Real estate agents looking for new business face some challenges when it comes to capturing leads. Often, agents are operating in a crowded landscape, where hundreds or thousands of realtors compete for the same pool of buyers and sellers. Add in the fact that the real estate landscape, much like all industries, has changed dramatically in recent years. 

SaaS tools, cloud computing, and other innovations have changed the game for agents, bringing more control and choice to buyers. As a result, real estate agents must work the web to attract more qualified leads, in a cost-effective, sustainable manner.  

In this article, we’ll look at some ways that real estate agents can capture more leads by taking marketing strategies multichannel, building up their reputation, and using technology to help them manage all of these efforts without going insane.

Let’s have a look.

1. Diversify your marketing efforts

Not every potential homebuyer is actively searching for a home. Prospective buyers only spend about 20% of the time spent online actively researching listings or real estate info. 

If you're investing in Google Ad campaigns here or posting the odd listing on Facebook, you're missing opportunities to reach your audience. By diversifying your channel mix, you'll be able to reach potential buyers wherever they are—Google, Instagram, Zillow, and so on. 

2. Know your buyers—well. 

Understanding the buyer is the first step toward building a strategy that brings more targeted leads into your funnel. Buyer personas represent your ideal clients — so you might have one for the millennial buying their first home, the downsizing retiree, the couple that needs room for their growing family, etc. 

Take time to build a profile that represents the different audiences you serve. This includes their demographics, salary, life stage, what they do, and other factors that could impact how they approach the home-buying process. 

Keep in mind, your personas must reflect real people with real motivations, desires, and concerns. 

1. Behavior and Motivation—What goals do prospects hope to accomplish? What kind of home fits in with their current lifestyle, and how does it align with their next chapter? In real estate, the goal is finding the perfect home, but there are a lot of emotions that come into play, here.

2. Obstacles—What information do buyers need to arrive at a decision? What challenges stand in the way?

3. Mindset—Homebuyers enter this process ready to make one of the biggest decisions of their lives. You'll want to gain an understanding of how to address their questions and guide them through the process in a way that's unique to each buyer.

Ultimately, you'll want to spend a lot of time doing the research here. The more you know about your prospects and their journey, the better targeted your content, ads, and other efforts will be. 

Regardless of industry, providing exceptional service should start with accurate reporting data. Buying a home is a big decision, and first-timer need all the help they can get. The right analytics tools give agents the ability to deliver the right content to the right buyers.

3. Go beyond basic blogging—realtors need targeted, high-value content

We've long known that blogging is a great way to build a positive reputation online and show up in the Google search results. But, it's essential to understand that Google's content standards have grown up alongside millennial homebuyers. 

Today, content needs to move prospects toward a goal, providing a detailed "why" and "how" in response to searchers' burning questions. Clients want to understand the finer points about buying and selling from getting their financials to choose the right home. 

As you begin building your content strategy, consider the Always Be Helping philosophy. Your customers are searching for information that will help them make the right choice. Additionally, because the traditional buying cycle is no longer a linear process, high-value content enables you to deliver the content that proves A: you know what you're doing, and B: you understand what that prospect needs at that exact moment. 

A few ideas for your content strategy:

• Home-buying tips that explain the basics to first-time buyers

• Blog posts that cater to the local community--local businesses, schools, parks, bike paths, transportation, nightlife, etc.

• Guides that help buyers understand how to navigate local lenders or government regulations.

• Investment guides

Offer resources to your leads

Building on the idea of creating great content and publishing it on your website and socials, consider sending resources to your leads. This might be something like a guide to first-time sellers or an e-book for new real estate investors.  

While it takes some time (and potentially a ghostwriter) to push out a high-level e-book or white paper, consider lead magnets an investment. 

You can use them inside drip campaigns, promote them on your website, and repeatedly share on social media sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Plus, offering a resource as the first point of contact gives you the chance to provide valuable insights early in the journey, opening the door for a discussion. 

4. Go multi-platform

Don't sleep on Google My Business.

About 46% of all Google searches are used to find a local business, be it a place to get a haircut or a nearby farmer's market. Looking for an agent is no different.

Google My Business search results always show up on top of the search listings. What does that mean? You can be right there at the top. Registering your profile on GMB literally puts your business on the map, making it easy for people to find you on mobile and desktop alike. 

The other piece of the GMB puzzle is reputation management--specifically in the form of customer reviews. 

According to research from BrightLocal, a whopping 86% of consumers read reviews before visiting a business.

Sure, this stat pertains to consumers in general, but it goes to show, reviews are valuable. Or think about it this way, if people won't order a pair of shoes or try a new restaurant without consulting the comments, how might they feel when it comes to the biggest purchase they'll ever make?

As such, reviews and social proof are a realtor's secret weapon. 

Community Pages

Community pages are typically included on real estate websites as a way to help potential buyers learn more about the area. Content should span everything from local hotspots to schools, shopping, and things to do—basically anything people might want to know. 

Why are they so effective? A few reasons, here’s a quick look at some of the benefits:

• Community pages help you establish yourself as a local expert-

• They attract high-intent leads, specifically people looking for information about real estate in your area.

• It’s an opportunity to rank for local keywords.

• You can promote them on social media, in email campaigns, and in paid ads. 

The best community pages include the following:

• Information about the local market combined with the best parts of living in the area.

• A lead capture method—use a form, a chatbot, or both.

• A call-to-action—encourage readers to take the next step whether that’s downloading an e-book or setting up a call. 

The point is, while we get that covering your favorite restaurants and upcoming community events might not seem like a priority, skipping out on community pages means you’re missing an opportunity to reach potential buyers. 

Start taking video seriously

According to Inman, roughly 85% of buyers want to work with an agent that uses video to connect with viewers. Yet despite knowing video drives ROI, only about 9% of agents have embraced the medium.

Some ways you might try using video in your marketing strategy:

• Add digital home tours to Instagram Stories and Facebook

• Post videos on Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube with instructional content. 

• Host live Q&A videos on either Instagram or Facebook where you can answer questions in real-time

• Invest in virtual tour software

5. Get smart about paid ad campaigns

As mentioned, consumer behavior is changing the home buying journey, and as a result, changing how potential buyers respond to lead generation ads. Just about every real estate site is trying to capture contact details in exchange for information about their home value. 

From there, they’ll be targeted on Facebook, Google, YouTube, and via email. Instead of running generic ads, map out the entire buyer’s journey for each of your personas. You’ll want to create an ad strategy that connects with your audience on multiple channels (so, you’ll run ads on search and social)

Target users based on home-buyer data

Facebook offers real estate agents data on actual homeowners, from income to potential credit card debt to local home prices. Combine those insights with demographic and behavioral data and you can create super-specific ads (on Facebook and Instagram) that nudge prospects through the sales cycle. What’s more, you can download audience files from Facebook and use them in your Google Ads campaigns. AdEspresso walks you through the process here.

Don’t forget to remarket

Here's the thing, many consumers start thinking about buying home months, or even years before they act on the decision. This means that there's a good chance that your audience is spending a good deal of time doing online research well before they ever get in touch. 

Remarketing is an easy way to get more mileage out of your paid ad strategy, allowing you to reconnect with past website visitors who leave without converting. And due to the nature of the business, return several times to check for updated listings. 

If a user looks at a listing page for a home you’re selling, remarket to them using ads that show additional details like the floor plan or information about the local community. In the CTA you might ask if they’d like to book a showing. 

Run broader PPC campaigns

Lately, there's been a shift toward thinking hyperlocal when it comes to real estate ads, which gives agents the ability to target ads down to the neighborhood. As is the case with any high-intent keywords, CPLs (cost-per-lead) can get expensive. One way to lower your CPLs is to go broad—focusing on a large area instead of specific suburbs or hot neighborhoods. 

While that might not be your area, running some campaigns based on broad search terms allows you to reach people relocating from further away. For example, someone considering moving from NYC to Los Angeles might search for "Los Angeles homes," but would be equally satisfied with a "Santa Monica home" or a "Burbank home."

6. Move toward a data-driven strategy

As much as we’d hate to lean on cliche, you can’t understand what you don’t measure. This infographic from Outbound Engine pulls in some startling statistics, noting that many reps aren’t paying attention to the ROI linked to their marketing campaigns. 

According to research from McKinsey, real estate pros that pay attention to what they call “non-traditional metrics” have better predictive power than those that limit their data analysis to traditional variables.

Capturing the right data will generate insights that allow agents to close more sales.

As such, you’ll need to make sure you have the right tools at your disposal so that you can close deals--fast. A CRM is essential here, as it allows you to track leads as they move through the pipeline, along with other activities like emails sent, appointments booked, and so on. 

Additionally, you’ll also want to look into a social listening tool and a lead management system to support your cross-platform efforts.

Social listening is perfect for those “non-traditional” metrics we mentioned above. Tools like HootSuite, Mention, Pitchbox, and countless others can help you track audience sentiment from across the web. This way, customer reviews, comments, engagement, and press mentions can all be reviewed from one central hub. 

Lead management systems (LMS) like SalesCandy streamline the lead capture process by routing leads to salespeople so they can respond in real-time. Agents can also track interactions and follow-ups and review ad campaigns and sales stats.

Wrapping up

In the real estate business, capturing leads is a cross-platform affair spanning everything from paid ads to organic traffic. That means, you’ll need to focus on connecting with consumers at every touchpoint from Instagram and Facebook, to Google’s SERPs, review sites and community pages. 

It’s also about collecting the data that supports smarter decision-making so you don’t waste time and money on campaigns that do nothing for your ROI. To learn more about how SalesCandy can help you power up your lead gen efforts, book a demo today.