It’s a fact: all Realtors need to know how to get real estate leads. Creating a steady stream of leads is vital in real estate if you want to be successful. You need to have new leads coming through all the time so that you can continue to convert them into sales for you and your clients.
Thankfully there are many things you can do to land more leads. From keeping an updated website to considering a local SEO strategy, follow our expert advice to hone in on how to get real estate leads.
The Lead Generation Struggle Can Be Real
But struggling to generate the leads that you need is a common problem in real estate. Real estate agents can find themselves competing against a huge number of other realtors within their local area, which makes it extremely difficult to get a good level of interest from both buyers and sellers.
You might be looking at other realtors and wondering what they do to get their leads. What techniques are they using that help them to be successful? But the truth is that you should forget about what other real estate agents are doing. Stop trying to copy them and figure out their secret, and find your own path instead. Invicta Local can help you to dominate your local market and find the leads that you’re looking for.
Don’t just blindly follow the same techniques that everyone else is recommending. It’s important to find what works for you, and what gets you results. This article will take you through some of the ways you can generate more real estate leads and how you can empower yourself to secure a steady stream of leads from your local market.
Get Real Estate Leads with a Great Website
The first stop on your journey to more real estate leads is your website. You can get more online bookings and reach all kinds of potential clients with a great digital footprint.
In fact, your website is an extremely important tool that you need for marketing your real estate business online. A quality real estate website needs to be relevant to your location and clients, kept up to date at all times, and optimized for search engines in every way.
Reel in Real Estate Leads with an Up-to-Date Website
The first thing to check is that your website has all of the latest information about your company, the services that you offer, and the properties that you have available.
As a real estate agent, information about your company can be changing all the time. While your services might remain the same, you can have a rotating list of properties that you’re marketing, which need to be kept up to date at all times with MLS integration. This requires regular checks of your website, not just to check that you have updated information on the properties you have sold or available for sale, but also to ensure that your listings are optimized for search engines.
Accurate information about your company is a must for your website. Google and other search engines will check the information on your site to ensure it’s accurate and that it matches up with the information you have listed elsewhere, such as on your Google Business Profile. You should especially think about details such as your company’s about page and the contact details you have listed on the site. Keeping your contact and location details up to date will help to improve your local SEO and make the user experience of your website better too.
Create a Great User Experience
User experience (or UX) is definitely something that you should consider when optimizing your website for lead generation. The user experience is all about how your website visitors use your site and how easy and pleasant it is for them to navigate. It’s an important part of digital marketing that needs to be taken into account when designing and maintaining your website.
Presenting accurate information about the services that you offer is one of the key things you can do to improve the user experience on your site. When you improve user experience, you improve SEO at the same time. The longer people remain on your site, the better it is for SEO. And if you have information and content that’s relevant to your audience, that’s a major bonus where Google is concerned.
Add a Real Estate or Home Blog to Your Site
One of the best ways to keep your website up to date is to make use of fresh new content. Putting up new listings for properties is a good start, but it’s also very useful to add articles or blog posts to your site too.
A blog gives you the opportunity to create relevant, valuable content for the customers that you want to bring in. Your blog posts and articles can cover a range of topics that are relevant to your audience. They could be tips and advice for buying or selling property, or for related things like moving home. Your articles could also cover local issues or talk about the local area in other ways, which is excellent for local SEO.
Blog posts and articles can then also be shared in several places. You can link to them through your Google Business Profile listing, as well as share them on your social media pages. You can also include your blog posts in your email marketing, providing valuable content for everyone on your email list, which can help you to convert people into qualified leads after they have signed up to your mailing list.
Engage with Online Chat and Messaging
These days, many people prefer to contact others online. It can be a lot quicker and more convenient compared to calling someone on the phone. It’s often the fastest way to get an answer to a question. And even when it’s not faster, it allows people to make contact, then busy themselves with other things while they wait for a reply.
Two things that real estate agents can make use of if they want to engage prospects and offer a range of contact options are messaging and chats. Messaging, such as the messaging function on Facebook or Twitter, can allow people to send inquiries without having to call you. Chat applications can operate in a similar way but are usually used to have a conversation in the moment.
Conversations can occur more quickly with a chat app, whereas with messaging, people may be happier to wait longer for a reply. Chat apps can also be combined with chatbots. Chatbots can provide automatic answers to regular questions, which frees up your time.
Generate Real Estate Leads with Google Business Profile
Along with your website, Google Business Profile is another valuable tool for nailing your digital marketing and securing more leads as a real estate agent.
But what exactly is it? If you’re not already using Google Business Profile, you need to understand how it can help you and why you should be using it. Google Business Profile is a Google tool that allows you to create a profile for your business. This business listing can then show up in Google searches, including on map searches. That makes it the ideal tool for local businesses that are trying to capture local leads.
Need help getting your business online? Learn how to add my business to Google.
Make Your Google Business Profile Robust
You’ll need to create a Google account to gain ownership of your business profile if you haven’t already. But even if you already have a Google Business Profile, you can still benefit from the assistance that Invicta Local can provide you. As experts in Google Business Profile, we can help you to optimize your business listing and ensure it will show up in relevant searches. Optimizing your profile ties in closely with your SEO strategy, and it should be an essential consideration for any real estate agent.
Your Google Business Profile includes details such as your location, contact information, website, and opening hours. It’s also a place for people to leave reviews for your business, so it’s definitely worth keeping an eye on the reviews and ratings that you receive there. You can also include photos on your profile, questions and answers, and posts, which you can use for updates or linking to your listings and blog posts.
If you have a Google Business Profile profile set up, one of the most valuable things that you can do is check that everything is accurate. Make sure that your location, contact details, and any other information about your business are correct. When people find your business on Google Maps, they need to be able to get accurate directions so they can come to your office in person. Or if they want to get in touch with you on the phone or online, they need to find the right contact details so they can contact you.
Don’t forget to check even simple things such as the name of your business. You can never be too careful, and even a simple typo could make a difference. Go through your profile and make sure it’s as complete as possible, with no missing details, especially the most important information.
Dress Up Your Google Business Profile with Photos and Video
If you want to enhance your Google Business Profile, one of the great ways to do it is to upload photos to your page. You can use the image feature to upload photos of your office and your staff, as well as images related to your listings. You can also add videos to your page, which can be a great way to showcase your business, employees, and the properties that you have on your books. Of course, another key image that you should upload is your logo. It’s essential to build your brand, along with a cover photo, which can also be branded.
You should also keep your page up to date by posting to it regularly and responding to reviews. The post feature is great for sharing your latest blog posts and listings, or for providing updates about things like awards you’ve won, promotions, local news and events, and new photos and videos.
Solicit Great Reviews
Staying on top of reviews is an important way to engage with your customers. People like to see that you respond to both positive and negative reviews. If you receive a positive review, show that you appreciate it by thanking the reviewer. If you receive a more negative review, knowing how to respond in the right way is essential. Recognizing their complaints when they’re legitimate and explaining what you can do to rectify them can go a long way. You might also promise to get in touch with them to discuss the matter.
Put SEO to Work and Generate Real Estate Leads
Search engine optimization is something that every business should be doing. When you’re a realtor, you should especially focus on local SEO. Local SEO focuses on a specific, local geographical region, rather than targeting a wider audience. Of course, this is ideal for real estate agents, who usually cover a certain area when looking for leads and customers.
Local keywords contain words and phrases that relate to your business’s location. They might include the name of the city, county, or state in which you’re based. They could also refer to local landmarks or anything else that could relate to the local area.
Focus on Local Content on Your Website
There are multiple strategies to use if you want to master local SEO. An optimized Google Business Profile is just one of the things that you should have. In addition to your profile, you should pay attention to your website and other off-page SEO.
Local content on your site is a great way to make sure you’re using relevant local keywords. Fortunately, this is easier for real estate businesses compared to some other brands. Real estate is all about location, so it’s much easier to incorporate local keywords into your content.
When optimizing content for local SEO, consider how you can base your content around your chosen local keywords. You can consider both your normal web pages and your blog or news page, which you can update regularly. You can create content that specifically targets certain areas.
For example, you might create a page for each neighborhood in the area that you cover. It could discuss some of the best things about living in the area, while also acting as a sales page for your services. At the same time, you can create a content strategy for your blog to ensure you have a steady stream of new content that covers local issues, events, and news.
There are many great SEO tools to help you identify and track keywords. Google Search Console, Google Analytics, SEMrush, and other tools can help you stay on top of your site’s performance.
On-Page Search Engine Optimization
As well as optimizing the content on each page of your website, make sure to cover other aspects of on-page search engine optimization.
This should include things like optimizing meta titles and descriptions for each page and optimizing the internal links that you use. Another essential thing that you need to do is ensure your site is running quickly. While it’s not solely a part of local SEO, it’s still essential if you want to optimize your site and generate more leads. People don’t like to wait around for web pages to load, so focus on improving speed.
Mobile-friendliness is also important, so ensure your website has a responsive design that works on any device.
Off-Page Search Engine Optimization
There are also important off-page SEO techniques to consider. Off-page SEO refers to things you do outside of your website to enhance search performance and draw in traffic.
Your Google Business Profile page is part of this, but there are additional strategies and methods to think about too. For example, managing listings on other real estate sites and link building for your site are two ways that you can improve off-page SEO.
Property portals shouldn’t be ignored when you want to generate real estate leads. Many people head to a property portal when they want to browse properties rather than going straight to a realtor’s website. This is because they can browse most of the properties in their desired area, from a range of real estate agents, rather than just choosing one agency. However, you can convince them to make more direct contact with you through smart use of property portals.
Additionally, engaging with users on property portals is a great way to generate leads. This can include social media such as Facebook, where you can list property on the Marketplace, as well as dedicated property portal sites.
How to Generate Real Estate Leads and Increase Return On Ad Spend
Google Ads is the most popular pay-per-click (PPC) ad platform. It’s one of the key tools you should have in your digital marketing toolkit. If you want to get more real estate leads, one of the best things that you can do is localize your Google Ads.
Whereas local SEO focuses on organic traffic, PPC ads allow you to pay for traffic to your site. But if you want to make sure your budget doesn’t go to waste, optimizing your ads is essential. There are multiple ways to do that, from targeting your ads correctly to writing better copy. You should be making sure that your ads are localized if you want to capture people in your targeted area.
Invicta Local can help you make the most of your ad spend with Google Ads management services. We’ll target your spend on keywords that drive conversions, not just placement, to help you see better ROAS and more happy clients on your books.
Precise Location Targeting
Targeting your ads by location is one of the best things you can do with Google Ads. Fortunately, Google Ads provides lots of targeting options so you can make sure your ads reach a local audience and you don’t waste money advertising to people who aren’t relevant to you. In fact, you can target your ads so much that you’re able to break down your targeting into specific zip codes.
You can choose a radius around a chosen zip code too or you can bulk target locations. Another available feature is the ability to exclude locations, which can be useful if there are certain parts of an area that you don’t serve.
Win with Smart Keywords
As well as setting the right geo-targeting for your ads, you also need to think about the keywords that you want to target and the ad copy (the written part of the ad). You can choose both keywords that you want to target and negative keywords, which are keywords that you don’t want your ads to show for. Google Ads provides its own Keyword Planner tool, which can be a good place to start if you want to find keywords. However, there are many other things you can do to identify the right keywords. You can explore other tools and get help from SEO experts who can take the work out of it for you.
To localize your ads, use a range of keywords that relate to the area that you are targeting. They could be as simple as “real estate agent [neighborhood]” or “[city] homes for sale”. Or they might be more specific, such as “how to sell my [city] home quickly”. Generally, long-tail keywords of more than two or three words will have less competition but also a lower search volume. Local keywords are ideal for real estate, although you don’t necessarily need to use only local keywords. If you’re targeting a certain area, your ads will still show for the people you want them to, as long as their searches match your keywords either broadly or exactly, depending on the settings in your ads.
Write Ad Copy that Converts
As for the copy that you write for your ads, you should think about the keywords that you’re using. If you have chosen the broad match option for your keywords, your ad copy needs to broadly match the subject of the keyword. However, if you choose the exact match option, you should use the exact keyword in your ad copy. The most important thing is that your ads are relevant to the keyword and are useful to the users who are searching for what they need.
It’s important for your ad to be compelling if you want to generate more clicks and therefore more leads. The more clicks you get, the higher Google will rate your ad and the more likely they will be to show it. The more your ad is shown, the more chances you have for people to click on it.
Optimizing your landing page for conversions is also a big part of optimizing your Google Ads. One of the best ways you can do this is by using dedicated landing pages, rather than just using your homepage as the target page for your ads. Creating landing pages allows you to connect your ads to the content that your visitors will find when they click on them. Landing pages are essential for lead generation too. You can use a lead generation form to encourage people to provide you with their details. You can then contact them and turn them into qualified leads.
Designing effective landing pages is crucial for the success of your Google Ads. You should make sure the content on the page matches your ad, including matching and related keywords. It’s also important for the landing page to have a clear purpose and design. People should know right away what the page is for and what they should do next. Some of the essential elements include a punchy headline, a simple form, and a strong call to action that tells people what their next move should be. You can offer them an incentive to encourage them to fill in the form or sign up for your newsletter, such as a free resource.
How to Get Real Estate Leads by Networking
Offer Referral Bonuses
For a smart tactic that can help you to get more leads, consider offering referral bonuses to your clients. If someone recommends your services to another person, and that person then buys or sells a house with you, you can offer them 10% of the commission as a reward. This is an excellent way to encourage word-of-mouth marketing for your real estate business. People will be incentivized to recommend you to others because they will benefit from passing on your name. This is something that you might already do with real estate brokers, but you could also consider doing it with others.
If you want to set up a referral program for your real estate business, it’s important to be aware of any laws that might govern this practice. Referral fees among estate agents and brokers may be simple, but there can be some circumstances where it might not be possible with people not involved in the industry. It can be useful to secure referrals from brokers or from other realtors who might feel that they are not the best option for the client. If they don’t have the means to help them, they might refer the person to your services instead, and you could reward them for that with a portion of the resulting commission.
Get Involved with the Local Business Community
There are various other ways you can benefit from being connected to other businesses both in real estate and in other industries. By connecting to your local business community, you can benefit from referrals, support, and even partnering up with other companies and business people. It’s something that you can do both online and offline, from attending events to talking to people on social media.
Consider Joining the Local Chamber of Commerce
Chances are the business community in your city, county, or region is supported by a local chamber of commerce or economic development partnership. These organizations work to let business thrive in their communities.
Chambers of commerce and economic development councils often work with local leaders to incentivize bringing new businesses and corporations to the region, provide relocation information for those considering moving to the area, and much more.
Joining a chamber of commerce gives you access to information you can leverage when thinking about how to generate real estate leads. Business leaders relocating to your area will likely want to purchase executive homes in your area when their operation moves to town. Listing your real estate business in a relocation guide can attract leads from others relocating to the area from all walks of life.
Join a Business Group
If you’re not sure where to start, joining a local business group or network is a great idea. It will allow you to make connections within the community and also make your business more visible. If you’re involved with a business group, that can often mean that you have opportunities to attend events, get involved with charity and good causes, and generally make people aware of your business.
You will have the chance to meet other business people, which can be beneficial in a number of ways. It can help with referrals and give you support, and it could even connect you to potential clients, whether you deal with residential or commercial real estate.
Be an Active Member of Your Community
A surprising way to generate real estate leads and make a difference around you is to contribute toward philanthropic initiatives as an active member of the community.
For example, The Junior League offers women opportunities to engage in civic leadership and community impact. This puts them in front of a wide variety of community members, from fellow league members to local leaders — many of which will be buying or selling at home at some point in their future. This kind of networking allows you to do good in your community while fostering relationships that could lead to warm leads.
Other opportunities to be an active member of your community might include things like serving on a local charity board, joining a church or religious organization, supporting a fine arts organization, setting up a booth to promote your business at local festivals, and beyond.
Network and Attend Events
Networking is a fantastic way to build your profile and brand image and reputation in the local community. You can network with people in person, as well as online. Try looking for local business events where you can meet other business people or local residents. More general local events could also be a good place for networking.
They could range from local charitable events to community events, where it’s good to get your name and face known. You don’t necessarily always have to attend in an official capacity as a real estate agent and business person. You can get to know people in a more casual, non-business manner, but also let them know what you do and make it clear that you can help them.
Make sure you’re keeping up with local events that would be useful for you to attend. In addition to joining business and networking groups, it can be useful to subscribe to certain mailing lists that let you know about local events.
Check the website for your municipality or community if there is one. It can provide useful information about upcoming events. Check social media too, as this can be a good source of news when you want to know about what’s happening locally. Lastly, try setting up Google Alerts with relevant keywords. This will ensure you get regular emails that let you know about local events or anything else that you want to know about.
Network Online
Networking online can be just as beneficial. Online networking often means using social media to connect with others. This can include somewhere with a more professional focus, such as LinkedIn, which is useful for connecting with other people in business.
However, it could also mean using social media sites and apps that aren’t necessarily purely focused on professional life. Twitter can offer a mix of both industry talk and the chance to engage with people outside of business. Facebook and Instagram can both be good options for engaging more with potential customers and generating leads directly.
Online networking can lead to meeting people offline too, from business people to residents of your local area. It can enhance your business image online to encourage not just online leads but also people coming to see you in person or calling you on the phone too.
How to Get Real Estate Leads with Invicta Local
The information above might seem like an exhaustive list of ways to get real estate leads. However, you can leave some of the legwork to the experts at Invicta Local.
Not only will we handle the details of optimizing your Google Business Profile and get you a great return on ad spend with Google Ads management, we’ll be your guide through online lead generation and more. You’ll find we understand how to get real estate leads.
Real estate clients taking advantage of Invicta Local have sold everything from million dollar homes to new construction condos with warm leads generated right through Google Business Profile. This reputation speaks for itself.
Additionally, Invicta Local has worked with real estate firms of all sizes in many locations across the country. This means we know your business and our team of experts can put our services to work for you.
Are you ready to generate more real estate leads with a leader in local search? Schedule a demo with Invicta Local now.