How Can I Generate More Online Leads For My Real Estate Business

Generating leads is one of the primary functions of your digital marketing strategy as a real estate professional. Without leads, there can be no revenue, and if your current digital strategy isn’t generating new and potential customers, it can be hard to justify spending more on online marketing. This is how many real estate pros get stuck in the digital mud, and before you know it, years go by and you're still cold calling and leaving door hangers. I’m not saying pounding the phones and/or pavement is obsolete in the digital age. I used to do both, and I know that there are few mediums more effective in sales than personal interaction. In fact, I believe that the real estate businesses that combine these traditional marketing approaches with effective digital strategies will be the future leaders of the industry over the next few decades. However, as more millennials and eventually Gen Z start buying homes, you’ll need to figure out the digital side and effective lead generation tool. Believe it or not, you don’t need to invest an arm and a leg to start generating online leads. There are a few simple lead-generation strategies you can start with on a shoestring budget. From there you can progress into more advanced lead generation strategies as you go, and it will be a lot easier to justify the time and money to do so if you are already generating some revenue from your sales funnel. So here are 6 actionable online lead generation strategies you can get started with right away, ranging from easy to advanced! 1. Generate Leads By Running Local Facebook Ads Difficulty Level: Easy Cost: $$ Facebook Ads provides a suite of different ad campaigns and targeting options that any real estate professional can take advantage of. You can target your audience based on location, demographics, and even interests. Here are some of the ways you can use Facebook to grow your real estate business and generate leads: Promote a Business Page to grow your followers Generate traffic or conversions to a website Advertise your listings on Facebook Marketplace Get Facebook users to connect with you through Messenger Get Facebook users to fill out a Lead Form Most campaigns can be run with an ad budget as small as $100 per month so it's pretty cost-effective. Even better is that you don’t need a website for 4 out of the 5 strategies listed above, so it’s a great starting point if you're just starting to build your digital ecosystem. 2. Generate Leads From Email Marketing Difficulty Level: Easy Cost: $ Email marketing is a powerful tool for real estate businesses for both lead generation and lead conversion. Given the notoriously long sales cycle in real estate, email is a great way for agents to stay connected with customers throughout the sales process and keep the deal in motion. It can also be used to generate new leads via referral and repeat business. Here are a few strategies you use to turn your email list into an asset: Send out quarterly housing market reports to past clients Send out referral incentives via email to clients Send out requests for online reviews with links to your GMB/Facebook listings Send weekly listing emails to buyers and renters in the deal funnel showing newly listed/price-reduced listings Send out happy birthday emails to past clients Anyone who knows how to send an email can employ any of these strategies, and all have been proven effective at generating new and repeat business. You won’t need a website or even an ad budget for these strategies, although it can be time-consuming if you have a long contact list. That brings us to our next strategy. 3. Leverage A CRM To Generate More Leads Difficulty Level: Medium Cost: $$ A CRM (customer relationship management) is software that helps businesses organize their contacts and run effective marketing campaigns. Using a CRM you organize your client list into different lifecycle stages and outcomes, which allows you to target each with the right messaging. Here are just a few ways you can use a CRM to generate more leads: Create email drip campaigns to nurture older leads Create custom landing pages and marketing funnels to work with your email marketing campaigns Send out monthly newsletters to contacts Send out text message marketing campaigns There are hundreds of CRM options out there that range from simple and free to complex and expensive. Most real estate pros can get the capability they need from a CRM that costs $20-30 per month, which will include unlimited contacts and email campaigns. Learning how to use a CRM may take a little time, but once you figure it out it can actually save you time in your marketing by allowing you to automate a lot of your marketing communications. A CRM will also allow you to create much more professional-looking email campaigns using pre-built templates instead of the plaintext emails you would send without a CRM. 4. Google Ads Difficulty Level: Medium Cost: $$$ One of the best digital marketing strategies to generate leads is by paying for search traffic via Google Ads. This allows you to place paid advertisements on search engine result pages for users searching specific keywords. Google Ads allows you to define which keywords you’d like to be listed for as well as daily budgets, ad scheduling, location and demographic targeting and much more. A few examples of how you can use Google Ads to generate leads include: Target people within 20 miles by typing in ‘real estate agents near me Target people searching for properties where your listings are located (i.e. ‘south Florida real estate Integrate GMB (Google My Business) listing with Google Ads to place ads in Google Maps search results Use Google Display Ads remarketing to show digital display ads to everyone who has visited your website in the past 90 days It’s relatively easy to learn how to use Google Ads' basic features. A basic ad account can be set up pretty quickly, but bidding on keywords can get expensive. Monthly budgets for real estate professionals can vary depending on location but expect to pay at least $500 monthly to be able to generate the results you are looking for. In order to use Google Ads, you need to have a website or landing page. This is where the user will land after clicking on your ad, so it’s very important that it is built to convert that user into a lead via contact forms, call buttons, and clear calls to action. This is where digital marketing can start to become complex. 5. Build A Lead Generating Website Difficulty Level: Difficult Cost: $$$$ In order to maximize the number of leads you generate, it’s very helpful to have a professional website that represents your business. Your website can be a showcase of your properties and/or listings, a blog where you share your expertise and insights, a collection of landing pages for your ad campaigns, or ideally, all three of these! Having your own website doesn’t just add credibility; it allows you to generate more leads by driving traffic to your digital storefront. Here are just a few ways you can make that happen: Post monthly or quarterly market reports as blog articles and share those links via social media and email Use a listing API to show your property listings on your website alongside your contact information Create content and web pages to target specific keywords potential clients are searching in Google, such as ‘condos for sale near Miami’ Build landing pages designed to convert traffic from marketing campaigns into Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and/or email. Building a good website is a project that takes time and effort. Even a one-page website built from a template will still take a few hours to set up and will usually cost $500-$1000 to hire a developer. A more complex website can take weeks, months, or even years to build and would cost considerably more. When it comes to building your website, it’s important to look at it as a long-term work in progress instead of a one-and-done build. Ideally, you’ll be adding content consistently over the years and making improvements along the way. Don’t get caught up in getting it perfect from the start. Conclusion Utilizing these 5 digital strategies, any real estate professional can get started generating more leads online. If you're just getting started out and you don’t have your own website yet, you’re still in the game. A simple Facebook page for your business or an email list is enough to get started. As you learn more about how to run these strategies more effectively, you can expand on them and begin to build more digital properties. As long as you devote a percentage of your time to advancing your knowledge of these concepts, eventually, you’ll build your own digital ecosystem that produces leads on its own!

How Can I Generate More Online Leads For My Real Estate Business

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How Can I Generate More Online Leads For My Real Estate Business

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