Lead Generation

by James Bridges on August 5, 2023

3 Steps to Creating Your Own Real Estate Lead Generation System

There are a number of great real estate lead generation programs out there. Programs can be designed where you pay a referral fee, monthly fee, or even a fee per every lead received. The systems and programs vary wildly and your results will certainly be mixed depending on your personality and how it can fit in within the lead source. With so many different lead generation companies out there charging money, it certainly makes one aware that you could create your own system and save money each and every month.

The benefit of creating your own real estate lead generation system is you can make it as specific as you want, meaning you can target potential sellers and buyers in your specific areas of expertise where you wan to work. A real estate lead generation system that gives you prospects who range in time from “I’m ready right now” to “Probably sell in a year” takes time, but it is one that can pay dividends (i.e. clients that turn into commissions) for years to come.

Here are some items to focus on so you can create your own lead system so you can start saving money each and every month.

Budget – Whether you are using a real estate lead generation system that you pay monthly, referral, or some other method it is certainly costing you some money. Determine what you have spent on your current systems and think about how you could use that money on your own. After all, a typical referral fee is often 25% and when you consider an average commission across the United States is about $5,000 that means you could invest up to $1,000 in marketing to generate a transaction. Optimally you will spend much less (think 7% of your average commission) and the savings will go right into your pocket!
How do you want to generate leads? – There are many different ways to generate leads online so think about the direction you would like to go before you spend any money. Whether you want to focus on leads from your website, blog, articles, social media, videos, etc. there are different methods to implement for each whole. Pick your favorite and develop a plan that includes everything from the media expense, types of ads, how you will be tracking and more.
Develop actions for a consistent flow of leads – In order for you to get leads daily it requires that you put into place actions that are easily repeatable. This can range from running new pay per click ads, writing new web pages, or even sending out blast emails. When you decide on how you will generate leads make sure you have an action that you can take daily to ensure that new leads keep pouring. The big real estate lead generation companies have a variety of action items they do constantly but your plan can be much smaller and get the results you need to generate new business each and every month.

It may sound like quite a bit of work to develop your own real estate lead system and it will require some work, but it will save you money in the long run. One of the best aspects about creating your own system is you can tweak it to hit your goals and save money.

If the task of creating your own systems sounds like too much work, consider hiring a real estate coach or purchasing a system that will help you discover the proper methods to creating your own real estate lead system. Investing in a coach or a “do it yourself” system will save you hours of frustration and thousands of dollars of trial and error.

by James Bridges on July 17, 2023

How to Generate Real Estate Leads

Starting in real estate with the concept of lead generation will put you miles ahead of your competition. Most real estate professionals start with the idea that if you just have a few key relationships in place you will experience tremendous success. While relationships certainly are important a solid lead generation plan is essential when you want to close business each and every month.

Getting high quality real estate leads isn’t something that will happen with only 10 minutes of work, but when you put a little bit of planning in you can have a consistent flow of people contacting you each and every day. Keep in mind that generating quality leads (i.e. when you know you can close a certain percentage of the leads coming in monthly) is like going to the gym….you won’t get in shape with one workout and 1 month of “lead generation” isn’t going to make you the best lead generator either.

To help you transform your real estate business to one where you can count on leads daily, consider the following tips:

Focus on Lead Generation – When you focus on lead generation you won’t send any marketing out that is just “branding”. Branding ads waste money and won’t generate leads. Keeping your focus on leads will ensure that any marketing you do (online, print, etc) will have the focus on generating calls and leads. This focus may seem odd to those around you in the real estate community and that’s OK. Many times in real estate it is suggested that you have to “introduce yourself to the community” or “get the word out” but that just wastes money. Keep the focus on what will generate leads each and every day.
Investing – Leads will rarely come free. Investing capital into your real estate business will help you to get leads at a much faster rate. A good rule of thumb to stick to is spending no more than 7% of a standard commission on your advertising. Every 7% you spend should generate 1 transaction. Sticking to the 7% rule will keep more money in your pocket and make your marketing work harder for you. Anything that isn’t generating leads for just 7% of a commission will have to be cut. This means that if your average commission is $10,000 then you can spend $700 in marketing expenses to acquire that closing. Looked at another way, if you were paying $50 per lead that means you would get 14 leads for $700 and you would need to get 1 closing out of those 14 leads. When you start to evaluate your marketing with this lens it might make you rethink quite a bit of your marketing efforts.
Marketing Strategy – I am a big fan of an online real estate marketing strategy, but it’s not for every agent. Having a plan in place for your real estate lead generation activities will make it easier. It doesn’t have to be complicated, just know what steps you are going to take to generate leads. This may mean having more than 1 system to generate leads for you. Top real estate coaches around the country recommend having 4 marketing systems to generate leads for you. Each system must adhere to the 7% rule and must generate at least 2 transactions a month. The systems involved with your marketing strategy can be varied (i.e. websites, blog, postcards, magazine ads, etc.) but just ensure that each of them are generating enough leads for you to close 2 transactions per month, per system.

With just the above three steps you will be able to start getting real estate leads. Remember, your plan doesn’t have to be complicated; it just has to have enough steps so you can see where you need to take action. Keeping your focus on generating real estate leads (and making sure it’s cheap) will have you closing transactions each and every month.

by James Bridges on April 6, 2023

Real Estate Buyers – Give Them What They Crave

Doing lead generation online gives you the opportunity to get the type of business that you really want. Yes, you can have a pool of buyers to work with, in the neighborhoods you know best, all year long. Keep in mind there are many companies out there that will sell you “real estate leads” and even some that break it down into buyer leads and seller leads, but shouldn’t you be able to do it on your own as well?

Absolutely!

The nice part about the many different tools and systems available online is that it allows anyone to do their own marketing for their real estate business. With a few simple steps, an understanding of what the market needs, and some motivation you can be on your way to generating the leads you have always wanted.

Let’s look at how you can start generating your own real estate buyer leads:

Content that buyers crave – Home buyers are searching every minute of the day for information on real estate in specific neighborhoods. Write up information on the neighborhoods that you operate in every day and let them know what it’s like to live there. Don’t borrow canned information; write up your own perspective of the neighborhoods and streets. When you take the time to share information about your area from your perspective your readers will feel your passion and feel compelled to contact you. You will want to attack your real estate content with the aspect that when someone starts to go through your content they will be thinking “wow, this person knows EVERYTHING about the area”. Create a balanced set of content from written content, videos and even audio (i.e. maybe a podcast) that speaks to the unique offerings of your market. Think about all the conversations you have had with buyers over the years in your car and start documenting your expertise.
Buyer tools – As buyers are enjoying your niche neighborhood content, they will want to be able to learn even more. Their need for more information will lead them to need a way to search for listings and to find out how much their new home will cost. Provide an MLS search tool on your website so they can easily find the real estate in the neighborhood that they have fallen in love with. Let them see what their mortgage would cost by providing them with mortgage calculator tools. Even as you provide these tools on your website, we all know that the multitude of apps (i.e. Zillow, Redfin, Realtor) make it incredibly easy to see what is available on the market which means your content needs to be so robust that they know there is far more to buying a home than just a simple listing.
Buyer focused ads – Getting targeted buyer leads means having ads focused on their needs. Create pay per click ads (on Google, Facebook, and MSN) that gives the buyers an opportunity to discover more about the neighborhoods and search for properties. You can keep the cost of your ads down by focusing on smaller neighborhoods, rather than bigger cities (and this is a great way to bring people deeper into your website). The big benefit here is you will also get buyers who are looking in a small area and generally purchase much faster.

Generating real estate buyer leads does take an investment in time and a small amount of money. When you consider that after you create a page about a neighborhood that the page will live on for as long as you have your website, it’s really not too much time at all.

If you want to generate 100’s of buyer leads each and every month, you can simply keep creating more content and creating more pay per click ads while keeping track of which lead sources are leading to the greatest volume of appointments and transactions. Taking this approach will prevent you from ever having to purchase real estate leads from a service, because now you know how to do it yourself!