The 6 Steps to Building The Ultimate REALTOR® Lead Machine

If you're reading this, you are very likely to be suffering from LSD. No, not the drug; it's Lead Starved Depression. We're going to cure that by the time you get to the bottom of this post! Never again:

• Wonder why your website generates so few leads.
• Get tired of products/services promising leads and not delivering.
• Sit up late at night trying to post to numerous social sites with no results.
• Buy leads from any source.
• Work too many low quality leads and tire-kickers.
• Lose prospects to other agents with better CRM practices.

I am writing this because I hear from real estate agents all the time who are just tired of trying "stuff" to get more leads and get them to closing. The root of the problem isn't always the "stuff," but more the lack of an ordered process. What do these things have in common?

• Computers
• Airline pilots
• Operating rooms

They all have a SYSTEM. The computer must have an operating system like Windows or Linux to work. Airline pilots have a pre-flight checklist and equipment inspection system to stay safe. Operating rooms have a very strict system of setup and sterilization of instruments to avoid patient infections.

The SYSTEM

This begs the obvious question: why do so many real estate professionals assume that great success at lead generation will just happen without a SYSTEM? They are frustrated trying to pull together multiple solutions and products to reach the goal of a steady stream of qualified leads. In this post, I'm going to walk you through a 6-step system that I guarantee will be a massive lead generation machine.

This system works for new agents, top producers, buyer's agents, listing agents, discount or full service, small or large brokerages; anyone who uses it properly. This system is all about applying the FORMULA FOR GROWTH.

L x C x V x f = Growth Potential

There are only four ways to grow your real estate business:

• L - increase the number of leads coming in.
• C - increase the number of clients (more leads handled better).
• V - increase the average transaction value.
• f - increase the frequency of transactions.

If you double any single one of these formula components, you'll double your business, commissions and income. Double all of them and you'll increase your business 16 times!

• Start by bringing in more quality leads.
• Do a better job of converting your leads to clients and closings.
• Target market to increase the average transaction; more expensive homes.
• Do more transactions with past clients (tougher because they don't buy and sell until they're ready, but don't lose them before they act again)

Learn the Steps to Building the SYSTEM: Introducing The Ultimate REALTOR® Lead Machine!

This 6-step system is going to show you how to increase every one of these variables, especially the first two, very quickly--leads and clients. This infograph shows you the steps, and we'll look at each to see how and why they work together to grow your business.

The following infograph outlines The Ultimate REALTOR Lead Machine. Download a PDF version here.

Print this and nail it to the wall next to your desk. If you plan on executing this strategy, you need to reference it often.

When you are learning marketing tactics like Google Adwords or Facebook advertising, you will need to constantly remind yourself of the Realtor Lead Machine. There is little benefit in understanding Facebook or Google Adwords advertising or SEO in and of itself. There is enormous potential in understanding how to apply all these tactics as part of the overall strategy.

Here are the steps:

• STEP 1: Define your overall market and brand
• STEP 2: Choose your traffic source
• STEP 3: Generate leads by launching very targeted landing pages
• STEP 4: Use a CRM solution to follow up with the leads until they are ready to buy/sell
• STEP 5: Close the deal
• STEP 6: Analyze your numbers, refine your campaign

Let's begin with...

1. Define your overall market and brand

We're about to look at some amazing ways to generate leads online, but before you do that you need to answer ONE question. Are YOU your BRAND or are people going to respond better if you build your marketing presence around your local market area and real estate?

In other words, if it were a website domain name, as an example, would it be YourName.com or YourCityHomeMover.com?

Once you define your brand, you're going to be using it all over the place, especially online. Some things you need to do include:

• Get a domain name for your brand.
• Claim your brand on the social sites.
• Set up a website with the single purpose focus on a niche for leads.
• Create a blog and voice to talk about you and your brand.
• Create all your other branded marketing materials for print and other traditional media.

Brand applies to every one of our variables in our Ultimate REALTOR Lead Machine.

In the next step, we'll dispel the myth behind traffic generation...

2. Choose your traffic source

There is no such a thing as TRAFFIC PROBLEM. Last month, ONE BILLION PEOPLE visited Facebook alone and Facebook gives you all the means to target each and every one of them.

You may not know how to convert those visitors to leads, or the leads into buyers or sellers. But you DO NOT have a traffic problem and here is why...

What if I told you that every time you get 1000 visitors to your website you will make $20,000 in commission? Could you get traffic to that website?

Heck yeah, you could! I bet you would be willing to spend $2500 to drive 1000 visitors to that website even if 1 out of 1000 translated into a deal.

The lesson we've learned here is that once you understand the Realtor Lead Machine, you become unstoppable at generating traffic and leads online.

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adwords, Instagram, Pinterest are all lined up to sell you targeted traffic. The trick is to get your message out to the right people where they are most likely to see it AND know how much each visit is worth to you.

We will teach you tactics like Google Adwords and Facebook Advertising, blogging, SEO and so on, BUT FIRST YOU NEED TO UNDERSTAND THE SYSTEM.

Your traffic strategy begins with driving visitors into bunch of VERY TARGETED LANDING PAGES.

3. Generate leads by launching very targeted landing pages

So you have a brand and know how to advertise it. Congrats! But we are not done yet.

Now it's time to create a very targeted advertising campaign directed to a very specific audience. You want to attract prospects to a specific niche landing page. What are the most common niches in a residential real estate business?

• Home Seller
• Home Buyers
• First Time Buyers
• Condo Buyers
• Open House Visitors
• ...

The shotgun approach used by most real estate agents online is to target everyone and everything ... all at once!

Most agents have navigation sections on their website for home buyers, home sellers, their dog, cat, neighbours and everyone in between!

You do need a full business website, and you will generate some leads this way, but it's not a part of this system. The Ultimate Realtor Lead Machine is all about TARGETING and FOCUS.

Here's a high-performing landing page from WebsiteBox designed to generate home seller leads.

The idea behind this website is to give away free CMAs (Comparative Market Analysis) in return for a visitor's name, address, email and phone number.

This landing page works because of the careful targeting of the right audience and a website focused only on one thing: lead generation in a single niche. In other words, if you want listings, you need a site focused on offering something sellers want enough to give you their contact information.

We do this with our Home Valuation LeadSite. It offers a free home valuation via email. The first thing listing prospects want to know is what's my home worth? A home valuation offer is catnip, and they'll gladly provide their contact information to get one for free. With a different very targeted niche lead site for each of our prospect types, we create a lead magnet to attract the right prospect, a highly qualified lead.

And we are able to do this in scale as we have created 10 unique, highly targeted LeadSites to help REALTORS generate leads. We call them WebsiteBox LeadSites.

The thinking behind WebsiteBox LeadSites is: What irresistible bribe could you offer in exchange for a prospect's contact information? The more laser-focused your give away is - the better your landing page converts. A give away that solves a specific problem for a specific segment of the market will generate more leads...

...and more leads means more customers.

4. Use a CRM solution to follow up with the leads until they are ready to buy/sell

If you understand and execute on this step, you'll be ahead of most of your competitors.

Getting a good lead is great, but keeping them until they're ready to take action is where many agents drop the ball.

Remember, our main goal is to increase the number of customers. So far, we have only generated leads through our landing page. we still haven't generated new customers.

The idea here is pretty simple ...

Once the lead is captured, they receive automated and timed drip emails carefully written to keep them interested and returning to you for more information. Your brand must stay top-of-mind when they think about real estate. The Internet has increased the time delay from initial thoughts of buying or selling to actually signing a contract. In many cases, it is months, and you must communicate with them regularly so they don't end up with a competitor who does keep in touch.

The CRM system must do other things, as well, if you want maximum results. It should allow you to see what they're doing on your website. Which homes they're viewing. The type of searches they are conducting on your IDX, and so on.

Using the right CRM system, you will increase the C (Clients) variable in our formula, but also something else. That elusive f (frequency) will rise as well because you'll work with past clients and retain those relationships for multiple transactions.

They key here is to constantly keep in touch with your leads ... until they are ready to buy/sell.

5. Close the Deal

A lead is just that ... a lead. It's not a listing or a sale, just an introduction to get to a listing or sale and the closing table. We just said that we need to keep in touch until they're ready to make a decision. For the seller, it's signing a listing agreement. For the buyer, it's signing a purchase contract.

In your drip emails, you're building confidence in your local real estate market expertise. You're also building trust in your ability to help them to reach their goal. Every contact you make with them should be doing one or both of those things. We're not selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door, but we are selling ourselves as the resource to reach their goal of buying or selling a home.

Your system is set up around drip emails, answering questions and building trust. A certain percentage of your prospects will respond the way that you want without you doing anything more, but not enough of them. You must know how to see opportunities to get them to make a decision and offer a chance for them to do so. Otherwise, some will gradually just drift away and end up working with a competitor who seized the initiative and closed the deal.

For those of us who are not "master closers," there is help out there. There are coaches who specialize in helping real estate professionals to recognize points of opportunity and ask for the business--close the deal. You may need help in negotiating with a seller lead who thinks your commission is too high. Or, you could need some pointers in how to help a first time buyer couple to take the plunge. They may love a home and even have a lender letter, but they're having trouble making a long-term life decision.

The key is to have a well thought out system, work the system, and get help in the areas in which you feel you need it.

6. Analyze Your Numbers

If our stated goal of this system is to generate tons of leads that lead to commissions, why is this step necessary? We already have done our lead generation in previous steps, and the rest is doing our job in moving them along to the closing table.

Actually, this is one of the most important steps in the process. In the advertising step, we're going to be running paid ads in many cases. How will we know if we're putting our money into the right advertising channels or if we're hitting the right audience? We will be making advertising budget decisions constantly, and the only way we can make informed decisions about how to spend wisely is with data.

You want to track every phase and ad run for:

• Impressions (the number of times an ad is displayed)
• Cost per click or action
• Ratio of clicks to impressions
• Ratio of leads generated to the visitors that click to the site
• Ratio of listings or buyer transactions to the number of leads
• Cost per transaction

Once you have some historical data, you'll begin to see trends, what is working and what isn't, and which campaigns are the most cost effective.

This is about tracking every variable in our formula so we know how to move forward and make marketing and budget decisions.

That's the System Overview

Every step in The Ultimate REALTOR® Lead Machine System is totally focused on a single mandatory function, and then they're tied together into a process that doesn't drop any lead, prospect or client out of the loop, ever. It's tested and proven, with agents enjoying massive lead generation growth and more closings than they ever thought they'd see.

To view the original article, visit the WebsiteBox blog.