When it comes to the digital marketing world many real estate agents have moved past “How do I generate leads?” towards “How do I convert more online leads?”.
Converting the leads is where the real challenge comes into play. There’s a ton of companies who can help you get more leads, including us. Those will do nothing for you if you don’t know how to convert them to an in person appointment. Nothing you do online matters if it ultimately doesn’t result in a face to face meeting.
For example, we had a client generate 1,000 leads over 6 months and did not generate a single deal. Not one. The exact same campaign type for another client and he got 6 deals on the first 100 leads.
If you want to convert more leads you need to look at you processes. It’s almost never a question of generating higher quality leads. It’s a question of follow up process.
There exists a lot of opportunities to improve and convert more leads. I often see the same mistake being made time and time again and its right at the beginning of the process. It’s how many respond to the initial inquiry.
Top Online Lead Mistake Many Real Estate Agents Make
So let’s take an example of a common real estate lead. Someone fills out a form on your website asking a question about a specific listing. What I’ve seen many people do right now is respond to the lead with something along the lines of:
“Hi John,
Thank you for reaching out about 123 Main Street, it’s a great listing, priced right, and not likely to last long on the market.
As per your question, the current owners would like to close within the next 60-90 days.
Are you working with an agent? If not, we’d be happy to sit down and discuss how we can help.
Have you been pre-approved yet? Happy to refer you to a mortgage broker who can help.
Would you like to set an appointment to see this property? It has a great layout, it’s been well maintained, and it’s close to some great schools. Presents a great opportunity for a young family. We can meet at my office first to go over buyer representation
Do you have any more questions about the property I could help you with?
I look forward to hearing from you and thanks again for reaching out!
REAL ESTATE AGENT SIGNATURE
*Oh by the way, I’m never too busy for your referrals”
How to Actually Respond to Convert More Online Leads
If you want to convert more online leads you need to respond differently. Remember, people are usually reading their email on their phone and so quick and to the point is better.
The above response asks too many questions and is way too long.
All you are doing at the beginning is trying to get them to respond to you. The first step to convert more online leads is to just get a conversation started.
So if someone asks you a question about closing time frame of your sellers from your website try something like this;
Hi John,
My clients would prefer a mid-October closing but can be flexible for the right offer, what timeline for closing are you looking for?
AGENT SIGNATURE
It answers their question, isn’t overwhelming and ends with a question that has an expectation of a reply. That type of answer will help you convert more online leads.
Instead of laying out all the questions in one email, you can answer each reply and end with another single question. Keep it simple. After a couple back and forth emails where you always answer their questions and respond with your own, you can invite them to a phone call to get it all done in one shot.
Don’t push too hard for the phone call if they haven’t provided a number yet. Respond to them how they have shown they want to talk to you.
If someone is just looking for more information about a listing but doesn’t provide a specific question we recommend something simple like “Are you looking at this property for yourself or as an investment?”
It’s short, simple, and to the point. Remember, the goal is just to get a reply at this stage. That’s the first win. Think of the consumer is a scared cat who ran up a tree. It’s slow deliberate actions to get them down. You don’t just rush up the tree and try and grab them!
A lot of REALTORS are wondering what makes a good real estate Facebook post. I’ve seen a lot of people with good ideas for Facebook but when it came time to execute they fell short and ultimately hurt their good idea. It’s not just about creating good content, it’s about delivering the content in a way that your audience wants to engage with it.
You want to make it simple, memorable, and inviting to look at (hat tip to Leo Burnett via Gary Vaynerchuck’s Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook book) so that they keep coming back to your content. If you overcomplicate your posts you’ll lose your audience.
Anytime you are posting you should think to yourself, if I saw this on my Newsfeed from someone else, would I share it? If the answer is no then you should reconsider what you’re posting. Always consider it from that angle of would you share it? If you wouldn’t share it then it is not a good real estate Facebook post
Instead of just describing what makes a good post lets actually take a look at some posts to see what was done right and what could be improved.
Real Estate Facebook Post #1
This is a great idea for a post. Showing happy clients (she’s smiling in the photo) in front of their home that has sold. So what could be done to improve it? First, include the clients first name at least. It will resonate more with your audience if it said something along the lines of “Congratulations Susan! It was our pleasure helping you get your home sold! Couldn’t be happier for you!”
One issue with this post is the overuse of hashtags. Hashtags are great for Twitter and Instagram but for Facebook they offer no value. Facebook has enabled their use but few people actually search them on Facebook and it clutters the post. One or two may be ok if it helps provide context but don’t go overboard. That level of hash tagging should be reserved for Instagram.
Real Estate Facebook Post #2
This is a good real estate Facebook post. It sounds like real people writing it and has some real personality in it. It uses the clients first names which helps its authenticity. Also, it does a good job at referencing their own content with their Moving with Pets blog post on their website.
So how could this post be improved? Add a link to the moving with pets article. If you just mentioned it you should include a link to it at the end of the post. The best way to do this is to first shorten it through bit.ly so that you can track how many people are clicking through to your content. The only other way I may change this post is to add the names of the kids or adding Adam, Sue, and family!” or a line about the dogs enjoying their new backyard too.
Otherwise, good post!
Real Estate Facebook Post #3
This is an an example of a good real estate Facebook post. It’s not promotional but it’s designed to get engagement.
It entertains the audience so they will more likely keep coming back and engaging with more content. It’s also still home related so its on point in terms of the theme. After a few posts like this its more palatable for the audience when their’s a post asking them to take action in regards to this agents business.
To take a post like this to the next level, run an ad promoting it to fans of the show in your area and you can see a huge jump in engagement. People love being right!
Real Estate Facebook Post #4
This is a great post that has been executed well. It shows they are involved in the community and supports a local company. They’ve even tagged the company to help promote them as well.
People love seeing local businesses supporting each other and the added combo of using the owners first names shows the involvement in the local community.
The more you can promote local interests that are the same interests your ideal clients have, the more your social engagement will skyrocket.
Don’t be afraid to put some money behind a post like this to promote it to more people locally.
Real Estate Facebook Post #5
Here is an example of posting a listing on Facebook. Obviously being in Malibu and a high end home do they have the advantage of great visuals which they used really well here. They picked one really nice photo and gave some details about the property but didn’t overdo it. Then they include a link to the property.
There are a few things I’d change about this post though. One, I would open with a statement or question to get more attention. Newly listed has nothing interesting about it.
Add some personality to this and it can go a long way!
Think of the post as a movie trailer, you want to generate enough excitement to get people to want to click through and learn more about the home.
What have you found works with your Facebook posting to get engagement?
Creating a nice piece of content is half the battle. It’s the toughest part to actually do consistently. If you don’t actually promote your real estate content though, you’ve wasted your efforts. You need to maximize how many people will see it. So to promote your real estate content the right way, just keep reading.
Imagine taking a new listing and then not doing anything. Not putting a sign in the lawn or even putting it on MLS. That’s basically how most agents promote real estate content. As a Real Estate Agent you will take that listing, have a photographer come through, create a feature sheet, professional photography, videos, etc… Then you put it on the MLS. Even that’s just the tip of the iceberg in promoting your listing. Your listing is no different than your content.
Pro Tip: Listings are also one of the best sources for content you have
What are you doing to promote your content the way you promote your listings?
So let’s take a look at how you can promote your real estate content.
Promote Real Estate Content To Your List!
You should be building up an email list. When you want to promote real estate content you should be able to share it with them first.
Utilized properly, your email list should actually be one of your best sources of business. A lot of your online marketing should go towards building up your mailing list. This can be your gold mine.
Promote your real estate content by writing an email highlighting the reason they should watch/read it (ie. whats in it for them?) and then link to it. No need to make it a long email. For example, If I was to email this out I would just write it like this:
Do you want to learn how to promote the content you’ve created? I just wrote an article detailing the best way to get more people seeing it. Click here to read it
That’s it. Nice and simple. Don’t overcomplicate it.
When you create great real estate content you can share it with the lists that would actually find it valuable. They follow you for a reason, you’re great content is part of it.
Social Media
Social Media is an incredible tool for sharing content. When I was building my first blog Google+ and Facebook were the primary drivers of traffic. That may be one of the few times I give Google+ a positive comment so enjoy it while you can Google! It’s not as easy anymore. The competition for organic views has increased dramatically.
So let’s say you created an amazing 5 minute video. You can post that across different social networks like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and LInkedIN to promote your real estate content.
It’s not just the video you create though. Take individual takeaways from it and create other posts out of it. Did you have a great quote? That one great quote can be put into an image and shared across the different social networks you use.
Think about how you can chop up the content into micro-pieces of content. This is basically the Gary Vee content strategy. That one piece of pillar content can often be turned into 10-20-30-40 other pieces of content.
Paid Promotion
Facebook especially has changed to make it more likely that you’ll have to pay to promote your content to get in front of more people. The nice part though is that Facebook & Instagram ads are cheap so it won’t cost you much to get it front of more people.
What’s great about Facebook ads is the targeting level. If you were promoting a piece about a local school you can promote it to parents of children under the age of 10. They are the ones deciding which school they want to send their children to. You can be the one helping them make that decision. If they need to move into a new school zone who do you think they are going to get to help them?
Use the Facebook ad targeting features in the ads manager to make sure only interested audiences are seeing your content.
Make sure you have a Facebook pixel embedded on your site so that when they leave Facebook and go back to Facebook you can target them with more ads. They’ve already shown an interest in your content so now you can start showing them even more content or a specific call to action.
Once they’re on your post make sure you have the ability to opt-in to your mailing list as well. Just look at our site, we have few options to get your email.
Guest Appearances
This is one avenue of content promotion that agents neglect quite a bit. The power of leveraging other people’s networks to promote your content is huge. Start small, look for local bloggers and companies who target a similar demographic. Ask to produce content for them. Can be anything, just find a topic that is somewhat real estate related while relevant to their audience. If it’s a written post you are doing then use it to link back to one piece of your content.
For example, I did this above in this article. I spoke about a piece of content I written and linked to it. That drives traffic to that piece of content. Now do that on one someone else site. This can work with many different mediums. Just find those targeting the same demographic and find a way to collaborate. Provide value to their audience and some of them will naturally come check out yours.
This is also a great networking tool. It gives you a great reason to reach out, talk, and find out how you can help each others business.
Repurpose Content
Repurposing content is a great way to create content quickly. Let’s go back to the example of an article about a school. You created an in-depth report on everything to know about the school. You can quickly re-purpose a section of it for a social media post. Do one post just talking about the sports at the particular school or the music program. It’s part of the larger piece and you are leveraging the main piece.
Think about this very blog post. I’ll be able to take different sections of it and use it to create even more blog posts. Go even more in depth on the different topics I spoke about here. Then link back to this and in the future update this article to include links to the more in depth posts. I may even do one of those in depth posts on someone else’s platform and link back here.
One good piece of content can be repurposed and distributed in dozens of ways. You just need to get creative about it. As long as what you create still provides value then you can
Promoting your real estate content is the most important part of a content strategy. Without a promotion strategy then there is no point at all to even creating it. Take the time to plan it out.
The need for good real estate content in an online marketing strategy is important. Few do it but those who do reap the rewards. Most who are creating good real estate content know to avoid one thing.
Fluff. My biggest pet peeve.
The best digital marketing strategy is to provide no fluff. All you should do is provide value to your audience. Nothing extra inserted just to hit a certain length you read in a blog post was optimal. Whether it’s written, video, or audio just provide the most value you can with your content.
This is the same strategy real estate agents should use when trying to create good real estate content.
That may mean some content is shorter than you think is appropriate and some is MUCH longer. I’ll make them as short or as I long as I need to ensure that everything I put out is focused on value above all else.
“The Most Valuable of All Talents is Never Using Two Words When One Will do” – Thomas Jefferson
It’s an old quote but very applicable today. You don’t need to hit a minimum number of words to be effective. From an SEO perspective, Google values good content above all. Algorithm changes will effect you a lot less if you’re focused on providing good real estate content.
A lot of gurus will say that peoples attention span is short now and you need to make content short. This isn’t true. While attention span may be short for a lot of things, people will consume good content.
Whether its a Netflix binge, an hour long discussion over beers about real estate marketing, or comedians in cars getting coffee. People will consume great long form content. Jerry Seinfeld had people turn down his web show specifically because he wanted it to be longer than the 3-5 minutes executives thought people would watch online.
He’s now made tens of millions because people watched good content.
So the real secret to good real estate content is to provide as much value as possible and then stop at whatever length that is.
I speak to real estate agents all the time and hear I bought this real estate website but haven’t generated any leads from it, it’s crap.
The truth is, the majority of real estate agents marketing online are at fault for their websites failure. They treat their website as if they got a seller to agree to list their home with them then never even put up a for sale sign on the lawn or put it on MLS.
You have to put together a strategy to actually generate business from your website. You can’t just buy a templated website and walk away.
So here are 3 basic ways to generate leads from your real estate website.
Lists of Homes for Sale
The consumer wants their life made easier through your real estate website. They have one goal, and that’s a house. Finding the right
one can be nerve wracking. So help them in their search. Offer to create a customize list of homes for sale that match their criteria. They sign up and get a specific list such as bungalows, fixer uppers, or homes with three car garages for example.
I would offer these on different pages of your real estate website. Do you have a blog post about ways that discusses a specific school? Add a popup form, which can be easily created through a tool like Leadpages, that offers homes for sale in that specific school district.
Make the list of homes specific to the content they are looking at during that specific moment. So when you’re going through your site and looking at a page, think about what type of list of homes would make the most sense to offer.
On top of that, make specific pages on your website for each of different types of homes for sale so they can start to rank on Google.
Pro Tip: When you deliver the homes, add some personal insight. Don’t just send them the listings like everyone else will. Add insight that proves your expertise.
Resource Guides
People are hungry for information and want to consume a lot of it. Especially when it comes to a huge purchase like real estate. So your real estate website should offer them information they can’t get anywhere else. Specialized knowledge especially offers great opportunity. So create resources on your website that offers to help people learn about very specific situations.
As an example, you have a potential client living abroad who wants to move to your area for work. How would they find you?
They are going to go on Google and search for information about the process of relocating to your area. Build some posts on your site explaining every part of the process from the beginning until they are living in their new home. Make it a one stop shop for the information they need. Then add in some downloadable resource guides they can download in exchange for their contact information.
You can do the same with first time buyers, first time sellers, seniors, investment properties, military relocations, etc… It’s a long list of specific situations and if you help them navigate the waters they are often willing to leave their contact information in exchange for these guides.
IDX Real Estate Website Plugin
The most competitive way right now to generate leads on a real estate website is with an IDX feed. By using IDX or DDF to have listing displayed on your website you can keep people on your site longer. As I mentioned earlier, ultimately most people are just looking for their next home, so why not provide it for them?
The odds of you ranking organically from your IDX feed is incredibly low. It’s really hard to compete against the the big brands and companies like Zillow on organic SEO.
So you’ll most likely need to pay for google ads that drive traffic. Then with forced registration you can capture their contact information. Without forced registration you won’t generate a consistent flow of leads from IDX but the leads you do generate will generally be higher quality.
Online there are a ton of ways to generate leads from your real estate website. These are three of the most simple to implement. The resource guides can take some time to build but once they’re built they can work for years. You’ll need some expertise to install the home search function but we recommend hiring a professional company to do that for you.
A big thing digital marketing for real estate is to continually test new ways to get more business. You never know which method will work until you’ve tried it. Sometimes its something you least expect.
When you’re visiting websites, look at what you like and what intrigued you, and think of ways you can implement all or parts of it yourself!
We’ve noticed, through many of our Over A Pint episodes, that one of the most common issues that REALTORS® face is the overflow of work and their need for an assistant. Many REALTORS® are unsure of how to hire an assistant or train them. “What kind of criteria should I be looking for?”“How do I know they’re the right person for the job?”“What if I don’t have enough work for them?”
Start With The Application Process
Once you’ve selected which websites you want to use to find your new assistant (click here for Canada’s 10 Best Job Search Websites), it’s time to type up your job listing. The trick is to include something in your listing that will think out the herd.For example, when I was looking to hire a social media marketer, I included a hidden question at the bottom asking applicants to mention our Facebook group. We had about 130 people apply for the position, around 80% did not answer the question, and only 7 people answered correctly. From the 7, I hired the person that best fit the job requirements and the personality of our company.
Capacity Talent vs. Cul-De-Sac Talent
Next, you need to figure out exactly what time of assistant you need to hire. Rick Sergison, one of our special guests in the above Over A Pint video, mentioned 2 different types of talent that we’ve described for you below.Cul-De-Sac Talent : a person with cul-de-sac talent “is someone who can do the current job really well, but who does not have the desire or ability (thus the capacity) to learn and take on new tasks and responsibilities.” Capacity Talent : this person is someone who can do not only the current job really well, but who also has the desire and ability to learn and take on new tasks and responsibilities.”Rick gave an example where an assistant, who previously worked with him, had come into his office with a question. Because Rick was on the phone with a client, the assistant chose to sit down and wait another 20 minutes before Rick ended his call. This is a perfect example of someone who doesn’t have the motivation to use every minute productively.He then decided to put a job listing up at their local school. He hired a mother who wanted to get back into the workforce while having flexible hours to take care of the kids. Though she didn’t necessarily work a 40 hour week, worked part-time in the summer, and took days off when the kids weren’t in school, she was a fantastic worker! This assistant not only did the work assigned to her, but went out of her way to research and provide extra services that helped Rick grow his business and giving clients that extra personal touch. She didn’t need her hand held every step of the way and was proactive.
Ask The Right Questions
Here are some examples of questions you can ask during an interview that will help you find an assistant with capacity talent!
Tell me about a time when you were asked to do something you had never done before. How did you react? What did you learn?
Recall a time when your manager was unavailable when a problem arose. How did you handle the situation? With whom did you consult?
Describe a time when you volunteered to expand your knowledge at work, as opposed to being directed to do so.
Now that you’re ready to hire an assistant, we want to help you with online marketing! You can book your free consultationhere. We’ll discuss your goals and figure out the best way we can help you succeed online.Got any topics you’d like us to cover in a future episode or a guest you’d like us to sit down with? Let us know in the comments below! You can also reach us onFacebook andInstagram.Source : Ward Real Estate
This is a great post that has been executed well. It shows they are involved in the community and supports a local company. They’ve even tagged the company to help promote them as well.
Here is an example of posting a listing on Facebook. Obviously being in Malibu and a high end home do they have the advantage of great visuals which they used really well here. They picked one really nice photo and gave some details about the property but didn’t overdo it. Then they include a link to the property.
