as a realtor who are ready to buy or sell a home in the near future. This proven-effective means of getting more out of client prospecting efforts comes recommended by profit-minded realtors like you, Signing up now makes a lot of sense if more real estate clientele is a need for you as you establish yourself in a career in real estate.

The way it has always worked with real estate clients is that it is prospective homebuyers are the ones that are most often happened upon by realtors who are hosting open houses or occupied in other facets of doing their jobs. Homeowners that are living in the home currently and thinking about selling may inquire about the realtor they worked with when buying the home, but if it’s been years or decades that may be less likely. As a realtor there is everything to be gained from being made aware of these folks before they go looking to contact a realtor themselves.

Visibility as a real estate agent is an interconnected part of the way agents will try to generation leads for real estate. Or they should be, because as much as paid real estate lead generation services like ours here at Real Estate Leads are effective there is so much more that can be gained from client-base building efforts of all sorts when potential clients think of you or remember you when they start thinking let’s get the ball rolling with selling this home and making the next move in our lives.

There are always going to be all sorts of ideas for real estate lead generation ideas, and in our last blog entry here we talked about making smart partnerships where you as a realtor offer to promote someone else’s business in return for them recommending you as a realtor and getting leads that way. With this second real estate topic blog of the weeks we’re going to look at ways you can be more visible as a real estate agent and we’re not just talking about bus bench ads and the like.

Advertise Through Traditional Media

Well, immediately after saying that here we are stating that realtors who want to be more visible should consider traditional media if they’re not using it already. It is true that sometimes the best avenues to get your brand out and attract new clients are the methods realtors in your parents’ era might have used. Billboards, bench signs, and print ads can all be excellent resources to generate leads for real estate. With the right person passing by and more than a little lit on something you could be top-of-mind when they’re looking for their next agent.

Be Seen As a Niche Realtor

Most realtors who are niche realtors catering to a more-specific buyer or seller clientele are likely doing so in one that is based on either a location or a style of home, and of course many times certain types of homes are more predominantly found in specific regions of a city, Province, or even in the country as a whole. Plus a lot of people are very particular about where they will be living and how it lines up with the lifestyle they want to have for themselves.

If you’re a realtor who specializes in a certain neighborhood, historic homes, or helping clients find their perfect apartment then you want to make the effort so that you’re renowned as that person by as many people as possible. This will be an additional way to increase the likelihood of success with lead generation for real estate. Ideally you develop a reputation as the go-to realtor for these kinds of buyers and sellers. Plus it’s more natural to become a niche realtor when you grew up there and even better if you’ve lived in one of those homes or owned one yourself at some point in your life if you’re a realtor.

Here are common real estate niches, and as you’ll see there are other buyer prerogatives in them: historic homes / mid-century modern homes. luxury homes. / neighborhoods / student rentals/ school districts / 1st-time homebuyers / condos or apartments / slums / distressed properties / senior homes / vacation homes / commercial or industrial real estate

Use Coming Soon Signs

We’re going to continue with how real estate lead generation ideas can include improving on existing communication channels you have, and perhaps even making better use of them. This is not an aspect of it that most will talk about with this stuff, but ‘Coming Soon’ and ‘Sold’ signs shown on social media or a property’s lawn, are a tried-and-true way to generate interest. It creates a level of anticipation for the buyer because if they are ready to buy or sell a home they envision how they’ll be benefitting in that same scenario.

This also makes no mention of how the affect is magnified when home are shown to have sold for over asking in __ amount of weeks. No real estate agent in Canada will need to have the benefit of that explained to them.

Attend Open Houses

Notice we said attend open houses, and not host open houses. No one suggests you should drive across town, but if there is an open house that is not far from where you are there is no reason you can’t attend and speak to people if they take the initiative to speak to you first. Some realtors have very creative ways of doing that, and some of them may be more appropriate than others. But this is again a way for you to be visible in the 1^st person and you may make just the right impression on someone who might want to work with you moving forward as they house hunt.

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All of your real estate lead generation ideas are going to have a little more pop and potential to them if you’re as visible as you can possibly be as a real estate agent working in that area and specializing in the types of properties that you do. Then you have the option of also weighing whether you’d like to invest in paid real estate leads to really supercharge you client generation efforts, and if so you are already in the right place here at Real Estate Leads.

Here we are again at the start of a new year, and if you’re someone who is new to working as a real estate agent in Canada we imagine that part of your resolve as 2024 begins is that you’re going to have greater success in your chosen profession this year. If there is one thing you’ve likely learned over the course of the last year and beyond it is that real estate is an extremely competitive business, and there is never going to be enough clientele to go around and have every agent being entirely satisfied with the number of clients they have to work with. This is why knowing how to generate leads for real estate is so important.

We’ve gone at length here about how you need to take a multi-tiered approach to lead generation for real estate, and that means that you don’t take just one singular approach. Using an online real estate lead generation system here at Real Estate Leads definitely has its merits, and it is a resource that wouldn’t have been available to previous generations of real estate agents. The power of Internet marketing is considerable, and that’s how online leads for real estate agents are generated in the way they are.

So you’re encouraged to purse paid real estate leads, but you need to expand your horizons with real estate lead generation ideas and building smart partnerships as a real estate agent. That’s what we’re going to focus on with our first blog entry of the year here. Go through them at your leisure, but we should say before continuing that no one is going to be able or willing to incorporate all these suggestions into their efforts.

But it is more than likely that at least a few of these partnership ideas line up well with what you’ll be able to do as you aim to generate leads for real estate. You will do well to try them and see if they help with building a real estate client base more quickly.

Smart Partnerships

There is much to be gained from networking with other local businesses to form mutually beneficial partnerships. Ideas can include co-hosting happy hours, giving gifts to clients or leads, or forming local alliances. The last one of those 3 is the one we think is the best, and so that’s where we will put most of our focus.

• Insurance Companies

Homeowners will almost always purchase home insurance, for obvious reasons. There will also be homebuyers who want to turn their new properties into rentals or businesses of other sorts. Having connections in the industry can facilitate these transitions and promote them occurring much more regularly.

• Personal Bankers

Having their home be the largest financial investment a person ever makes is nearly always the case. A personal banker can run numbers and double-check affordability for them, and it makes sense for you to have referral contacts with someone who works in arranging financing for prospective home buyers. This can help guide buyers to the best loan options.

• Commercial Lenders

Loan officers are an integral part of the home-buying process, and the rationale in making these contacts is the same one as above for personal bankers. It is definitely good to build relationships with commercial lenders.

• Landscapers

This is a less-common suggestion, but when you consider that many people who are looking to improve their property before listing will have a landscaper working for them it makes more sense. You may also want to try to establish a referral contact arrangement with a local landscaping service that is reputable and appears to do a lot of business in your area.

• Home Stagers

There are increasing numbers of home staging services where experts will provide the direction and whatever is needed to make a home look as best as possible for prospective buyers, working on the understanding that a first impression is everything.

Those who have worked with many such clients may be a good contact for you when it comes to ways to generate leads for real estate. In particular there may be instances where a former client took a home off the market and they’ve become aware of their intention to re list it but preferably with another realtor. If you can become aware of this information first it creates a potential opportunity for you to be first in touch with them.

• Title Companies

Each day hundreds of individuals across the country contact a Title Search office to determine ownership of properties of all sorts. A real estate agent will be very familiar with how this works and all the different interests a person may have when reaching out to someone to do a title search for them. Some of these may preclude the possibility of them buying or selling a home, or a commercial real estate property. If you are able to establish a referral partnership with one or more title search offices and be the realtor they speak of when meeting these clients it can do a lot for building a real estate client base

• Storage Providers

This is the last one we’ll mention with smart partnerships as a means of lead generation for real estate. It may seem the like least logical of the bunch, and perhaps it is. But one thing that even seasoned realtors may not know is that homeowners who are humming and hawing about selling a home because they’re not sure of where they are moving to next will on occasion inquire about putting their belongings in storage.

This can be especially true if the owner is overly motivated to sell for whatever reason. They may see putting their household belongings into storage as a worthwhile expensive even though it’s a nuisance. There could be the opportunity for you to work with them if they haven’t agreed to work with a realtor yet, and even if they have it might be sometime before they decide to work with a realtor when buying a new home in the future. See if you can get to know a storage provider, and you can recommend their service in the same way they can recommend you as a real estate agent.

Sign up with Real Estate Leads here and receive a quota of qualified, online-generated buyer and / or seller leads that are delivered only to you. Being the only realtor to receive the leads gives you the perfect opportunity to reach out to these couples or individuals first and present yourself as a reputable realtor who is ready to help guide them through the home buying or home selling process for maximum return. Read our testimonials from agents like you who have discovered the benefits for themselves, and Happy New Year to all of you.