The Fundamental Real Estate Lead Generation Strategies

Real estate agents are well aware of the importance of having a robust lead generation system. It is the bedrock of the real estate business. Everyone knows about it, yet there are many who are not entirely sure how to go about it.

Let us help you out.

Let us start with the basics.

What Are Real Estate Leads?

In simple terms, a real estate lead is a potential client, a homeowner, or a seller who has agreed to hire your services. These are the clients you will assist in the entire process of buying or selling their homes.

Why Should Real Estate Lead Generation Be Your Priority?

Real estate leads are what generates your revenue. In order to be a successful real estate agent, it is vital to always schedule time in your workday for leads generation. Even if you are a successful real estate agent, it does not mean you can take it for granted that you will always have quality real estate leads without you working for them.

The most successful real estate agents are always looking out for newer ways to attract quality real estate leads at all times. They keep up with the changing times and requirements of the new-age home buyers and sellers. Therefore, you must devote adequate time and resources to maintaining a steady supply of quality real estate leads.

Have The Real Estate Lead Generation Strategies Changed in 2021?

The short answer to this is yes! Like everything else that was affected and changed by the pandemic, the real estate world has also undergone massive changes. These changes have also taken place when it comes to the strategies you apply for generation quality real estate leads.

Though the one good aspect of the real estate business has been the fact that it was relatively less impacted by the pandemic. People are always going to need homes. They are always going to be relocating and in the need of selling and buying homes.

Real estate agents have been in huge demand all through the latter half of 2020 and the demand is only going to surge in 2021. So, it is time to re-evaluate your lead generation strategy.

The Key Real Estate Lead Generation Strategies To Follow:

To make it easy for our readers to pick and adopt the real estate lead generation strategy that is missing from their plan of action, we have divided the selection of leads into a few distinct categories.

1. The Traditional Approach
2. The Virtual Approach
3. The New-Age Approach

The Traditional Approach To Real Estate Lead Generation

In this section, we shall cover the time-tested ways of real estate lead generation. These methods have always given results and are the foundation for any real estate agent's success. Incorporating a little bit of a new approach to these old methods will fetch you the desired results in terms of real estate leads.

Cold Calling

The oldest and the most often ignored way of lead generation is the cold call. Often considered to be the least effective method as most prospective clients may find it very intrusive, we would still advise this as a reliable method of lead generation.

In the current times, the appeal of the cold call has increased. The pandemic has meant that a vast majority of the people are working from home. This means two things:

• 1. They do have the time to attend a cold call.
• 2. They are more than ready to welcome a slight distraction from their daily mundane routines and have a quick chat with you.

So, now is the right time to pick up the phone and give a call to your roster of possible clients. You must always follow the basic etiquette of cold calls

1. Call at an appropriate time. Afternoons and early evenings are better.
2. Have a short and informative cold call script ready.
3. Never let the first call be very long.
4. Always ask when it would be convenient to call them back for a more detailed discussion.

This is a simple way to quickly identify interested clients.

Expired Listings

Most real estate agents tend to avoid trying to deal with clients who have expired listings. Now the usual reasons for this could range from a hard-to-work-with client to major issues in the house to a variety of other reasons.

However, the current situation puts a different color on expired listings. Maybe the property was simply listed at the wrong time. Maybe they were not able to get the right advice and make the necessary changes.

As a savvy real estate agent, you are in the ideal position to help out such clients. You could offer advice to fix the issues the listings originally had and suggest changes that would ensure the property gets sold.

Build Your Business Network

To be a success in the real estate business you need to widen your social and professional network. It is vital to build and nurture these professional relationships to generate quality real estate leads. Get to know all the small local business owners. Strike up a working friendship with them.

The real estate business is a vast ecosystem. You can get quality referrals for new leads from a host of these small business owners, such as local construction companies, gardening service providers, house staging experts, and more.

These connections would increase your chances of getting to know prospective clients first. You can approach them and make your pitch before any other real estate agent in your neighborhood.

Arrange Open Houses

Open houses are one of the best marketing tools available to a real estate agent. This can serve as an important resource when it comes to real estate lead generation. In neighborhoods that are opening up for business and things are going back to normalcy, hosting an open house event is a good way to attract new clients.

You would get to meet a lot of people and get their contact details. As marketing tactics, such type of community events is a goldmine for generating leads. However, do follow the local rules and regulations when it comes to hosting an open house under the current circumstances. Try to stagger the crowd, and, if possible, arrange for house tours on multiple days.

The Virtual Approach To Real Estate Lead Generation

Cold E-mails

A not-so-distant cousin of the cold call is the cold emails. Now unlike a cold call, you can have a slightly different approach towards cold e-mails. You could tailor-make these mails to the specific requirements of these prospective clients.

You could also have dedicated e-mails for first-time contacts, home buyers, or sellers. Or you could even choose to send a round of helpful real estate advice emails. People tend to respond to emails that they find useful so always make sure that your emails are relevant to their needs.

Virtual House Tours

One thing that the pandemic has taught us is that anything and everything can be conducted virtually. From work and school, to concerts and the Oscars, online was the way to go for all these activities and events. You could conduct online house tours that could give potential buyers a glimpse into the homes. If you are comfortable, you can even host it as a live stream session wherein you can answer queries and give more information to your audience as you move around the property conducting the house tour.

Make sure that you do a dry run test for camera and audio quality. Pick a day and time where you can have maximum attendance and bring your successful real estate agent tactics to the online house tours as well.

Leverage Your Social Media Accounts

In this day and age, no savvy real estate agent is going to ignore the social media platforms when it comes to generating real estate leads. With a massive online community on popular platforms, it makes good business sense to utilize these to bring in quality leads.

Make sure that you have a presence on all the major social media sites. Keep all your contact information and listings information updated on each website. It is a free way to generate new real estate leads.

Whether it is LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, or any other social media platform, make sure you are always interested in learning how each of these functions and how to maximize the benefits from them.

The marketing potential is tremendous on these platforms but you must modify your marketing strategy to suit each website. For instance, Instagram is all about using the right mix of Hashtags and great quality photographs; whereas, Facebook is all about the connections you have built and the pages you are running.

Maintain A Real Estate Business Blog/Website

One of the key marketing resources for generating leads is to have a professional and informative real estate industry-oriented blog or website. The internet has become omnipresent in our lives. Our first approach to anything is to run a quick online check on it.

So, having a blog or website will be extremely helpful in finding new leads. Even if someone has visited your page for information, they are going to keep you in mind when they are in the need of a real estate agent. This is a simple and low-cost method of real estate marketing tactics. Do make sure to always update your page with relevant and timely information and advice. You can give shout-outs to other local business houses and thereby strengthen your professional circle.

The New-Age Approach To Real Estate Lead Generation

Online Real Estate Lead Generation Platforms

If you want to be a successful real estate agent you simply cannot ignore the potential of online real estate lead generation platforms. These platforms provide real estate agents with quality leads of buyers and sellers.

Take, for instance, Dorrmat a market forerunner in online real estate platforms. Dorrmat beings its years of experience in the real estate business and fuses it with the technology that is needed for success today. Dorrmat provides not only a pipeline of quality real estate leads but also provides a robust Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool. This CRM is vital to ensure that you have all the relevant lead details arranged and available for viewing in a proper manner. Dorrmat also provides a host of other benefits to the registered real estate agents on their platforms.

Run A Youtube Channel

Although this may seem a bit offbeat, there is a measurable benefit in creating a Youtube channel. It builds your brand and is an effective marketing strategy to adopt for our digital world. You could upload videos giving real estate tips, informative house tours, dos and don'ts of house buying or selling. You could even include videos showcasing the neighborhood and the local business organizations.

Give your audience a look into what they can expect to gain from living in a particular neighborhood. The best part about such videos is the fact that even the older ones can continue attracting viewers and can translate into quality potential leads.

Focus On Better SEO

For those of you who already have a website or a blog on the real estate business but are not noticing much traffic of visitors on these pages, then maybe you have to get some SEO management to help you out.

You could have the best content on your website and your blogs are full of informative articles but all of these are of no use unless the search engines pick your page and it shows up in the rank of top real estate blogs or websites.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) works on multiple levels to make your brand visible to all your local clients and helps improve your rank on popular search engines. This is a technical aspect that is best handled by experts.

It is a wise investment as it not only leads to more visitors to your site but also helps you attract more quality real estate leads for your business.

Summary

The host of changes in our lives have prompted a change in the way real estate agents approach leads generation too. We have gathered some of the tried and true strategies to boost your real estate leads. Our advice would be to apply the strategies from all the sections outlined above. Each market is unique and so are the clients, so it is always good to keep open multiple channels of leads generation in order to be a success in the real estate business.