11 Better Ways to Generate Real Estate Leads

I know, you get all your leads from word of mouth and all the rest “don’t do nothin” for me. What you may not be recognizing is that all channels power up your personal referral network and build word of mouth referrals from anywhere.

Staying old school agent and procrastinating on using all methods to grow your word of mouth referral network is unwise. 90% of agents avoid digital marketing. I hope you’re not one of them, because the top realtors I know all talk about how online is their growth area.

What is random and slow can be accelerated and improved.  You can build your audience and continuously engage them and avoid leaving your local neighborhood markets to your competition. Weave these 11 tactics below into a powerful overall strategy that is self-supporting.

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How Impressed Will Clients Be if They See You Have it All Together?

It’s not this or that tactic or, it’s using all of them to win.  Smart professionals who take the future seriously know they need to combine tactics like these and stick with them. Persistence is paramount.

And social media? Well, that has a special place in the engagement of your inner circle  and their connections. Each of these 11 tactics below will feed the others. Look at them as an army that will bring it all together for you. Have faith that this inexpensive effort will pay big dividends.

Most Realtors lack an overall strategy and they resort to hacking tactics to scrape out leads. Wouldn’t it be better to put together a multichannel strategy that helps you dominate local presence? These tactics below should help you step it up in lead gen.

Feed the Team!

If you’re a Realtor team leader, it’s not just about you.  Teams are where the success is, yet your team members need leads and to feel they have reach into the market. and supporting them generates big returns for you and a healthier sustainable agency. If you’re not doing it, your agents know it and begin jumping ship.

Let’s revisit the whole lead gen thing quickly with the 11 Best lead generation tactics.

The essence of excellent lead generation is wide scope visibility to the buyer and seller market and creating a clear emotion to choose you. Sounds so simple and maybe it is?

  1. Create topics, events and beliefs that bring you and prospects together. If they fish, play golf and tennis, travel, like fixing old cars, build furniture, grow flowers, watch HGTV, or eat health foods, then shouldn’t you be into these things too? This is more than blog and FB posting. It’s a way of getting invited into their lives.
  2. Create a visually welcoming website: a new website is fresh, easy to read and navigate, and has pics, videos, text and interesting headlines to draw them in. They’ll come back again and again because it’s fun, helpful and interesting. You may need to hire a good creative content person to get this accomplished. No, it isn’t easy but if you have the goal of a great website in mind, you will get your wish.
  3. Promote through social media, print flyer and local radio ads: A multichannel approach helps to focus the impact of your promotion. One channel by itself may not be engaging enough for your audience. Your offline promotions should bring them to your website and FB page, and get them on your email list. How well are you doing that now?
  4. Create a highly visual brand image and use it on your website, lawn signs and vehicle wrap: bright and ugly is what one very successful agent did, it really worked and made him stand out from the rest. Differentiation is the key. Don’t be boring.
  5. Leverage the new RETS industry standard MLS IDX system: RETS IDX gives you more flexibility and success in using your local MLS listings. These are the assets that your prospects crave.
  6. Use a new CRM system: with advanced lead scoring and engagement/conversion analytics, and the ability to send to a friend thus getting your circle to promote for you. Are your Google leads looking for bungalows, condos, or 4 bdrm houses near schools? Let your analytics tell you what they want and then give it to them.
  7. Hire an SEO / Content Strategist: 90% of buyers and sellers go online as part of their sales process.  To create high Google rankings along with epic, lead converting content that gets shared social you need someone who loves doing this stuff.  Plenty of strategically generated, amazing content optimized for Google really can generate huge traffic and leads. Don’t stick your head in the sand about online traffic — it’s the future of real estate and it’s your future.
  8. Build social media connections, interact with them, make them feel good:  because people buy when all their miseries fade away and they’re left with one clear state of feeling good. You make people feel good when you rid them of their troubles.  One agent I know of relies totally on Facebook and uses it as a central lead conversion center (he revealed some of his secrets to me). You can only have 5000 connections but that’s a big farm to grow sales.  The points is that homeowners are avid FB users and you can go from stranger to friend.
  9. Travel, meet people, study industry news and be more interesting: dull and uninteresting kills so build interesting material for your blog and FB page. That’s engagement. All that activity inspires others. Show your travels, celebrations, achievements, learning, and other people’s good stuff too. Celebrate everything and show them life is a fun blast and they need to buy or sell and start living themselves. Who wants a dull life?  Yes, travel is expensive. I wish I could travel because it can take your business to a whole new level and revitalize your personally. You need an “experience strategy.”
  10. Start a charity that helps homeless people, unemployed people, physically challenged and other forgotten people: show genuine caring by doing something them to suffer less and feel more hopeful: generosity does work so give away things for free and don’t favor any recipient. Be fair and helpful. You’ll get respect and admiration with your own local charity.
  11. Advertise on Google and Facebook: Can’t ignore his quick direct connection to prospects. It isn’t because you can’t afford it, it’s because you can’t convert the leads with just a phone number. This comes back to your CRM and lead conversion system, and the quality of the value offer prospects are seeing in your web content. Some agents win solely with PPC ads because with local targeting on FB, Google and remarketing. These give you an economical, continuous presence. Don’t use the lead gen companies. You can do it yourself.

There’s plenty more lead generating ideas, but these 11 give you the best bang for your buck.  Check out these top skills for luxury real estate agents.

Search Engine Marketing Services

I provide packaged services for successful agents, yet I am fully open to helping agents at a lower price point.  Take another good look at your website and ask yourself what’s missing.  Does your website and digital promotion really hit to the heart of what buyers and sellers like? Are you making them feel really good?

Call me anytime at 416 998 6246. I’m looking forward to working with a progressive and success minded realtor.