The COVID-19 crisis has undoubtedly made significant impacts on the real estate industry. While disruptive and uncomfortable for some, this change has created new opportunities for those who have adapted quickly.
The past year has limited an agent’s ability to show properties, participate in networking events, open houses, and so on, but that doesn’t mean it halts all business generation activities. Now is the time to roll up your sleeves and take action! Many lead generation efforts can still be done to make your business visible to potential clients even if you can’t reach them the traditional way.
Real estate agents can embrace modern technology and digital marketing tactics such as search engines, social media, personalized emails and other online tools to attract, nurture, and convert leads.
This article will guide you through the importance of real estate lead generation and four strategies that will help your business grow in this new reality.
What is lead generation?
Lead generation describes the process of attracting prospects and generating interest in your product or service to eventually convert leads into clients. In real estate, these are the potential customers who are interested in using your services to buy, rent, or sell properties.
Why is lead generation important?
Acquiring new clients:
Sure, customer retention is essential, but you can’t solely focus on servicing existing clients forever. While it’s great to have loyal clients, for real estate, you need to generate interest among new people to widen your pool of high-quality leads to increase the chances of sales. With face-to-face events at a standstill, now is the perfect time to create new opportunities through alternative ways so you can hit the ground running post-pandemic.
Growing your business:
Lead generation is crucial because it ensures that a pipeline of activities is in progress for business down the road. When you continuously feed the top of the funnel, you have a steady stream of warm leads ready to progress next week, next month, and next year. Lead generation programs are designed to entice prospects with your real estate services and eventually convert them into sales qualified leads, so you can expand your business accumulatively.
Building your reputation for future opportunities:
Often, people aren’t ready to convert that quickly, but they shouldn’t be ignored. After all, real estate is a highly social industry that relies heavily on networking and referrals. Consistently delivering key messaging and providing value across various touchpoints will build your brand’s reputation and keep you top of mind when the time is right.
Here are four things you should be doing to generate leads in real estate:
1. Pay attention to your agency website
Your website is the online equivalent of your agency storefront. In a study by the National Association of Realtors in 2020, 97% of home buyers used the internet to search for a home, and 43% said it was the first step they took in their entire home buying process. First impressions are everything, so engage your visitors instantly with a sleek and professional website for easy access to browse through listings. Ensure that your website is designed with the end-user in mind and include clear call-to-actions (aka CTAs) and user journeys. Map out exactly how your visitors will be driven to landing pages for you to capture lead information.
Aside from informative content and aesthetic design, your website must be search engine optimized to boost your ranking on the Google Search Results Page. SEO will improve the visibility and traffic of your web pages, allowing listings to gain serious traction and generate more traffic to your website. Click here to learn how to optimize your website to increase lead generation.
2. Harness the power of social media
Think of social media as an extension of your brand. Social media is designed for networking and provides an additional touchpoint to share fresh and engaging content to your lead’s radar. Provide your followers with relevant content such as news about the neighborhood, home maintenance, restaurant recommendations, and the local public school system to contribute value to this community. Start engaging with influencers when relevant and use hashtags and geo-location tags to gain exposure, followers, and ultimately, potential leads.
Make the most out of your team and leverage the power of the micro-influencers around you. The micro-influencers – those being your team members or employees, can help to boost your company’s reputation through content creation, sharing, and customer service, giving the impression of a united forefront. Use social media as a tool to build trust and an affinity towards your brand until prospects are ready to take the next step with you. Learn how to become social media savvy to boost lead generation here.
3. Follow up with personalized email marketing
Email marketing is the best method to reach people who are already familiar with you. These individuals have already subscribed to your marketing list and are therefore more likely to take action. Take the opportunity to position yourself as a trustworthy expert and advise your potential clients about the current market and home buying process. Not only this, try diversifying your communications by rotating between providing them with educational driven and sales driven content to keep leads warm and interested.
Email marketing allows you to segment your clients into specific categories based on behavior, preferences, or lifestyle. Emails tailored to particular groups will yield better results as the content is designed to resonate with the intended audience. Carefully curate content for different lead types and use eye-catching designs with images, videos, and a compelling copy to increase the open rate and click-through rate.
4. Use data to manage your lead relationships
It’s one thing to generate sales leads, but you need to help qualified leads move along the sales funnel. With all your marketing efforts in place, it’s important not to neglect consistent management of the sales pipeline and cultivate strong relationships with your leads and existing customers.
Lead generation CRM software tracks all communication and behavioral patterns using intelligent technology to anticipate future client needs and give your sales team insights to deliver quality customer care. These tools analyze data to generate forecasts and identify which lead opportunities will produce the most value. With consistent tracking of all marketing efforts, data will inform your team how to manage their work while ensuring that no prospects are lost along the way.
Are you interested in implementing all the above strategies to accelerate lead generation for your real estate business? Chat with us today and get a FREE demo of Property Raptor!
