Real estate agents are never going to be literally jostling with each other. No one is going to be leaning on each other or getting their elbows up, but this is a figurative description of the fierce competition over securing one or more of the limited number of people who are going to buy or sell a home. And are ready to work with a realtor now. You will want to be that agent, but so will every other realtor working in the same city or town. Getting a lead on them that your competitors don’t have is huge, and this is why real estate lead generation is such a big deal.
Especially nowadays with the power of the Internet. The majority of people who start a search for homes for sale will be looking to buy a home or gauge the median home values of ones selling in their area. And 99% of the time they are doing that online, and this is how online real estate leads come to exist. There are all sorts of real estate success tips out there for you to dig into, but there’s no denying that paid real estate leads can fast track that success if you have the skills to be reliably converting leads into clients.
The ability to do that is the other 50% of the equation, and we have dedicated other blogs to converting real estate leads. But this one will be another that focuses on real estate lead generation strategies, and here we have more innovative lead generation strategies for you. We’ll get right into them, but before we do we’ll mention again that Real Estate Leads is the best real estate lead company in Canada and our ever growing list of testimonials will attest to that.
Keep in mind as well that all suggestions are only going to be effective if you are willing to apply them repeatedly and independent of whether or not you see immediate success from them. No one is ever an overnight success in real estate, and even the most successful and renowned realtors in your area will have gone through a LOT of trial and error with generating leads in real estate before they got to where they are today. Continue to apply yourself to the best of your ability and you can be there one day too.
Building Reputation
Always being on hunt for new clients is a core part of working as a real estate agent in Canada. It will always be possible to have repeat businesses from customers, and homes are a long-term investment. But recent customers are unlikely to be clients again for at least a few years. So the focus becomes on generating new leads for new clientele and then hoping that they will then also promote you to others as a realtor who is good to work with.
The best lead generation techniques are never going to be easily done though. You can target buyers, sellers, investors, or all of the above depending on your strategy and core competencies. When you are able to glean a more expansive spread of information about the potential client you are immediately more inclined to make a better guess as to whether they are a cool, warm, or hot lead if they are even a lead at all. This ties into real estate marketing dynamics because you want to be applying yourself judiciously.
One thing that is almost true is that you a shotgun marketing approach is usually never a good idea or something that will work well for you. Remember that driving real estate buyer and seller leads is essential to your business and poorly chosen or implemented strategies will hamper your ability to find quality leads and convert them into clients.
Remember as well that having real estate be a profitable career means relying on commissions. So the more leads you generate, the better. So let’s now move to looking at real estate leads through a more critical lens.
Discovery, Contact & Making a Determination
Lead generation will first involve discovering the lead, and that’s becoming aware of an individual or couple who are looking to buy a home or sell one and would prefer to do so with the expertise of a realtor helping them. You will then contact them and if all goes well then you’ll be collecting personal contact information from prospects. These prospects could be individuals interested in buying or selling a home, investors, or individuals who want to learn more about what you offer as a real estate agent.
A potential customer doesn’t becomes into a lead until after they’ve entered into communication with you and usually that’s either through a form on your website or by calling or emailing you directly. Lead generation in this way is part of a larger lead nurturing strategy that allows you to convert leads into paying clients.
And that nurturing part of it first involves making a determination about how ‘warm’ the lead is – how likely is it their going to make a move in the real estate relatively soon, or does it seems that they are just putting out feelers right now and likely won’t buy or sell until well down the road in the future. But remember that anyone who gives you their personal information has some interest in your real estate business and wants to learn more. This understand is key to real estate lead generation.
Better Real Estate Lead Generation Strategies
Articles for real estate agents usually focus on effective property marketing, and that’s fine. But before you get to that and the house is listed on the market you’ve got to secure the client. The importance of lead generation is clear as it helps you collect your prospects’ personal contact information to help them enter the sales funnel and ideally they eventually become clients who buy or sell a home through you.
Information can be collected in several ways – through a form on your website or click funnel, email, phone calls, and even in person. The success of innovative lead generation strategies is always going to depend on several factors, and the amount of your time and your budget you’re able to put into them is going to be right at the core of that. So no matter what you have to put into them here is where you need to be putting maximum focus with your strategies.
- Be Active Across Social Media
Real estate agents who understand the need to promote themselves for better lead generation can and should look to social media marketing right away. Certain platform are a great place to connect with other professionals and stay on top of local real estate market trends while making yourself very visible to new prospective clients at the same time. You can join communities or groups to network with others in the real estate industry or use social media advertising to establish connections with potential home buyers or sellers.
It’s recommended that you get started with social media ads if you want to generate real estate leads without spending too much of your budget. Facebook and Instagram ads qualify as being cost-effective, and of course on the other end social media is good for property sales optimization too. But as it relates to real estate leads you can measure everything from impressions to conversions, and another plus for social media ads is you’re able to target individuals based on specific demographics to promote greater numbers of clicks to your website or create lead gen ads where users have the option of submitting their contact information from social media.
When they do, you’ve got a new lead just like that.
- Create Email Marketing Campaigns
Lead generation strategies work well to help you collect personal information like emails, but you may miss out on potentially valuable customers if leads are not well nurtured. Once you have emails and other personal contact information, it is time to start nurturing leads and building relationships so those leads are more likely to converted into clients.
Emails sent must contain useful information and link to blogs and other pages on your website where visitors can learn more. For leads that are warmer you can segment them and send these people and have them receive more pertinent information. This can be with questions that are as direct as ‘how soon do you want to buy or sell a home?’
You should have them seeing multiple choice options with their chosen replies, and this helps you categorize your leads. Here you should be using some type of CRM (customer relationship management) platform with automation to segment leads and have personalized emails with the right information sent at the right time. This type of timeliness is a big part of effective real estate lead generation.
In instances where a prospective buyer isn’t ready to make a purchase they can be sent blog posts about the process of buying a home. Or if someone indicates they are likely to sell a home within the next three months they can be sent sales emails to persuade them that you are the best choice as their agent.
- Develop a Brand
A realtor should always be focused on building a brand for themselves, and this is a big part of having leads coming in to you too. An agent is their own brand, and being visible with a professional website with service pages and information about your process and what clients can expect is the most integral part of having your brand established. You want prospective clients to have a place where they can learn more about you, your services, and then with other information like how much weight you’ve put on over the last year.
It is true that many realtors do well with referrals in real estate and word of mouth, but it is still important to give prospects a place to learn more about you. A good real estate website design will include service pages and testimonials to build trust, and it should also feature content that caters to any specialties you have in your service. For example, this could be for vacation homes if you are working as a realtor in an area where the local population surges during the summer months.
- Form Local Connections
When a real estate agent networks well there is going to be a greater likelihood of getting leads based on people you’ve met and who have a favorable opinion of you. You can start with individuals you know in the community and attend local events like open houses to meet new people and find qualified leads. Many real estate professionals rely on referrals, and so when you meet a new person for the first time you should always give them your business card in the even they know someone looking to sell or buy a home.
- Build Strategic Partnerships
Building partnerships with companies is always going to be included in real estate success tips too. Your aim should be building them in your same niche but trying to have them not be in direct competition with you so that you can help you grow your business. We’ve seen how a lot of real estate agents build relationships with mortgage lenders, bankers, and insurance companies to get more referrals.
All partnerships must be mutually beneficial if they’re going to work. If a realtor partners with a mortgage company then the lender will send the realtor’s contact information to prospective buyers. Conversely the realtor then promotes the lender to the buyers they know and anyone else who they’ve worked with in the past.
- Traditional Advertising
Traditional marketing will never qualify among innovative lead generation strategies but it is still effective. Particularly if it can be paired with a digital strategy. Advertising on billboards, benches, and buses or in local newspapers and publications continues to be a way for realtors to get new clients and it will always be that way.
What is best is to utilize traditional marketing efforts at the same time as you are enhancing your digital marketing by sending prospects directly to your website to convert to leads. An example here might be advertising in a local magazine but adding a QR code to your graphic. Once redirected these prospective clients see a form they can fill out and if they do then they have entered your sales funnel.
- Build Credibility with PR
Realtors are always going to be integral in the home buying or selling process, so customers will want to be assured that you’re someone who will put their best interests first. You can build credibility and trust with prospects before they become leads by investing in local public relations (PR) and becoming a thought leader in your industry.
Those who reach out to local publications to let them know you’re available to help with any articles about real estate in the future can become ‘thought leaders’. You may also want to be searching for local online publications where a guest post written on the subject of real estate investing written by you would be something they’d like to publish.
Remember as well that lead generation doesn’t end with collecting someone’s personal information. We need to stress that lead nurturing is the next step to ensuring your leads convert into paying customers. CRM software really is best for this, and there are several popular ones you can buy and then utilize for better automation, audience targeting, and segmentation to develop relationships and build trust with buyers and sellers. Buying one will be a solid investment in your real estate lead generation efforts, and you’ll quickly see that.
FAQs
- What is an average number of leads a real estate agent will find each month?
This is entirely dependent on what real estate leads generation methods the realtor is using. If they are only relying on traditional advertising and not using more innovative lead generation strategies then they may only receive a handful of new leads during that time. If they are using paid real estate leads and working to drum up real estate leads online they may be receiving up to as many as 100 real estate leads if they are paying for them.
- What can agents do to ensure their leads are exclusive to them and not available to other realtors in the same way?
With traditional advertising or referrals for real estate leads this is simply not possible, but with paid real estate leads most providers will only provide leads to one realtor. This is a part of why they will be willing to pay for real estate leads, because of the fact they have an exclusive inside track on being in touch with that prospective client. You can always expect that with the best real estate lead company in Canada.
- Are real estate leads known to be more reliably converted into clients in certain parts the country?
Yes, real estate agents working in major metro regions of Canada have real estate leads more frequently converted into clientele simply because of the nature of the real estate markets here and the fact that hotter markets see interested buyers and sellers proceeding to either buy or sell homes more often because of these being ‘hotter’ markets. That said, there are smaller cities in Canada with respectable ratios for lead-to-client conversions.
- Do any paid real estate lead services provide guarantees for at least some percentage of leads provided being ‘warm’ leads?
No, there is never any guarantee of any lead being a warm lead. Although with Real Estate Leads all leads are qualified to the extent that the realtor can know the individual is genuinely interested in selling their home or buying one. The leads you receive may be warmer or cooler depending on that individual and as the agent you will be nurturing your leads accordingly once you’ve made that determination.
