How to Build a Successful Real Estate Lead Generation Plan

As a real estate agent, you know how important it is to bring in leads. Most agents do consider signing up for services from the best real estate lead generation companies, but not many of them have a lead generation plan.

Not having a plan can be a big mistake. It can cause you to become disorganized with the leads you have, and, if you are just throwing things at the wall to see what sticks, it could mean that your strategies are not well suited to your business.

Not only do you need to come up with a real estate plan, but you also need to come up with one that is customized to your needs. So how does one go about doing this? Read on for a comprehensive guide that will tell you everything you need to know.

Before you begin – we’re assuming you already have a strong real estate website. If you haven’t built one, you should check out this article to get one built.

Assess Your Sales Personality

According to experts, salespeople like yourself can fall into one of four sales personality categories which include:

• Assertive
• Amiable
• Expressive
• Analytic

You may already know which you are, but if you are having trouble, there are online quizzes you can take to guide you in the right direction.

Once you find out what sales personality you are, you can use that to establish your brand identity which will come through in all your marketing materials.

 

Determine Your Goal

Every lead generation plan should have a goal. Your goal should include what you want to achieve and when you want to achieve it by. For example, you may want to increase your lead base by 50% in the next six months. Or you may go even bigger by planning on a 10% increase in sales by the end of the year.

Whatever your goal may be, it’s important to be specific about a timeline and results.

 

How Much Money Do I Need to Make?

When defining how much money you need to make, you need to think about how much money you need to live. Now determine how much you make from the average home sale and how many homes you need to sell to make the money you need.

After you get some real estate experience under your belt, you will be able to determine how many people you need to talk to to get a deal and how many appointments you need to get a listing.

The people you talk to will be a combination of potential clients you meet at open houses, FSBOs, expired listings, renters you are trying to convert and people you are networking with such as retired agents, service people lawyers and more.

Don’t be surprised if you end up figuring that you will be talking to tens of thousands of people a year to reach your goal.

Divide that by the number of days a week you work considering weekends, vacation days and more. You will then figure out how many people you will need to talk to to reach your goal. If you decide you want to make more than your daily expenses, the number of people you talk to will increase.

Essentially, to keep up with your goals, you may have to talk to about 40 people a day. That can be nearly impossible. If you want that number to go down, you will need to sharpen your skills by learning your scripts better, improving your prequalifying skills and boosting your listing presentations.

Keep in mind that every contact you call must reached out to at least four times a year to bring potential clients closer to converting.

 

Match Your Strategy to Your Personality Type

The next thing you will want to do is to match your strategies to your personality type. So if you are amiable, send your clients birthday cards and congratulatory messages. If you’re analytic, send them stats about the real estate market in your area.

Allowing your personality to come through in your marketing materials will make your job more pleasant and it will infuse you with the passion you need to make connections and reach your goals.

 

Consider the Personalities of Your Target Audience

In addition to thinking of your own personality, you must also think of the personalities of the people in your target audience. To do this you must first determine your ideal buyer personas and profiles. This can be based on several factors including:

• Demographics
• Common professions
• What they do on a day-to-day basis
• What challenges they face
• Where they go for information i.e. what social media sites they are likely to use

Once you figure this out, you will be able to come up with a marketing strategy that engages them and that they can relate to. There are specific strategies you can take advantage of to help attract buyer leads, or seller leads.

 

Identify the Resources You Have Available

A lead generation plan will require an investment, but you will save money by identifying the resources you have available first. These include:

• The people you know including those who can connect you with potential clients and those who can teach you valuable career lessons.
• Your own knowledge and work experience which can help you present creative marketing strategies that establish you as a leader in your field.
• What tools you have on hand including social media platforms, computers, answering services, specialized software and more. These will be valuable in helping you reach out to potential leads.

Once you establish the resources you have available, you can determine what you need. This can include additional classes, joining organizations, launching paid campaigns, one of the best real estate CRMs and additional software.

These things can be expensive so you will need to determine how much you can afford to spend. Prioritize what you need. You may be able to acquire other resources later.

 

Explore Lead Generation Costs and Options

You’ve accounted for the resources you have on hand and the ones you will need, but technology is always growing. It’s important to stay on top of the latest trends so you don’t miss out to the competition.

Do some research to find out about real estate lead generation software tools you’ve never heard of and how much they cost. Determine if they are worth the investment.

 

Active Strategies or Passive Strategies

Lead generation strategies can be active or passive.

An active strategy is more controlled. An example would be calling a FSBO listing and trying to get them to convert. In this instance, you can keep calling FSBOs until you find one that will meet with you.

A passive strategy would be to post something on social media or to publish a blog on your website. It’s out there getting noticed but you’re not really doing anything with it. You can turn that sort of passive strategy into a more active one by emailing a link to the post or article out to clients.

A good lead generation campaign will take a combination of both passive and active strategies but the more active you are, the more results you will get.

 

Optimize Your Most Effective Strategies

When it comes to lead generation ideas and strategies, there are a wide variety out there. But trying to juggle them all will lead to a low ROI and a lot of energy expended for minimal results.

Once you experiment a bit, you will find the strategies that work best for you. Focus on three or four of them to get the results you need.

 

Select a Pillar Strategy

Your pillar strategy will be the focus of your campaign. It should be the most effective active strategy you use. It should be carried out in your real estate plan on a regular basis as you see fit.

 

Choose Your Support Strategies

Your pillar strategy should be supported by other strategies that are a mix of active and passive. In choosing them you must consider which work best as well as which fit into your budget. You should also consider which you enjoy using most and which align best with your personality.

Your plan should also include managing your sphere of influence (SOI) by communicating with leads regularly, holding small events and following a marketing plan. This will bring in a steady stream of repeat and referral clients.

 

Build a Content Marketing Strategy

A content marketing strategy involves determining the negative and positive triggers that are leading people to your website and where they are in the funnel when they visit.

They could be at one of three stages in the buyer journey, including:

• Awareness
• Consideration
• Decision making

The goal of this exercise is to determine how you want to target your audience in terms of content ideas, blog titles and email subject lines- essentially the elements of your campaign that are most likely to attract leads.

It’s also a good idea to find keywords that are relevant to your services, target audience and the problems they are facing. There are several keyword-finding tools available on the internet you can use to achieve this task.

 

Select Pillar and Support Pages

Earlier, we discussed how to develop pillar and support strategies in your campaign. You can take a similar approach when developing your website.

Think of a pillar topic that should be featured on your landing page. Then come up with ten or so blogs that support that main idea.

Over time, consider changing out your support pages (and even your pillar page) based on what’s having the biggest impact with your target audience.

 

Make it About Your Offer

Like any business, you will need to decide what your call to action is. For example, if you are selling vitamins, your CTA may be ‘buy my vitamins’ or something more subtle like ‘sign up for our newsletter’ or ‘check out our website’.

When you are selling real estate, you won’t want to go with ‘buy a house’ as your CTA. It’s not realistic. Rather, you will want to sell people on something that shows your knowledge and helps you keep in touch with them, so they come to you first when it’s time to buy or sell.

So, getting them to sign up for a newsletter is a good option. You may also want to provide them with a resource such as a white paper. They can access the white paper by inputting their contact information giving you the information you need to stay in touch.

The white paper itself will show your expertise in the field making them more likely to use your services or to refer you to someone else who is looking for an agent.

Once you decide what you’re offering, use your other promotional materials to guide people to take the desired action.

 

Nurture Your Leads

The sales process takes time, and you will need to contact potential clients several times before you make progress. It’s important to develop a process to keep them moving through the funnel. This can even be automated so it does not require as much as your time.

The strategy you choose is up to you, but here’s a good example.

• Kickback Email: A kickback email should be sent out immediately after you collect their contact information. It can say something as simple as, ‘thanks for signing up’ along with a brief description of what you offer.
• Nurture: A nurture email should be sent out 3-4 days later and may reveal a bit more about your services.
• Survey: Encourage potential clients to fill out a survey so you have a better idea of their real estate needs. It should go out 2-3 days after the nurture email.
• Sell: This email should go in for the kill. It should be sent out after another 2-3 days. It should state your CTA in no uncertain terms.
• Second Tap: If they haven’t responded in 4-5 days, send out an email letting them know you have noticed their lack of response. You may also include a customer testimonial to further entice them.
• Bail: If another 4-5 days goes by and you still haven’t heard from them, acknowledge their lack of response. Continue to keep in touch but use less aggressive tactics.

If you are in real estate, bringing in leads is everything. Building a plan will help you effectively reach your goals. What strategies will you be including in your campaign?