Real Estate Lead Generation Tips: The First House Isn’t the Last House

When working with your real estate lead generation, it is tempting to think that as soon as the lead comes in, you've got it in the bag. There is the whole "excitement factor" of getting a lead, seeing what the price range is, and then giving them a quick (overly excited) call.

There are a couple of very common mistakes when working leads this way. First, you tend to get very excited, make a call or two, maybe even send an email... then you drop 'em for dead. The second big mistake is assuming just because you had a home or a price point or something that it means that is the ONLY price point or home this lead is there for. Let's speak to this second case.

The reality of the web lead is that the person is normally becoming a lead during their search process, but from there you often don't know what part of the process, and you really don't know what this real estate lead is looking for – at least not for sure. So what can be done?

The tip this week is in how you work the lead on day one vs. how that lead is worked on day five and even day 14. The idea is that you are going to work with this new lead in a way that allows you to be sure about what they are looking for WHILE continuing to offer value. Here is a sample of what you might do with a new lead:

First 15 Minutes: Reach Out

Actions: Call or Text OR Send Email

What you want to do here is to call, text or email as soon as you can, but try to do it with a little snippet of something interesting or helpful. For example, a text like:

"Hey John, you were on my website looking for real estate. Can I help?"

isn't nearly as helpful as something like:

"Hey John, saw you were on my real estate site. I recently saw some new housing stats for the area you're looking at. Love to connect and share. Is there a good time?"

Suddenly, you have some real value and something to start the conversation. Now, all you have to do is log into your site and pull up stats by zip code to send over.

First Few Hours: Confirm Initial Interest, Send Something Interesting

The next action item that can help narrow things down is to jump on your site and review their most recent search history, including recent searches, properties of interest, etc. This is always telling because you can see what they viewed, when, and how many times. You discover many times that the price, location, and even property type can vary.

By looking into what your real estate leads are looking at, you find where to spend more of your time. If someone is consistently looking at homes in the $750K range, and the average price in your market is only $400K – that might be worth some follow-up effort and a little more time.

Once you feel that you know what they are there for, try sending them a listing and that zip code's market stats, like price or inventory trends. With the right tools, this only takes about 10 seconds. Again, this is a much more effective follow-up idea than just sending a general email about how great of an agent you are.

Day 2: Help the Real Estate Lead Cause and Start a Drip

If by day three they haven't already set themselves up a saved search or if only your automatic initial drip is going, review the current drip campaign and see if it matches your lead's view history on properties. Many times, you will find that the properties they are looking at are different from what they first hit the site with (and your auto-dripper may not have gotten it right). If that is the case, becoming more relevant is going to help this lead become responsive.

The steps above are typically about one minute strategies that power-up your real estate lead generation efforts. Including these in with something like our 13-Touch Lead Campaign gives you a big increase conversion rates and helps turn what sometimes seems like a cold, wet fish into a screamin' hot lead.

To view the original article, visit the Inside Real Estate blog.