Tired of Cold Calling? 12 Online Real Estate Lead Generation Ideas To Try

The real estate industry is a fairly complex field, and agents need to have clarity in their marketing strategies to ensure that they can capture high-quality real estate leads. Usually, many real estate agents have this misconception that they can still follow the old cold-calling and door-knocking methods to gain the attention of their prospective customers. But the reality is that these methods are no longer effective in helping them to build a strong client database. This makes realtors wonder how to be successful in this industry. There is a real and growing need to use techniques that are powerful, efficient, and at the same time immediately actionable.

In this article, we have asked our team of experts to offer some of the best onlinereal estate lead generation ideas that will eliminate the need for cold calling. Agents can gain high-quality real estate leads without the necessity to rely on older techniques.

1. Approach The FSBO Listings

The FSBOs, which are the "For Sale For Owner" listings, have become common over the last few years. Usually, real estate agents vary in approaching these listings because the homeowners take the full responsibility to sell the houses on their own and do not wish to engage the services of a realtor. But such properties, in most cases, fail to get potential buyers because the homeowners are unaware or are unable to follow the proper procedures for listing and selling a home.

Many are even unsure about all the paperwork and marketing needed for the selling process. For selling homes, one should stage it, update the real estate listing portals, arrange home tours, reach out to buyers and negotiate the price. Due to these challenges, the houses are often not sold for more than 6 to 8 months. As a real estate agent, you can use this as an opportunity to generate leads. Plan and approach these homeowners and persuade them to see the benefits of working with a realtor. It is an effective lead generation process that does not involve cold calling.

2. Set-up And Run Direct Mail Campaigns

Have you experienced the power of direct mailing campaigns? If not, this is the right time to do so. You can design effective mails by adding engaging content, images, and links. Direct mailing is beneficial for real estate experts because you can always be on the top of the mind of your prospective clients. Many online service providers let you design and schedule these emails in advance. Through direct mailing campaigns, realtors can capture the attention and generate leads to expand their business prospects.

3. Implement A Lead Generation Strategy

For a real estate business, it is essential to ensure that you keep getting qualified sellers and buyers. This can be done by implementing a lead generation strategy. Realtors, at times, solely rely on their brokerages to provide them with leads. However, in the long run, this may not be fruitful. The strategy should include different ways your business can get in touch with the home buyers, sellers, motivated sellers, expired listings, and various other leads. To ensure that the strategy is effective, involve experienced real estate professionals. They have a strong client base and have extensive experience in dealing with a wide range of prospects. Realtors could also try and emulate the strategies employed by other agents.

4. Attract Online Leads Through Your Real Estate Website

A website is an internal component for generating leads. All businesses have their websites as their key point to find leads. So, create an effective real estate website. With this website, you will be able to increase your online presence and get in direct contact with your prospective clients. Many realtors and real estate businesses have high-profile websites to capture the attention of their audience. The website has a lot to offer. All you need to do is to ensure that it has the following components.

Display Your Qualifications And Services

How do you gain the trust of your clients? You need to show that you are a qualified expert in your city. You can display your qualifications, certifications on your website so that visitors can go through them. It also helps in explaining your extensive experience in the real estate world.

Showcase The Past Records In The Form OF Testimonials

Testimonials of your past clients help in building trust in your services. It shows that you have happy customers, and you have followed all the parameters while helping them get sellers and home buyers.

Create Landing Page

You can build a specific landing page on your website for converting your prospective clients onto customers. These pages can contain content based on discounts, webinars, coupon codes, newsletters, and various other aspects. Through these landing pages, you can encourage your visitors to subscribe to the business and receive the benefits offered to them. In return, the visitors have to provide their contact information — phone number and email id. A realtor can use the visitor data to generate real estate leads.

Start A Real Estate Blog

Content marketing plays a significant role in capturing real estate leads. You can start a real estate blog page on your website or post blogs on a blogging website. Through a regular blog post, you can share crucial information related to the real estate business. The blogs would help the readers resolve their issues and keep them updated. You can even ask your readers to suggest topics that they need guidance for. In this way, you can build a community of your own.

Search Engine Optimization

Having a website is not enough — you need to ensure that you are getting proper web traffic and visibility in the search engines. So how to improve the visibility of your site? If you want your website, landing pages, and blog to be in the top Google SERP results, it is crucial that you follow these parameters. SEO includes the usage of the right keywords, URL linking, meta tags, description, meta title, and various other points. In this way, the real estate agents have opportunities to generate qualified leads.

5. Retargeting Ads Through Social Media

Apart from an online presence, realtors should maintain a social presence through social media accounts. There is a need to set up accounts on social media platforms for your business to build social proof. Through social media, you not only gain organic traffic to your website but also paid traffic. How will you get paid traffic? By retargeting ads:

Google Ads

Google ads are displayed on the top and bottom sections of the search engine result pages. You have to use the right keywords that can capture the attention of the users and direct them to your website or landing pages.

Facebook Ads

Facebook Ads help in capturing the attention of that audience that you miss out on search engines. Millions of people use these social media channels daily. So the probability of finding qualified leads through social platforms is vast. You can share textual, visual, and video ads through Facebook — these ads are not just engaging but also motivate the visitors to take action. Through these ads, you can ask people to fill up the lead forms in return for incentives. These incentives can be discounted offers coupons, e-books, or newsletters.

Apart from Facebook Ads, you can also use Twitter ads and LinkedIn ads to generate more traffic and leads for your business. Using these effective ways to capture the leads and being consistent is essential to becoming successful in this industry.

6. In-Person Networking & Re-Engaging Old Clients

In order to be successful in the real estate business, it is essential that realtors build a good network. For forming a network, you need to attend business events and join various communities. Through these events and communities, you have the chance to meet people who can help you bring referrals. You meet lawyers, financial managers, mortgage lenders, and other local business owners. You can request them for referrals in terms of sellers and home buyers and convert them into leads.

Besides in-person networking, you should also request your past clients to provide you with referrals to generate more leads. These clients are already aware of the services you provide. The referrals that you receive from them would be authentic and qualified.

Join LinkedIn Groups To WIden Your Network

Reap the benefit of the LinkedIn platform to generate seller leads. LinkedIn offers you to create groups of like-minded people. You can share informational posts, blogs, visuals, and videos in these groups. Many people would like to be a part of it, contribute, share their issues, and much more. You can offer to resolve their issues and get in touch with them. It helps you gain a wider sphere of influence.

7. Partner With Local Businesses

Being a real estate agent, you can consider this as one of the most important lead generation strategies that do not require any phone calls. Local businesses include home stagers, financial advisers, cleaners, roofing contractors, and many more. They are in direct touch with the people who are ready to sell the house within a small period. You can partner with these local business owners to get authentic and qualified seller leads.

 8. Master Hosting Effective Open Houses

You might be unsure whether the open house events still work for the agents in the current situation or not. It does. Once you master the right skills to host effective open house events, you will observe that it is a great tool to find leads. Many realtors consider this as an efficient real estate lead generation strategy. When you organize open houses, you get to meet a large number of interested buyers, sellers, and visitors. Interested people will share their contact details and would like to work with you. You might feel that it is a time-consuming process, but it is quite effective in generating real estate leads.

9. Lead Generation Through The Real Estate Portals

Often realtors come across websites that offer a hassle-free way to generate seller leads. These real estate websites confirm that they can provide qualified seller leads that agents can convert into potential clients. One such website is Dorrmat — If you are looking to generate high-quality seller leads, Dorrmat is the apt choice. Realtors have the opportunity to build a steady leads pipeline of quality home sellers through this platform. The realtors have to register themselves as agents and provide their qualification details, experience, and reviews from past clients. Based on this data, it becomes easy for the platform to gather leads and provide them to you. Dorrmat acts as an efficient intermediary between real estate professionals and home sellers. It assists in developing the connection with the sellers and helps the realtors employ the right strategies to convert them into clients.

10. Consider Creating Listing Videos

If you wish to do something different from other real estate professionals, then create real estate listing videos. Video content is an effective way of lead generation as you will keep your audience engaged and informed about a wide range of real estate properties. You can use different software and tools to create the videos and upload them on various online platforms such as social media sites, Youtube, or your real estate website. It is a great way to get referral traffic to your website that you can convert into clients.

11. You Can Arrange Seminars And Educational Events Based On Buying, Selling, And Real Estate Market Condition

If you want to work closely with the local community, then it is best to arrange seminars or events. These events can educate people regarding home selling, buying, and important aspect of the real estate business. When you share your work and knowledge through these seminars, it becomes convenient to gain the trust and confidence of your target audience. They see you as an expert who can help them resolve their issues. They will wish to work with you.

12. Get Real Estate Leads Through Intensive Social Media Promotion

Social media is a numbers game, from the number of followers to how many times your posts are viewed or shared. Therefore, it has become necessary to study your competitors and design similar posts to provide your audience with relevant content. Your business will benefit from the proper focus and use of relevant hashtags, as there is a strong possibility of gaining more leads and making more money.

Summary

Cold Calling was an age-old method used by real estate agents to get in touch with their prospective clients and convert them into potential customers, but in the digital era, people no longer entertain cold calling or door knocking methods. Therefore, it is better for the real estate agents to focus on the lead gen strategies that help them get the attention of your target audience and convert them into potential clients. Whichever technique you use for getting new leads, the crucial aspect is to stay consistent with a set of strategies.