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May 13, 2022

13 Real Estate Lead Generation Ideas

Ashley Walsh
by:
Ashley Walsh

It isn’t an exaggeration to say that the agent without real estate lead generation ideas is the agent without a business. New leads are the lifeblood of any business. If you’ve been struggling with getting new leads, then you know how true this is.

That’s the purpose of this post. It gives you 14 lead generation ideas to help you drum up new leads for your real estate business.

You’ll find that many of these ideas build on one another, allowing you to maximize the number of new leads you get with less effort and fewer upfront costs.

Go Digital

1. Use Social Media

Social media offers you so many ways to create new real estate leads. Here is a handful of social media real estate lead generation ideas.

  1. Mine LinkedIn for leads. This can include participating in real estate related groups and posting relevant articles and blog posts to your account. Interact with people who interact with you, particularly if they’re in the local area.
  2. Hold a contest on Instagram. Ask people to post photos of their homes for sale. The best photo wins a gift card from the local home improvement store. All the participants in the contest become potential leads.
  3. Create Facebook ads that target people who are looking for homes for sale or who are moving.

2. Take Advantage Of SEO And Blogging

When it comes to getting real estate lead generation ideas, SEO and blogging top the list.

When people search the web looking for homes to buy in their area, they use words like “homes for sale in [name of your town]” or “properties for sale in [geographic region].” Creating content that includes these keywords can help get you found online. 

Over time, a real estate agent’s SEO-friendly blog gains traction with the search engines. With enough time and effort, that agent’s blog could even be on page one of Google for real estate-related search terms, particularly if you provide them with quality information.

3. Offer Virtual Home Tours

Virtual home tours give people an inside peek at homes they may not see otherwise and to do so without them having to leave their own house.

If you’ve perfected your SEO, then you can use keywords like “virtual home tours in [name of your city]” in your website content. The search engines will pick those words up eventually, and your virtual tours will start to show up in these searches as well.

This is another way to gather leads, provided you’ve set up a system to capture people’s names and contact information once they land on your page. A popup and/or a chat function are two easy ways to do this.

4. Campaign For More Online Reviews

When people want to buy anything significant, including a home, they look for reviews on sites like Yelp before they take any steps.

If you’ve had some exceptional experiences with your past real estate clients, then encourage them to leave reviews for you on sites like Yelp, Facebook and other social sites. Good reviews equal more leads and more business for you.

5. Use CRM To Nurture Warm Relationships

CRM, or customer relationship management, is a software system that allows you to keep track of your communication and interactions with your clients and potential clients. These systems include reminders to follow up with people, to send out emails, and to do any other tasks that have to do with customer management.

In terms of real estate lead generation ideas, you want to follow up on leads that your clients have given you or on the casual inquiries that you get from a blog post or on social media.

This is an example of what we referred to in the beginning of the post when we said that these real estate lead generation ideas build on each other.

In this case, because you blog and participate on social media, you can now use CRM tools to turn cold leads into warm leads.

Grow Your Network

6. Build Out Referral Program

If you haven’t done so already, you should develop a solid referral program that allows you to tap into the personal networks of your existing clients. There are a number of ways to do this. They include but are not limited to:

  1. Developing a bird dog system. A bird dog system is one in which you compensate someone who sends you a lead. It could be something as simple as sending them a $25 gift card to Amazon or a home improvement store.
  2. Sending out emails to your clients, past and present, letting them know what’s up with you and the local housing market. Remember: Eventually, most people outgrow their homes. They’ll need an agent again when the time comes to buy again, so it’s logical that you keep in touch.
  3. Create a “Welcome Home” kit for new homeowners. Include goodies for the new house, as well as a few business cards and a note about your referral program. Let them know that you appreciate any new business they send your way.

7. Build Connections With Local Entrepreneurs And Business Orgs

Connecting with other local professionals puts you in contact with people who might refer new clients to you. This is particularly true if you network with people who work in complementary businesses.

Here’s an example. As a real estate agent, you want to get to know the managers of home improvement stores. These businesses serve the housing market, but none of them compete with each other for business, making lead sharing more likely.

Give Away Free Advice

8. Host Seminar Or Workshop On Your Specialty

Most people find the homebuying process a bit intimidating, particularly if they’re first-time homebuyers.

Offering a free seminar or workshop in your local area allows you to reach these potential clients in a way that they won’t find intimidating. You’re just offering information to help make the homebuying process smoother for them.

9. Answer Questions On Quora

Quora counts among the best real estate lead generation ideas around and for good reason. Unlike many other online Q&A sites, Quora has a vetting system of sorts, which lets users know if a person is a verified expert in his or her field.

Usually, the person answering a question has a bio that signifies his or her area of expertise. You could become an expert on Quora to take advantage of this.

You could also just scout the site, looking for questions relating to real estate. Each option could also provide a backlink to your website, which is always appreciated.

Other

10. PR / Haro Opportunity

HARO stands for Help a Reporter Out. Basically, HARO is a website where journalists post questions related to stories they’re working on. They need information and quotes from industry experts to complete their stories.

If you answer a question that was picked up by a journalist on HARO, then you position yourself as an expert in the real estate field.

Here’s an example. A reporter is working on a story about how home prices in Seattle have topped $600K. If you happen to work in the Seattle area, you can bid to answer that question.

If the reporter picks your answer, then you’re quoted in the news media as an expert. You also get a backlink to your site, which should send you traffic and potential real estate leads.

11. Cold Calls/Outbound Prospecting

While cold calling from the phone book may not be the first thing that pops into your head when you think of new real estate lead generation ideas, it can work in a pinch. Sometimes, it’s the cold call that revives a dying or near dying real estate business.

If you truly have no new leads to call on, don’t overlook the phone book as a source.

12. Go After Older Expired Listings

If a real estate listing has expired without a sale, that listing might just be your next new lead. There are a couple of advantages to using this as a real estate lead generation idea.

First, you know that there are homeowners who want to sell their homes. Second, you can pretty much bet that they’ll be open to talking to someone who might be able to sell what right now looks like a hard-to-sell property.

You can find these listings on the MLS, on social media or by looking through public records.

13. Attend A Non-Real Estate Event

This is kind of a corollary to #7 and is an easy way to get real estate lead generation ideas. That is, you want to create connections with non-industry people.

Going to a community event that’s unrelated to real estate gives you a way to strike up conversations with new people and let them know what you do for a living.

For example, many cities host movies on the lawn in the local parks during the summer time. During events like these, it’s natural to start chatting with the people sitting around you. It’s also natural to talk about what everyone does for a living and to exchange business cards with new people you’ve met along the way.

Treat your real estate leads to a great experience

There are a few different options available when it comes to generating new real estate leads – from engaging with reporters and PR to taking advantage of digital. The goal is to provide value and stay top of mind as people inevitably buy and sell their homes. 

With Shaker, you can provide a white glove customer experience in our end-to-end transaction management app. Request a demo to see how Shaker is right for your business.

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