What Is Seller Lead Generation In Real Estate? And Why Agents Need It.

Many new real estate agents gearing up for a new career are still a little unsure of how to start their real estate business and ensure that they are doing their best to generate leads to sustain their independent business through the challenging first year in this industry.

A real estate school education does introduce agents to the core aspects of this business, but once they step into the real world, the amount of advice and the list of dos and don'ts seem too overwhelming for them. What if there was a way to simplify all of this crucial information and make it easy to pick those strategies that work?

That is what we have done. To help you grow your business, we have picked the brains of our real estate experts and have put together the key elements you require. We will take you through all the necessary components so that you can make the best career choices for yourself.

Why Real Estate Agents Must Create A Lead Generation Channel

The primary step is to build a lead generation channel. There are a few key points to be aware of when it comes to real estate lead generation.

Understanding Lead Prospection And Attraction

There are two fundamental ways in which seller leads can be obtained. The first is by prospecting for leads. This requires cold calling and door knocking. In essence, you are approaching as many people as you can to find a few leads. It would be a sheer numbers game. The other method is to get the leads to approach you and show a willingness to work with you. It is termed a lead attraction. Both these methods are necessary when it comes to obtaining buyer leads or seller leads.

Importance Of Inbound And Outbound Real Estate Lead Generation

There are two main ways to generate leads. Our experts would advise opting for a mix of both to ensure that you are gaining the maximum benefit:

A. Inbound Leads

The first is your inbound leads. These are potential clients who approach you after having come across your marketing efforts or through any other modes. These are fairly easy to convert because they are already searching for a real estate agent to help them with selling their home. A good mix of lead generation ideas that highlights your experience and success rates would be enough to attract most of these seller leads. Most of the online leads generation methods come under this category.

B. Outbound Leads

These are the leads that you find by approaching them. Traditional advertising, digital marketing, and the old school making phone calls and door-knocking come under this category. The issue here is the sheer volume of people you need to approach to get a single lead and the effort it takes.

Although the preference for outbound leads seems to be on the decline, the truth is far from it. The reason being decisions to buy or sell do not happen overnight. The leads in real estate require nurturing to get to the level of customers. Therefore, we will not ask you to shut the door on outbound lead generation methods yet. However, do keep track of the effort and time versus the number of leads obtained.

Real Estate Lead Generation Strategies

1. Create A Social Media Marketing Plan

Social Media platforms have become an integral presence in all aspects of our lives, including our professional and business areas. It has gradually grown in importance to now occupy the prime position when it comes to generating leads. There are a few core aspects that you must spend time setting up. By building these, you ensure that you are gaining maximum benefit from it.

A. Run Facebook Ads

Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and other social media sites are valuable tools when it comes to gaining new followers and building connections that can help you expand your business. Facebook also offers you an opportunity to run targeted advertising to gain new customers.

On Facebook, you can create highly specific ads to reach your niche customer base. For instance, if you specialize in selling condos, then you can create an ad with the right mix of keywords, add in the targeted location zip code, adjust the demographic parameters, such as age, income levels, and other key markers, and start advertising. Facebook shows your ads to those who have already shown an interest in selling their homes. It also matches your criteria of customer profile with the audience profile.

B. Work On Widening Your Reach

Another benefit of social media channels is that they enable you to widen your personal and professional circles. Through frequent updates and interactions with your followers on various platforms, you gain to build a position of expertise in real estate.

It helps you remain on top of mind for all of your online followers and connections. These connections can lead to many leads as you are already a known face for them, and through your posts and other regular interactions, the potential clients already have a good idea about you. For most home sellers, the rapport they have with a real estate agent would be a deciding factor for signing the listing agreement.

C. Strategically Plan Your Posts

For real estate lead generation through social media, it is necessary to have a fine balance between content addition and content promotion. Buyers and sellers do not wish to be bombarded with a constant stream of marketing posts on all the channels.

Therefore, strategically divide your social media posts, stories, videos, and other content under marketing posts, posts about general real estate market updates, informative content that benefits your audience, and fun real estate tips and tricks. It will help you to keep your audience engaged with your updates.

2. Register On Dorrmat The Leading Seller Lead Generation Platform

The simplest way to ensure that your supply of real estate leads does not run dry is to opt to work with Dorrmat. Based in Arizona, Dorrmat has made huge strides in a short span in the world of seller lead generation platforms.

If your target markets are key cities in Arizona — like Phoenix, Tucson, Mesa, Tempe, and others — then Dorrmat is your ideal option to gain an uninterrupted supply of quality leads of motivated home sellers. The entire Dorrmat platform has been designed to bring together the home sellers with the best agent for them. Along with the leads, the platform also provides value addition in the form of integral features such as extensive customer support for registered agents, customer relationship management software (CRM) to segregate and efficiently manage all of your leads, direct lead capture, and more.

So with home seller leads additional integral features, and superior technology, Dorrmat is fast-growing as the prime choice of real estate agents wanting a steady source of leads looking to sell their home.

3. Plan Your Open Houses Strategically

As real estate agents, you would often hear more experienced realtors telling you to generate leads from your open house events. It is indeed true that you can make open houses a double benefit by finding the most suitable buyer for the listing and also ensuring that you manage to find new clients.

The key point to remember is that an open house is attended by both who are looking to buy or sell their homes. Your aim should be to ensure that you gain contact with all the attendees and create a channel of communication with as many attendees as possible.

Have a proper entry system. We would advise ideally adding the information directly to your CRM. Set up a system to meet and hand over your business card and brochures to all the people at the event. Interact and impress upon them your expertise when it comes to the real estate business in your city.

And finally, for real estate lead generation from an open house event, you must ensure that you try and contact all the attendees as soon as possible. Depending upon their feedback and real estate requirements, divide them into the CRM so that you can continue to nurture all of these contacts.

4. Work The For Sale By Owner (FSBO) Listings

For new agents, as time is plenty, it makes sense to try and work those listings where the homeowners have decided to skip having an agent help them. Now, most of these homeowners struggle to obtain offers on their homes. Have a three-step strategy to convert these leads:

First Contact — From the multiple listing system, identify these home sellers and send them a simple letter introducing yourself and wishing them the best for the sale of their home.

Second Contact — Wait for a few weeks. Send another letter in the mail and ask if they have had any offers. You can also suggest a few points of home selling that they may have missed as they do not have anyone to guide them.

Third Contact — Wait for a couple of weeks and now offer your services. Ask them to meet you once and discuss the remaining aspects. By now, the fact that they have not received their expected offers would have made them more anxious to sell and more willing to work with an agent.

5. Approach Homeowners With Expired Listings

Similar to the above — but a far more simple way for lead generation — are the homes with expired listings. These are homes which for one reason or the other, did not sell, and now the listings have expired. As these are highly motivated home sellers, there is going to be a lot of competition from other real estate agents who will be approaching them.

You can still get valuable seller leads by targeting those expired listings that are older and the homes that have not been re-listed yet. Again, similar to the above system of contact, follow a few steps:

Send a short letter introducing yourself and asking if they still plan to sell their home. If you receive a positive response, then request a meeting. For the meeting, go prepared with both possible reasons about why the home remains unsold, and how you plan to tackle it and start getting them offers from buyers. In most cases, these seller leads will be happy to work with you.

6. Set Up A Referral System

A core aspect of real estate lead generation is an effective referral system. Each interaction of yours should create a ripple of leads for you. However, most agents do not realize that this is not a mere formality but requires a dedicated approach. These are the potential ways in which you can get referrals.

A. Approach Your Past Clients

It is good to have a simple script and system to ask your past clients for referrals of seller leads. Make it a simple, no-pressure system. Do remember to make it sound like they would be doing a favor for their friends and family. Aim to get at least five referrals from each client.

B. Tap Into Your Sphere Of Influence

Your family and friends are your constant source for getting a referral. It is good to have a quick, friendly message that you can send them and request referrals. You can also set up a simple incentive system for them to be more motivated to supply you with seller leads.

C. Network With Other Real Estate Professionals

An excellent source of real estate referral leads is your fellow real estate professionals. People with whom you have professional relationships, such as other realtors, bankers, lenders, and other individuals, can be a valuable way to generate leads. It would be beneficial for both of you because when you get a chance, you would be providing them with referrals of potential clients and customers.

Summary

Real estate lead generation is the cornerstone for success in this business. For a real estate agent, it is necessary to formulate a clear plan of action. It is needed to ensure that they are maximizing the available opportunities to find new leads. It would involve creating a robust system and constantly evaluating the lead generation strategies.