Ten Actionable Steps For Real Estate Lead Generation Online

Gone are the days when real estate agents would pick up the phone and start cold calling people in hopes of finding prospective clients. What if we tell you that there are ways to generate real estate leads [that require no cold call or door knock routines and that there are ways that you can find interested buyers and sellers without meeting them in person first?] In the real estate business, it is important that you have a proper strategy for each vital component of your business.

Lead generation is a crucial part of your real estate business. This is what brings in new potential clients, and thus you need to have a proper strategy in place to ensure that you are drawing in the maximum number of clients. Now, there are many ways in which you can frame your lead generation strategy. However, make sure that the majority of the strategies have an online component.

The real estate business is always changing and evolving, but the last year brought in the maximum number of changes. So, in the past, it might have been acceptable to focus entirely on offline real estate lead generation strategies. Today, that is not possible. All real estate agents must ensure that they are not missing out on any potential buyer or seller because they failed to capitalize on the online real estate lead generation strategies.

Steps For Gaining Real Estate Leads Online

1. Start A Real Estate Website

The very first thing that real estate agents will need to do is to set up their own real estate website. Anyone who is looking to find a real estate agent is going to run a search online. This is true, especially for millennials who are going to be one of the largest segments of home buyers and sellers. In order to not miss out on these potential clients, you must have a professional and informative real estate agent website.

A website will help you funnel all of the new leads into one place and manage them better. You can use it in all of your real estate marketing and promotional material. All you need to do to convert your site visitors into potential clients is to make sure you have a well-designed landing page. This will help you gather the contact information and other relevant details of the visitors.

2. Utilize Social Media

Social media has become the next big arena for all businesses, and it is no different for the real estate industry either. Everyone has multiple social media accounts that they use for various purposes, which includes real estate as well. If you have a proper strategy in place, then you can benefit from the vast pool of target audiences that you find on these platforms.

All you need to do is create business accounts and plan out a set of social media posts and ads. There are software and online services which offer the capability to schedule all of these posts in one place and then on the scheduled date, they get posted on all of your accounts.

You can also run platform-specific ad campaigns, as these tend to get you more positive results.

A. Facebook Ads And Facebook Messenger Ads

The first in line is Facebook. Both the original platform and its messenger service offer highly customizable and feature-rich options for running targeted ads for your services. Clearly write an ad copy specifying your area of expertise and then use the tools that Facebook provides to select your target audience on the basis of location, age group, income bracket, marital status, and more. This ensures that your ads are seen by the right group of people.

B. Get Leads From Instagram

Instagram is also a great source for real estate lead generation. This social media platform is designed to be more visually inspiring. So on this, you need to post high-resolution photos of your listings to attract potential buyers and sellers.

You can even go live and carry out a Q&A session on real estate topics. This will help you gather more followers and increase the reach of your posts and stories.

C. Find New Leads On LinkedIn

Buyer and seller leads can also be found through LinkedIn. Although it is a platform for more career-oriented connections and interactions, still by highlighting your business and listing your accomplishments, real estate professionals stand to gain a lot from it. Leads in this case mostly come through referrals and direct connections, so the wider your sphere of influence is, the better chance you have of getting these leads.

3. Online Seller Leads Aggregating Platform

One of the best ways of generating leads online is by registering on a lead generation platform. These platforms benefit both homeowners and real estate agents alike. These provide a common ground for both real estate agents and individuals looking to buy or sell their properties.

A platform like Dorrmat, a leading seller leads generating platform, offers its registered agents a continuous supply of quality seller leads. Dorrmat also provides a host of other features that can help boost the business of new real estate agents. They offer a functionally rich CRM, a professional and customizable landing page, a lead capture link, and many more top-notch features.

4. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

All of us use Google on a daily basis, and it is our instinct to click on one of the first few results. It very rarely happens that we go beyond the first page of the search results. Now, if you have a real estate website, then you must make sure that your website features as one of the initial results on search engines. This will get you more business as your website will be at the top of the search rankings.

For this, you need search engine optimization services. They will help find the ideal keywords and phrases and use them in your website content. They will constantly monitor the performance of your website on various parameters, such as the number of unique visitors, bounce rate, most clicked links, and more. Furthermore, they will ensure that your website tops the search rankings and maintains its top position.

You can also work with your SEO service provider and work to specifically target local searches for real estate agents. This will help you reach more local clients and gain more business.

5. Virtual/Video Open Houses

An open house has always been a great medium for lead generation. However, like the old-fashioned cold calling, a traditional open house can be turned into a virtual one. You can take your open houses online with a little planning and preparation. Such virtual open houses can help you reach more people and find more leads.

Hire a good videographer and start the home tour. Start from the entrance and explain everything in detail the way you would to a client in an actual open house. Let the camera switch from showing you to showing the amenities that you are describing. Most millennials and the Gen Z population admitted that they preferred watching a video of a home as it gave them a better idea about the home's features than reading a description.

6. Real Estate Business Blogs

An excellent way for lead generation and to boost your real estate website's rankings is to have your informative blog section. This helps agents build a personal connection with their website visitors. Now, in order for your blogs to become popular and fetch you the leads, you need to make sure that all of the blog posts are informative and help the readers understand something new about the real estate market. Topics could be regarding home improvement, market analysis, and the ideal time for new listings.

For example, in your blog posts, you could discuss the reasons why homes end up with expired listings. What are the factors that affect a home's sale? Discuss a few factors and how to improve them. Such blogs would generate more reach and homeowners who have listings that are not being sold may approach you. The key for successful blogging is to always offer something beneficial to the readers.

7. Digital Marketing To Generate Leads

A great way to generate leads online is through utilizing digital marketing. Many real estate agents are at times confused between SEO activities and digital marketing activities. The former focuses on improving your website's rankings on the search engines. The latter focuses on marketing your business on various channels.

It offers better brand visibility, boosts awareness about your brand, and helps position your business as unique and distinct from those of your competitors. As in this your target market is studied and analyzed in-depth, all the solutions and strategies are customized for your brand. They will run campaigns on social media sites and various online channels to make your real estate brand visible to a large segment of the population. Thus, you will be able to widen your reach in the local real estate market and get leads from serious and motivated homeowners.

8. Online Reviews And Referrals

When it comes to generating leads, the best method that has remained steadily viable all these years is through referrals and recommendations. The key to this is to start building your sphere of influence from the initial days as agents. All of your fellow real estate professionals, homeowners of past successful deals, and everyone else in your social circle will provide you with a useful referral.

Now, in the online sphere, nobody believes the anonymous reviews. Therefore, when you have real people giving you positive reviews, it is far more beneficial. Similarly, when you have closed a deal, send in a referral request through e-mail. Ask satisfied customers if they know anyone who is considering buying or selling a property, and share their contact details with you.

9. Customer Relationship Management Tool

One way to find new clients is through mining your contact lists. All you need is a robust CRM tool. This software helps you segregate your contacts and all of their related information in a systemized manner. This is an excellent tool to keep in touch with all of your clients and ensure that when they are ready to move ahead with the transaction, you are the agent who is in touch with them.

When people are trying to sell their homes, they are bound to meet multiple agents. Most of the time leads are lost when you are not frequent enough in reaching out to your potential leads. With the help of a CRM, you can ensure that you are always in touch with all your leads at different stages as it offers you an excellent system to automate and send out messages to all of your leads in one go.

10. Generating Real Estate Leads Through Retargeting

We have already covered the benefits of utilizing social media marketing and digital marketing, but one more way to gain quality leads is through retargeting. It is a part of Facebook advertising, but you need to incorporate it separately.

In this, any of Facebook's users who have shown an interest in your brand, through liking/sharing your posts, signing up for a newsletter, or have clicked and watched your adverts, will then be shown your brand multiple times.

This method offers you a high return on investment as your adverts are shown only to those people who have already shown an interest in your brand and probably intend to sell or buy a property. This actively improves your lead generation numbers.

Summary

The decision to become a real estate agent could be one of the most lucrative career choices you make. Yet, many agents struggle in the initial years to gain business success, as they have a hard time finding quality leads. Generating real estate leads can be a simple and straightforward process if you have a proper strategy in place for utilizing the online options to gain real estate leads. There is more to the tactics of lead generation than cold calling. By following each lead generation strategy mentioned above, you can easily boost your real estate success.