The Complete Overview Of Seller Lead Generation For Real Estate Agents

All businesses have a common need — leads. In the real estate business as well, lead generation is the most crucial part of your tasks as a real estate agent. As one of the few professional sectors that managed to withstand the trials of the past months and actually registered significant growth, many individuals are considering a shift to the real estate industry.

If you are considering getting a real estate license and embarking on a new career as a real estate agent, or maybe you are someone who is considering how to take their real estate business to the next level, this article is for you.

We shall look at real estate lead generation from all aspects and share some ideas to ramp up your lead numbers.

A. What Is Real Estate Lead Generation?

Leads in all businesses are the potential customers. Each lead has the potential to be converted into a paying customer. That is why considerable effort is expended on attracting new leads on an ongoing basis.

Lead generation is the procedure from start to end to attract and convert a prospect into a customer. As real estate agents, that would be individuals who wish to hire your services for all their property-related needs. It is a crucial aspect, irrespective of the size of the real estate business. From large brokerages to independent realtors, everyone is trying to maximize the number of leads that they can gather through the different methods.

For agents who are new to this field, it is always challenging to find buyers and sellers. However, even new real estate professionals can ensure they get an adequate number of leads to sustain their business with these key strategies.

B. Generate Inbound And Outbound Real Estate Leads

The first step in real estate seller lead generation is to ensure that you utilize both the inbound and outbound methods to generate leads. A combination of these two methods will provide you with an optimum balance between the expenses you incur to find new leads and the real estate leads that you obtain.

So, let us look into these two categories in a more detailed manner:

Inbound Leads

In simple terms, this is a form of marketing where the potential sellers approach you. They might have heard about you from their family, friends or saw your brand/service and decided to consult you. For attracting those interested in buying or selling their homes, it is necessary to create your ideal customer profiles.

Customer profiles are the type of real estate clients that you wish to work for in your business. Think about the various demographic parameters — family type, income level, home types, and more. Once you have figured this aspect, then the next step is to position your real estate brand to attract them.

To attract these potential customers, design the brand, content, social media marketing campaigns, and other key aspects to align with their needs. You would see a higher volume of prospects coming to you through all the lead generation systems.

Outbound Leads

Outbound marketing is the exact opposite of the above. In this, you reach the potential real estate seller. The real estate business does rely on a fair few outbound marketing techniques to get new leads. All advertising campaigns that you undertake, any cold calling or door knocking, would come under this.

This method is both necessary and effective. It is necessary because of the sheer competition that exists in the real estate business. You need to stand out from your competition and convince the prospects that you would be a good fit for them. All of your peers are doing it, and therefore, you need to do it too.

Similarly, it is also highly effective because most potential home sellers interview and approach many agents after coming across any marketing material. They tend to hold on and remember such agents for a longer duration, even if they are not ready to proceed and sell their homes. As a real estate agent, it works to your advantage as you can start nurturing future leads early.

C. How To Find Seller Leads?

Now that we have discussed in-depth the two key real estate marketing methods, which you need to incorporate in your lead generation strategies, let us now gain some awareness about those specific methods to generate new leads for your business.

1. Register With Online Lead Generation Companies

Many real estate agents utilize online seller leads generation platforms to ensure that they have a constant supply of leads. A market leader in this space is Dorrmat. This Arizona-based online real estateseller leads providing platform has grown exponentially in this last year.

The reason for this growth of Dorrmat lies in the way it has been built. It utilizes the best of real estate technology and tools to position its agents as expert consultants for home sellers. Due to this, the platform is able to offer its agents quality leads home seller leads. For realtors based in Arizona, Dorrmat is the prime choice as it provides them seller leads from all of the major cities in the state. The housing markets in Phoenix, Tempe, Yuma, Tucson, Scottsdale, and others are growing at a fast rate.

An added benefit for many new real estate agents is the comprehensive set of features that Dorrmat provides. Some of the most popular features provided by Dorrmat are a strong CRM with backend support, a direct lead capture link, the facility of adding vendors, and a professional landing page. Dorrmat is more than a seller leads acquisition platform. It is a comprehensive lead generation system.

2. Build A Lead Generation System

Many real estate agents fail to understand that the need to generate leads is an ongoing process. Therefore, there needs to be a system in place to ensure that your lead generation efforts do not stop. There are two core components of it that you need to establish first. These two components will ensure that there is both inbound and outbound traffic, which can help you find potential clients.

A. Real Estate Website

Your brokerage would give you a page on their company site. However, it is always a good idea to have your independent real estate website. This website would be the core of all your real estate marketing efforts. Focus on creating clean and informative landing pages. These should help your website visitors to easily navigate and find relevant information on the site.

Advertise all your active listings with high resolutions photographs and all of the details so that you can attract more buyer leads and impress potential sellers too. Do try to include an informative blog section. These blog pages help you establish yourself as a real estate expert to your site visitors.

B. Social Media Platforms

One remarkable trend emerging last year and growing this year is the importance of all social media platforms for lead generation. Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and other social media websites and apps have become the new source of real estate leads.

It is necessary to be active on these platforms and cross-link your website landing pages, links to your blog articles, and more. You can boost traffic to your profile and website by putting up real estate market-related useful content. This could be in the form of videos, stories, posts, or photographs. It would depend on the social media channel.

3. Run Google Ads

Marketing plays a crucial role in real estate lead generation. If you have the budget for it, then you should consider running Google ads. These ads will help you attract leads in your area. Most homeowners would be running a search on Google for their real estate needs. When they do that, Google will present your ads to them.

Similar to Google ads, you can also try opting for Facebook ads. These ads would help you reach the potential target customers in your zip code who may be looking to sell their homes. In both Google and Facebook ads, you can customize your ads across demographic parameters so that it gets shown to only those who would find them relevant and useful.

4. Invest In Lead Generation Tools

An essential aspect of lead generation is lead nurturing, and for this, you require a few integral software services. A core lead management software that you would need is a CRM.

Customer Relationship Management Software

One of the most important softwares that you would require for your real estate business is a tool to manage customer relationships (CRM). This CRM helps you manage all your customers from a single point. All you need to do is input the contact information and other key details. Then you can easily send reminders, track your lead conversion efficiency levels, and more. It helps you categorize and manage all of your real estate clients in an efficient manner.

Apart from this, you would also require tools and services, such as DocuSign, a drip marketing system, a tool for updating all of your social media profiles, and lead management software and tools.

5. Arrange Open Houses

Open houses can also be an excellent way to generate leads. Such events are attended by a huge number of people. Make sure that you let everyone in the neighborhood know that you are hosting open houses. These attendees can be your future leads.

Have a process in place to gather their contact information and add it to your CRM and once the open houses are concluded, make it a point to approach the potential buyers and sellers at the earliest convenience. Try to host at least one open house per month. It would enable you to become a more known face in your local community. Every lead that you get from such events is a strong possibility of becoming your customer in the future.

6. Plan To Approach Expired Listings And For Sale By Owner (FSBO) Listings

A potential way to generate leads is by targeting those who are already motivated sellers but are facing difficulties in being able to sell their homes. There are two distinct categories with this.

The first are those homeowners who have expired listings. These are homes that were put up for sale, but due to certain issues remaining unsold, the listings expired. Home sellers with expired listings would be looking for a new agent to work with and sell their homes.

Similar to the above group are those who have decided to sell their home on their own. These are called FSBO listings. Contact these FSBO sellers and offer your help. It is good to wait for some time and inquire whether their home has been sold. The chances are high that these listings also expired as it is difficult to sell FSBO homes. So now, these customers may be more willing to work with real estate agents.

7. Expand Your Network

Have an automated system to contact people in your local community. It could be in the form of a text message or direct mail service. The secret to generating leads is visibility. The more people who know you or remember your services, the greater your lead generation numbers. You stand to gain a lot of leads through referrals if you build strong ties in your community.

A strategy that you could follow is to form professional connections with other businesses in your local area. Meet all of them monthly, and share free real estate information or resources. This would help you become a valuable addition to the community and establish you as an expert agent. You could also offer to sponsor local community events. This would let you showcase your brand and advertise your services but in a more subtle manner.

Summary

Everyone keeps searching for thebest real estate lead generationmethods. Real estate professionals are constantly trying to fine-tune their methods for generating seller leads. However, sometimes even experienced agents may need to go back to the drawing board and evaluate their strategies. They need to do this to take advantage of the market conditions prevalent. By refocusing on the basics and ensuring that you are covering all the required modes to gather leads, you can ensure that you always have a constant pipeline of exclusive leads.