Generating leads is one of the biggest challenges for real estate agents in a constantly evolving real estate industry. Real estate agents have to constantly come up with new ideas to generate and close leads because, in the process of doing business, it only takes a certain period to realize that the marketing strategy that brought in quality leads a few months ago, no longer works. Thereby, making it necessary that real estate agents review their ideas, improve on them and generate new ones to meet their leads generation goals.
To save you some valuable time researching and thinking of the best ways to go about generating leads, we’ve come with 11 underrated real estate leads generation ideas.
1. Make Outbound Phone Calls
The first question that crosses your mind now would be, to whom? Thing is, you never know the power of what you already have until you start looking. Nobody other than your existing contacts - those people you actually know. From research, it is estimated annually that one-third of the public require services related to real estate - renovations, repairs, painting, refinancing, selling, or buying - and professional and trusted realtors are always hands-on to work with them through the process.
It costs you no extra effort, just reach out to those contacts of yours, they probably trust you already enough to tell you their needs or refer people who might need your service your way.
2. Connect With Locals and Local Businesses that can Lead to Referrals
One of the very many things experience in the real estate business will teach you is that referrals are the best source of leads. Often, referred leads are ready to acquire your services or perhaps deciding, so these kinds of leads are easy to convert. However, there is a lot of work to be done.
To acquire referred leads, you’ll have to partner with locals, important personalities in your farm area, everyday local businesses like barbers shops, grocery stores, mechanics, and the likes. The point is to partner with every and any business you can partner with, share your fliers, and work out ways to help your businesses.
To better increase your chances at this method, you can refer to platforms such as Reach150, where you can gather recommendations from happy clients, promote yourself on social networks and stay top of mind with re-targeted advertising on today's most popular websites.
3. Fire-Up Your Response Rate With Facebook Messenger Ads
Instead of channeling all your ads on Facebook and Instagram like tons of real estate agents, channel your advertising on Facebook Messenger. The trick is, whoever sees your ads on the messenger app and has a budding interest in your offerings will be quick to leave you a message because it takes just about a click or two to do that - I mean, you’re already on messenger, so why shouldn’t they just message you.
Statistics show that sending ads to Messenger can get you open rates that are 242% higher than email, and offer much higher response rates than traditional Facebook ads.
4. Hop on Divorce Leads
The real estate industry is already fierce, therefore niching down and thinking outside the box is a welcomed idea. So, to close more leads, you can lean towards leads that have courts order to sell. With the right attitude, patience, and empathy, divorce leads can be a great source of lead generation for your real estate business.
5. Host First-Time-Buyers Webinars
While many will argue that the covid-19 pandemic has changed the way we interact and do business, the solution to this has been introduced even before the advent of the novel disease, the INTERNET!
And even though there are tons of resources available on the webspace that addresses questions that first-time buyers may have with regards to their concerns, hosting a webinar where you can meet and connect with thousands of first time home buyers, educating and addressing some of the most unanswered questions in the industry will generate you genuine leads.
Think of this as a question and answer session with your prospective clients by providing value. That way, you’re telling a large poll of prospects that you know your job and you’re good at it.
6. Buy from Lead Generation Companies
If you’ve been in the real estate business for a while, you will understand that time is of the essence. As a real estate agent, you should know that the process of acquiring, nurturing, and converting leads takes time. Therefore, to save some valuable time, you can simply leverage existing real estate leads generation firms that can guarantee you specific leads according to what you require.
Through SmartZip’s smart targeting feature, the AI-backed system can help target leads from a particular area you’re looking to farm. With SmartTargeting, your "farm" isn't just a ZIP code. It's a narrowed list of the homeowners most likely to sell.
7. Use Predictive Analytics to Farm Local Areas and Acquire Leads
Rather than firing blanks, marketing your brand to an entire community, you can just focus your marketing campaign on prospective property owners with the likelihood that you’re the first real estate agent they’ll talk to - that’s smart farming.
Predictive analytic systems such as Offrs uses data from their proprietary algorithm and over 250+ data points to derive leads from the biggest social media platform, Facebook and Google ads to determine which property owners in your targeted geographic area are most likely to sell this year. Offrs works best for real estate agents who are looking to dominate a particular area in the long term.
8. Use Automated Text-Messaging
Compared to emails, text messages have been reported to have a whopping 97% open rate compared to emails 20%. However, the only downside to this is that texting your prospective leads individually takes a large chunk of the valuable time you could be spending on cold callings.
Therefore, you can make use of automated texting platforms where you can automate your text message marketing, and use your time for other lucrative actions.
9. Pitch Expired or Older Listings
Instead of reaching out to newly expired listings like the majority of your competitors, smart real estate agents will be after listings that have long expired, say a year ago, and never relisted. There must be a reason why they thought of listing in the first place, and that’s most likely because they wanted to sell, they just couldn’t for several reasons.
So, your job is to reach out to them and enquire about their plans, perhaps a change in plans, and how you can help them meet their set objectives. If their plan informs them that they might be selling in the future, your job is to help them strategize and get them ready before the time.
10. The Coffee Shop Consultant Trick
Since you would be using the coffee shop a lot of time, why not advertise your services there for free. You can borrow the idea of Justin Potier of Carrington Real Estate Services, who set up agents to work at a coffee shop with a sign saying, “Free real estate advice.”
That’s a good use of space and time if you ask me!
11. Invest in a Professional Website, Engage on Social Media, Learn SEO, and Build Quality Backlinks
Perhaps, one of the smartest ways to go about leads generation these days is to rank on Google search engine. Put your business out there, go all in and get your business in the face of your farm area. Learn how SEO works for real estate websites, and get quality articles that inform and convert.
Update your website followership with great values through newsletters and blog posts. Engage on social media platforms, groups, and discussions. Put your business out there and watch a stream of leads flow to you like running waters.
Conclusion
Without a doubt, generating leads irrespective of your level of experience is a daunting task, and can take forever without the proper strategy. If followed with interest, these recommended ideas can be your deal-breaker.
