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!