In this post, we will show you exactly how to generate leads in real estate, and so getting busy with appointments.
In fact:
It doesn’t matter if you’re a buyer’s agent, seller’s agent, or perhaps a dual agent. Because these are the same strategies and techniques we use to generate up to 400 leads weekly for our real estate clients.
Real estate lead generation is a continually changing industry. Just a few months ago, what generated excellent leads at a reasonable cost might no longer be effective nowadays. Consequently, a lot of agents are always searching for fresh and cutting-edge methods for generating real estate leads.
To reach your sales targets and profit goals, we’ve gathered 5 perfectly working methods to lead gen in real estate along with strategies and tips. Your phone shouldn’t stop ringing with this treasure of lead generation techniques.
Because it stands to reason that, if you’re generating consistent leads, that will result in a consistent number of appointment scheduling, which will translate into a consistent number of closed deals each month.
Let’s dive right in.
- 1. Lead Gen While You’re Sleeping
- 2. Refer a Friend with a Bonus
- 3. Facebook Lead Generation Ads
- 4. Local SEO
- 5. Automated Follow Up
1. Lead Gen While You’re Sleeping
Yes, this can actually happen with POWERFUL landing pages.
Surprisingly, landing pages are your 24/7 non-stop sales force.
An optimized landing page can even generate you leads while you are busy with other appointments.
Having a good sleep at night, an early one? Well, no problem.
Because your landing pages are doing the job.
Basically, a good looking landing page with clear content and offering can drop the hassle of covering most clients’ inquiries.
You might be thinking that your website can do all of that.
Two simple reasons why the website can’t do that:
- The website is meant to be covering all your offerings (not dedicated to a specific audience).
- Website traffic might flip from one page to another ending up with no action taken.
Whereas, with multiple landing pages you are optimizing each page to a specific audience with a clear CTA (Call-to-Action), which clearly in real estate cases it should be filling out a form.
Obviously, you need more than one landing page to reach your lead generation goals.
In fact, a study by HubSpot found that having many landing pages can get you more leads.
So, what makes a well-optimized landing page for real estate?
It all depends on your target audience details, and each landing page must be optimized for its audience.
Generally, there are many types of landing pages and they vary by the elements and CTA in each type.
For real estate lead generation landing pages you will proceed with:
Before we proceed with the anatomy of your lead gen landing page.
Just remember you are writing your audience a sales letter, forget that you are building a one-page website (landing page).
Hence, this sales message is meant to be read by individuals, and it has to be so good that would make this person more than happy to cough up their contact details.
Let’s go deep into each element of your real estate optimized landing page.
Headline: Attention-Grabbing Benefit
This is the very first section of your landing page, it’s what your landing page visitors see first.
Within our experience and research, it’s been found that most successful real estate landing pages have direct headlines.
Here is what Sundae headline looks like on one of their successful landing pages.
This is a direct headline with a clear statement for homeowners. If they send the right audience to this landing page, it will catch their attention that they want to see a clear solution to their problem.
So they continue to read the sales letter until the end.
This headline actually focuses on the time factor, as a realtor you know how much it’s important for homeowners, as selling their home can take them months or even years if they decide to do it without the help of a real estate agent.
Featured Image
This could be an image or a video. Here you are placing your best shot of one of the homes that you’re selling.
If you are a buyer’s agent then you would place an image that indicates the area you operate in, or a very good home interior image of one of the homes you checked lately for one of your clients.
Here is a good example of a very nice home interior image by The Goolsby Group
CTA #1
This is where you ask the landing page visitors if they want your services without even scrolling through it. By the way, after you analyze your page with tools such as Google Analytics; these leads that come from your CTA #1 are the most converting ones.
Although, you don’t want to drop your form fields on the landing page like the template placed earlier. We have made this template for better visualization only.
The best approach to place your form (First Name, Last Name, Email, and Phone number…etc) is by using a button that takes your visitors to the form.
This way is less disturbing because you are showing the form fields only to people who clicked the button.
Check out this landing page by Corcoran, which smartly redirects visitors to the form after clicking on the “LET’S TALK” button.
Bullet Points
Do not underestimate the power of good bullet points. People read these bullets to know exactly what they would get after working with you.
Build six to eight solid bullet points with the features and benefits they get with your real estate service. Arouse their curiosity on some points, and give them a reason to work with you on others.
Keep in mind that “FEATURES TELL, BENEFITS SELL”
The Value
In this section you will inform your audience why to choose you, and what’s going to happen next, in a transparent way.
So if someone is signing up for your form should know what to expect from you in detail, with no surprises.
To put it simply, here you answer the question “Why you?”
This could be your experience, your promise to them, and your own values that you share with each of your clients.
Last Chance CTA
This is the same button mentioned in “CTA #1” but with different wording.
It’s a smart way to remind your landing page visitors to fill out your form after all that reading.
Here you need to give them more specific powerful words related to their criteria.
So if you’re targeting buyers, you can say something like “YOUR DREAM HOME IS WAITING FOR YOU”.
Or if your audience is homeowners, you can say “YOUR HOME MIGHT BE LOSING ITS VALUE OVER TIME”.
2. Refer a Friend with a Bonus
Referrals are a SUPER consistent source of new leads.
Generally, referrals are free. But what if you go the extra mile with it and offer your successful clients a gift after buying or selling their property?
Of course, this is an indirect way to ask for referrals. You are maintaining a good relationship between you and your clients.
Believe it or not, they will remember you when they come across the subject. You will be the first name that comes to their mind when a friend mentions something like selling a house or buying one.
Your gift can be a printed/electronic voucher, a discount on brokerage fee, or anything you can afford to giveaway.
The best strategy is to give your clients value vouchers. They are flexible to use and they are easy to deliver.
Actually, you can joint venture with one of the big stores out there for these vouchers. Many stores would love to collaborate with you on this, and so you end up paying less for these vouchers.
Let’s say you helped one of your clients to sell a house, regardless of whether that person now has got paid a good amount of money. You are building a relationship here.
You can give that seller a voucher from a specialty store like; a clothing store or bookstore.
On the other side, buyers would love to get that voucher more. They have just paid a big amount of money, and they most probably have a house mortgage now.
You can give these buyers a voucher from a furniture store, so they can get something for their new home.
The return on can be so huge with this strategy, you are also building a solid viral marketing name for yourself in their family and friends’ gatherings.
3. Facebook Lead Generation Ads
The key here is to know your target audience, you already know how to build an optimized landing page for that audience, and you will end up having multiple landing pages for multiple audiences.
This takes us to action, now you want to make use of these landing pages and start generating leads.
First, there are two ad objectives that would work for real estate when generating leads on Facebook:
- Facebook Instant Forms Ad (instant form by Facebook)
- Facebook Conversions Ad (landing pages)
So what’s the difference? which one is better? And which is cheaper?
Facebook Instant Forms Ad
With instant form ads, you are redirecting this audience from the ad to a simple instant form that you create on Facebook, the process looks something like this:
The main disadvantage of this ad type is that you don’t have much space to explain to people all the details of your service, what are your values, and why they should choose you.
On the other hand, this ad objective can work very well if you use it for an exclusive property offer, in the buyer’s agent case of course.
So if you have that outstanding property that has a very good price, and you need to sell it as soon as possible. This ad is the perfect option for you.
The cost per lead, in this case, would be on how many people filled out the form you created on Facebook, and it differs based on location, and audience criteria.
Noting that this type of ad will not get you the qualified leads that you’re looking for.
Facebook Conversions Ad
Here is where you make use of your best optimized landing pages. You will drive your specific targeted audience to each landing page based on the optimization of your pages.
Basically, if you are a buyer’s agent and you created a landing page to target specific buyers then you use this page.
BONUS POINT: buyer’s agents can target millennial home buyers for modern houses and apartments listings, ages can be between 28-38.
Or if you’re a seller’s agent then you create a landing page that is dedicated to homeowners who are in pain for the sake of selling their homes.
BONUS POINT: seller’s agent can target people in a divorce settlement. Targeting leads that have a court order to sell their house, people who really need to move. They are highly motivated leads.
If you’re a dual agent then you can do both practices.
When you’re targeting a specific audience with a tailor-made landing page for them, and a related ad copy you are just speaking to this audience.
This strategy works for any audience and it will drive qualified leads. The best part here is that this will not cost you a lot, the cost per conversion for it can range between $0.80 to $3.5 per lead and that would be based on your audience location and criteria.
Just don’t forget to test your ad copy and your landing pages with A/B testing at least for 1-2 weeks.
4. Local SEO
If you’re new to the digital world, SEO is the acronym for Search Engine Optimization. Where you aim to place your website on top-rank organic search results on the search engine results page, for a specific keyword.
This is a huge subject to discuss over here, but we always recommend NOT to perform it on landing pages.
The first reason why is, that landing pages are meant to be for a specific audience and to be optimized regularly for that audience. Now, this doesn’t comply with SEO.
Because if you’re optimizing your landing pages it means you’re changing its content in a way or another, and so you’re changing your focused keywords for SEO.
The second reason is, your landing pages are meant to be lightweight. These pages don’t have much content to build your SEO based on, and so there would be a lack of using keywords and getting backlinks to these pages for SEO support.
This means SEO doesn’t work for landing pages by any chance.
Instead, you need to start working on a solid website during your lead generation process mentioned above.
Your landing pages and your Facebook campaigns are getting you leads, and don’t stop by that. You need to start working on your own website.
This is where you apply local SEO, and the return on can be huge.
Local SEO is when you target specific keywords for your website in a specific city. When people in that area are searching for these keywords you appear to them with your website on top organic search results.
You can check the value of your keywords to you before using them on your website.
This is a big deal in the real estate business because it means you are beating the competition on the trustworthy top organic search results.
This means you’re keeping the ball rolling on your lead generation process. Where at some point the local SEO will get you the same number of qualified leads you generated in your ads.
BONUS POINT: start your local SEO by creating your business listing with Google Business Profile.
5. Automated Follow Up
Here we are speaking about SUPER ways for lead conversions.
You have gathered your leads out of multiple campaigns, and you need to convert them into sales now.
Well, you might receive leads through direct phone calls, because you placed your phone number on all of the landing pages.
Or you will receive leads from the forms used on your landing pages. Where you requested their Name, email, and phone number.
Or perhaps you may receive leads through SMS and WhatsApp messages.
In other words, your marketing investments will get you three primary leads sources:
- Phone Calls
- Form Leads
- SMS and WhatsApp messages
So you now should categorize each lead received by these means. It’s really important to do this step; otherwise, you will get lost with all the data.
You have reached your first goal to collect leads, now it’s time to cross-check the second goal of converting these leads into sales.
Once you categorize your leads, you communicate and follow up with them the way they like most.
Just remember your lead conversion is determined by how quickly you respond to these initial lead queries and the methods you have in place to follow up and nurture these leads over time.
A study by Zillow stresses the importance of that and how it does affect your lead conversion rate.
Let’s get into the tiny specific details of a successful follow up with your leads:
Phone Calls
People who call you directly are your most valuable leads and they have the highest intent.
They don’t want to fill up a form and wait for your call back, they are ready to take action immediately.
These people don’t have time to waste, they are ready to take action.
You need to respond to these people’s calls as soon as possible; because this is where you might close most of your deals.
You will not use emails to follow up with this type of leads.
Instead, you set up your follow up plan for them by phone calls and SMS follow ups.
It’s obvious that these leads don’t like it through emails, they had the chance to fill out the form on your landing page; but they preferred the direct call.
Therefore, your follow up plan to them should be within a one week time frame.
If they don’t answer your follow ups over the phone, then you use your already prepared SMS follow up system.
You can use tools like Sender or Salesmate for your SMS follow up, they are easy to set up and schedule your messages.
Form Leads
These people filled out your landing pages forms, they left you their Name, email, and phone number so they expect to hear back from you.
You will have the highest leads volume in this category, and you need to subcategorize them based on each landing page objective.
Otherwise, your follow up plan for these leads will be a bit complicated.
So, you now have a list of leads for each landing page; and you should now start your phone calling process to all these leads based on your each landing page goals.
These leads are ready to receive your phone call, they already left you their contact details and they expect your call within a day at least.
Now there are different scenarios that you will face during your phone calling process:
- Successful Calls
- Unanswered Calls
- Uncompleted Calls
Successful Calls
These phone calls are the winning ones, you called your leads, and they are interested in your service and ready to deal with you. These leads are converted now into sales and you will have to give them that referrer bonus we mentioned earlier.
You don’t need a follow up system for these leads, they are already your clients now.
Uncompleted Calls
Phone calls that are not completed due to disconnection, interruption, or no free time.
Perhaps you call someone who gets disconnected while you are speaking. You get back to them and there is no answer.
Or while you are on the call they might say “can I get back to you?”.
Or you might call a lead that is so busy at that moment. They might answer your phone call, but they are not fully focused to what you’re talking about. If you feel that, you should directly ask them for a better time for the next call.
Your follow up plan for this type of leads should always be ready, and you will use both email and SMS follow up with these types of uncompleted conversions.
You already have their email address and their phone number. You will leave them an email so they can see that you’re ready to solve their problem and heal their pain, and an SMS so they can immediately see that you are interested to do a clear phone call with them.
You can use email marketing tools like GetResponse and set up a two weeks time frame for this audience.
Remember, these leads left their contact information because they are in pain, they have a problem and they are seeking for a solution; which you said you can solve on your landing pages.
So they are ready to do an action, but you need to approach them at the right time.
Unanswered Calls
Now, these leads left you their contact details, but they are not answering your fourth phone call.
There are many possibilities why, and it could be anything that made them not to answer.
So if there is no answer after your fourth try, means it’s time to move these leads to the POWERFUL follow up system you prepared.
Your follow up must be only through emails, and you should nurture this type of leads.
Yes, you will not use SMS follow up for this type; because if they don’t answer your phone calls it means they are not interested in your SMS too.
Build an email follow up process that goes through 4 weeks time frame. Unless of course, they got back to you with a callback.
So, you only move this list to the follow up plan after one day of not answering your fourth phone call.
Based on the landing page goals they visited to fill up your form, you set up your email follow up process.
BONUS POINT: use attractive wording and catchy subjects for your email follow ups, give them extra features and benefits if they choose you for the service.
SMS and WhatsApp messages
Not common, but there might be some of your landing page visitors who try to communicate with you by SMS.
While if you added a WhatsApp button on your landing pages, surely you will receive a lot of inquiries over WhatsApp; since it’s an easy “click to send” way of communication.
You will try your BEST to switch this chatting conversation into a phone call. Because texting is time consuming, and includes many miscommunications that you don’t need.
But still, there is a certain type of people who prefer texting rather than calling. You need to continue providing them with answers to their inquiries; until they are convinced of your phone call.
On the other hand, some leads don’t get back to your replies.
You will follow up with these leads through an SMS follow up process that can go through 2 weeks time frame.
Note that your main objective behind this SMS follow up process is to shift the conversation to a phone call, and not nurture this audience.
What did you think?
Now we would like to hear from you:
- Which step are you going to do first?
- Have you tried any of the methods above?
- Was this article helpful and easy to digest?
Let us know by leaving a comment below right now.