Top 15 Ways to Generate Real Estate Leads

The real estate industry is a $217 billion global market with more than 50 million people just in the United States alone. For those who don’t have time to work on their own leads, here are 15 ways you can generate them from anywhere!

The “how to generate leads in real estate as a new agent” is a blog post that discusses the top 15 ways to generate leads. The article includes tips for finding and building your own lead generation campaign, and offers advice on how to use social media to market your business.

A successful real estate firm relies on the development of real estate leads. Lead generation may be done naturally via friends, family, and networking, or through sponsored methods such as advertising and marketing. Ideally, capturing real estate leads through a range of lead generation strategies at the same time would provide a consistent supply of potential new customers for your company.

The best 15 free and paid real estate lead generating tactics to use in your real estate firm to ensure development and success are listed below.

1. Organize an open house.

Potential buyers may visit an open house without making an appointment when an agent opens a home to the public for a certain period of time. Anyone who enters the building is a possible lead. However, you must do more than leave a sign-in sheet and a pen at the door to actively acquire leads from an open house.

Begin by interacting with people as soon as they enter. Make them feel welcome, even if they’re simply interested neighbors who aren’t looking to purchase a house right now. Always have a few alternatives for collecting your visitors’ email addresses or phone numbers on hand. Printouts of market information and business cards with your contact information should also be included. In fact, a QR code generator might be used to encourage people to store your contact information on their phone.

An open house is a face-to-face audition in front of possible new customers, one of the few chances you’ll get to meet someone in person and maybe become their exclusive real estate agent. If you’re not sure where to begin, read our more detailed post on how to throw an open house.

Even if you don’t have your own listings, you may help other agents in your firm by hosting open houses. If you do, keep in mind that selling the open house you’re holding is your number one priority. If they’ve made it plain that they’re not interested in the open house, shift the discussion to comparable postings. Confirm with the listing agent ahead of time that you will be able to retain each lead that goes through the door.

2. Consult Your Circle of Influence

The phrase “sphere of influence,” or “SOI,” refers to all of the individuals you know. Everyone you’ve ever met gets into the SOI bucket: family, friends, coworkers, teachers, hairdressers, baristas, and so on. Your SOI may be a gold mine of leads, both from your personal relationships and through their contacts and recommendations.

Reach out to your SOI on a frequent basis to generate leads. You may send an SMS, a brief personal email, or even a Facebook Messenger or Instagram DM to do so. Even if your friends are aware that you work in real estate, it is unlikely that they will remember to contact you when the time comes to sell their property. They could believe you just conduct rentals rather than sales, or that you only cover one area when you really cover the whole city. Even your family has to be reminded from time to time.

Don’t be pushy while asking for leads, but don’t be bashful either. Make it clear that you’re always willing to assist and answer queries without charge. Make them feel at ease when they come to you without making them feel obligated to hire you if you do. Connect with people first, and if that leads to business, terrific, but don’t get too worked up if nothing comes of it at first.

Don’t quit up if you don’t get results right away since your SOI will help you generate some of your greatest and most lucrative real estate leads. Nothing is more flattering than someone phoning you because they had a positive experience working with you.

3. Farm Your Surrounding Area

If you’re farming for leads, it indicates you’ve concentrated your efforts on a certain location or neighborhood in order to enhance your brand reputation there. You may achieve this by using mailers and being involved in the community. When your name is out there, you have a better chance of being called when someone needs a real estate agent.

For new agents, farming might be difficult since there may already be an established agent in the locations you wish to target. Don’t let it get in the way of your success. Some individuals prefer to work with fresher, more zealous agents rather than more established ones.

Send out postcards introducing yourself and providing sales and market data—your brokerage is likely to offer you with a certain number of cards for free. You may also buy magnetic mailers, which provide potential customers an incentive to keep your contact information on their refrigerator. The notoriety you get through farming aids in the production of real estate leads for both buyers and sellers.

In this real estate farming guide, you’ll learn how real estate farming works and how to choose the perfect farm place.

Offrs.com and SmartZip both provide predictive analytics tools to help you locate the next major real estate market to concentrate on if you want a more automatic approach. This information may provide context and help you to target locations with greater conversion rates. SmartZip is twice as pricey as Offrs.com but provides more back-end analyses.

Visit Offrs.com for more information.

4. Make networking a priority.

Networking is a fun technique to produce real estate leads, and it’s particularly successful when it coincides with the development of your SOI. The difference is that networking focuses on making relationships in order to grow your company. However, the most efficient networking tactics involve rubbing elbows with both real estate professionals and non-real estate professionals.

Attend concerts, art displays, social events, virtual events, and other gatherings. Join alumni organizations, join a committee at your children’s school, volunteer with a local charity, and attend fundraising events. Attending as many of these events as possible is a fantastic networking tip, so set a goal to get out at least once a week.

Before attending an event, research market statistics and trends, since every real estate discussion will always contain queries such, “How’s the market?” Make use of these questions to demonstrate your knowledge.

Pro tip: When you go to a networking event, don’t expect to get a real estate lead right away. Networking, like anything else, is a process, and leads develop as a result of how you follow up and establish rapport after the event. So, whenever you meet someone, write a brief email to express how much you liked meeting them and add your contact information. Check out our ideas on networking and other aspects of real estate prospecting.

5. Use a lead generation service for real estate.

While it may be better to develop leads organically, real estate lead generating businesses may save you time by immediately giving you with the names and contact information of highly motivated prospective buyers and sellers. Depending on whatever service you select, you might expect to get leads by email or SMS. Leads may be sent in batches or individually.

Zillow’s Premier Agent program is one of the top offerings, especially for generating buyer leads. This is because it allows agents to interact with homebuyers in their target ZIP codes by displaying their listings on some of the most famous real estate search sites, such as Zillow and Trulia.

Zillow’s options for handling inbound leads, on the other hand, are very rudimentary. Furthermore, it’s not as effective in targeting seller leads, so if you have more demanding requirements, consider:

• Real Geeks: This highly powerful solution captures leads via IDX websites, sends SMS messages to incoming leads, and provides social media advertising capabilities for extra lead acquisition.
• Zurple: Similar to Real Geeks, this service lets you to create leads by constructing websites that are meant to attract leads from hyper-targeted locations, but it also includes a powerful customer relationship management (CRM) tool and an AI-powered chat tool to nurture incoming prospects.
• BoldLeads: This service provides an all-in-one platform for producing buyer and seller leads, with ultra-simple setup, connectivity with leading CRMs, stealth voicemails, and pre-set follow-up funnels.
• Market Leader, in contrast to Zillow, can give you with seller leads. Even better, you’ll get a certain quantity of exclusive leads, so you won’t have to compete with other agencies.

Check out our guide to the finest lead generating firms for a more in-depth look at each of these services, as well as additional lead generation services like these.

6. Use Search Engine Optimization to Attract Leads

People in your agricultural region are utilizing search engines to obtain solutions to their real estate-related queries at any given moment. With a search engine optimization (SEO) plan, you can rank your website higher in search results, answer frequently asked questions that demonstrate your knowledge and reliability, and generate new leads.

(Image courtesy of neilpatel.com)

While SEO is not one of the easiest real estate lead generation tactics, it is a long-term approach that may provide you fresh, highly focused leads on a constant basis without requiring a lot of time and work.

7. Establish a presence on social media

Although creating a social media following takes a great deal of consistency and forethought, it may also provide a fantastic return on your time commitment. You may expand your reach and develop a profile that showcases your skills to prospective prospects as soon as they click on your name with a comprehensive social media marketing campaign. Social media is one of the few real estate lead generating strategies that can successfully establish the know, like, and trust elements.

(Image courtesy of @carolinakeepingitreal on Instagram)

To begin producing real estate leads using social media, you must first choose which channels to concentrate on. More information on how to accomplish this may be found in our platform-specific how-to guides:

Building a social media following is a long-term plan for generating organic leads, but you should also explore advertising to accelerate your success right now.

8. Advertise on Search Engines & Social Media

Free and paid leads are two sorts of leads you may use in your real estate lead creation plan. However, you’ll have the best success if you combine the two in your lead creation plan. Both organic and paid leads may be generated using search engines and social media. You may employ paid advertising to generate greater results in less time, or you can mix the tactics for a longer-lasting effect.

To get the most out of your internet advertising efforts, think of it as virtual farming, with the ultimate objective of building your brand awareness rather than selling to every lead right away. These networks, however, may be a wonderful source of leads if you produce content that interests prospective clients.

The following are some of the finest ways to generate leads via web advertising:

• Advertising on Facebook and Instagram allows you to design advertisements that target certain geographic regions, individuals with specific interests, or people with whom you’d want to collaborate. You may utilize social media to generate traffic to your website, and you can use advertisements to promote upcoming events. You can contact individuals on Messenger, Instagram stories, and the News Feed by advertising on Facebook.
• Search engine advertising: The most well-known services are Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising, which allow you to target keywords and display your listings at the top and bottom of the search engine results page (SERP) in a manner that blends in with the rest of the results.
• Google My Business: When you use the free Google My Business service to establish a business listing, your information, such as your name, phone number, and website link, will fill the whole right sidebar of the screen.
• Local community pages: These are specialized landing pages that may be connected to IDX feeds and feature properties for sale in a particular target market. As a result, they’re an excellent tool to add in your listing marketing strategy.
• NextDoor: Another social site that includes message boards where neighbors may discuss problems, seek for missing pets, and discuss local concerns is NextDoor. However, for $100 to $1,000 a month, its Neighborhood Sponsorship service allows you to promote yourself through pop-up ads as users browse through content.

9. Send Targeted Messages & Mailers

Targeted mailing is aimed to those who satisfy certain criteria, such as having a strong credit score or living in a high-income home. You can contact even more prospective customers using mailers, such as a postcard or newsletter, or mass electronic marketing, such as email or text messaging, than you can with networking alone. You may make your own targeted list or purchase address lists from other parties to expedite the process.

To learn more about the several methods to deliver targeted communications, click on the headings below:

Cold canvassing is a prospecting technique that involves pinning postcards, fliers, and business cards to bulletin boards at coffee shops. Cold canvassing increases name recognition, which is particularly beneficial for novice agents seeking to break into a large market. If you modify your material depending on where it is being delivered, you are more likely to acquire a lead. Try cold-calling rental properties in your area with information and titles such as “Why rent when you can buy?”

Although postcards may not provide the best return on investment, many brokerages provide agents with a certain number of postcards every sale as an incentive to join the business, so there’s no harm in giving them a go. Postcards may be used to introduce your new brokerage, advertise a new property, or provide local market information. Include a headshot, and double-check your postcards for errors. Your mailers will be sent to the circular file if they include grammatical or typographical problems.

Pro tip: You may increase the effectiveness of your mailers by obtaining a tailored mailing list and distributing them to a specified audience. For instance, REDX provides qualified lead data segregated into particular subgroups of potential sellers, such as expired listings, FSBOs, and preforeclosures.

When done right, email marketing drives visitors to your website and captures more prospects. It also works to keep you in the minds of others in your area of influence (SOI). Make sure your emails include useful content, such as community information or a call to action (CTA), such as an offer to give a free market analysis. After someone clicks through, be sure to follow up.

“Hey, I saw you clicked on my most recent market report,” for example. Isn’t it amazing how sales in your area have increased by double digits? Please contact me if you have any more queries.” Check out our guide to real estate email marketing for additional information, including specific procedures and tactics.

Text messages are an excellent approach to communicate with a possible lead without disrupting their day. Use SMS to answer to queries fast so you can take advantage of any prospects that come your way. If you text too often, you’ll seem to be pestering someone’s phone, which might hurt your lead generating efforts. As a result, although texting is wonderful for nurturing leads in your pipeline, it isn’t as productive as other strategies for generating new leads.

10. Make Agent-to-Agent Referrals a Priority.

When you link another agent in a different market with one of your contacts, you’ve made an agent referral. You may expect to be paid a portion of the commission if you make a reference to another agent who closes a sale, which is normally between 25% and 45 percent. If you get a recommendation, the same regulations apply, and you’ll have to pay the recommending agent a portion. You may either establish your own contacts or utilize a recommendation service.

You may, for example, employ a referral service like Fast Expert, which matches active leads with real estate agents. You may pick buyer or seller leads and filter them by ZIP code using Fast Expert. Agents are only paid if the lead leads in a successful closure, and in these circumstances, a 25% referral fee is applied. There is no setup charge, monthly fee, or beginning fees, according to the firm.

Agent-to-agent recommendations are a great way to earn money while remaining relatively inactive. When individuals finish transactions, the more recommendations you give to other agents, the more likely you are to obtain referral checks.

11. Provide a Learning Opportunity

You establish yourself as an expert and put yourself in front of prospective customers when you conduct an event and provide an experience. Consider giving a tour of the region where you sell or holding an informative event at one of your properties. As soon as you advertise a new home, you might conduct a “neighbors-only” open house.

Potential customers may see you in person and get to know you in a relaxed setting through experiential marketing. You boost your chances of getting recruited or recommended by providing them the opportunity to meet you in person and get to know you. Thank them for arriving as soon as possible.

The following are some examples of experiential marketing:

• Happy hours that are sponsored
• Discussions with real estate specialists on a panel
• Cocktails and invitation-only open homes
• Tours of your market’s surroundings

12. Make use of landing pages that are specific to your audience.

Using a landing page to advertise something particular and distinct from your business is a great way to stand apart. Drive traffic to your landing page by publishing or promoting it in networking groups, on social media, or via search engines once you’ve created it.

Building your own landing page with a contact form and a call to action is all it takes to capture leads. A good place to start is with our analysis of the best real estate website builders.

13. Pick Up the Phone & Call

Even if it seems that individuals prefer texts and emails than phone conversations, one-on-one communication is still quite successful. Cold contacting former friends or leads who have gone through the cracks, when done correctly, may rekindle a connection that might lead to new leads and referral sources. A detailed and natural real estate cold calling script is the key to a successful cold calling approach.

Pro tip: If cold contacting, even with a script, makes you break out in a cold sweat, consider hiring a virtual real estate assistant to do it for you.

14. Maintain Contact with Expired Listings

Expired listings are those that did not sell within their first listing period. The expiry date for a property may generally be found in the listing data on your multiple listing service (MLS). Looking for expired listing leads is a terrific method to demonstrate your capacity to sell difficult properties.

It’s worth mentioning, too, that as soon as a listing expires, sellers are swamped with inquiries from brokers vying for their business—so anticipate competition. Why? Converting a disgruntled seller is more likely than getting new business with a cold call.

Consider REDX if you’d rather be out selling instead of sifting through MLS data for leads who may or may not be motivated to list again. REDX is a real estate prospecting tool that connects agents with quality specialized leads, such as pre-foreclosure or expired leads. While there is a startup charge with REDX, it is giving Fit Small Business readers $149 off when you click the button below.

Visit REDX

15. Keep an eye out for FSBO listings that are becoming older.

Property owners who list their home without using an agent do so for a variety of reasons, the most common of which is to save money. As a result, for sale by owner (FSBO) leads might be more difficult to convert. However, many FSBO sellers eventually learn how much labor goes into selling a home.

While it’s hard to predict when they’ll give up, it never hurts to let an FSBO know you’d be happy to assist them get their listing more exposure.

Tip: You can’t deliberately solicit business from someone who is already represented by another agency. Asking upfront whether they have a formal representation agreement with another agency can save you time and keep you out of trouble. Before you make your pitch, do this.

Conclusion

While real estate lead generation may not always have an immediate effect, you can be certain that your efforts will help you grow your company in the long run. Whether you purchase leads, concentrate on one-on-one connections, or use organic means, obtaining real estate leads is an important part of growing a successful company.

The “top real estate lead generation companies” is a list of the top 15 ways to generate leads for your business. They are also ranked from most effective to least effective.

Related Tags

• how to generate real estate leads for free
• how to generate real estate leads online
• real estate lead generation ideas
• how to get leads in real estate reddit
• how to get real estate leads on facebook