One of the biggest challenges of the everyday work of estate agents is to keep their customer acquisition for real estate going while attending to all their current clients. They have to worry about providing a good service in the present and also to look into the future. And, when there’s some time left, there’s the debate about how to gather the real estate leads.
But did you know that by diversifying the lead generation for real estate you get different profiles of potential clients? You get in touch with those that are tech-savvy and those that would rather use traditional communication methods, those that want to buy, sell or rent, those that are looking for a new property for their family and those looking for an investment, those with an average amount to spend and those to whom the sky’s the limit.
Unless you work with a very specific niche, this diversification can help you sell faster because your property portfolio complements your clientele of homebuyers. Meaning there’s always going to be someone willing to sell a property perfect for another client’s needs.
So, to help you with this mission, here’s an exhaustive list of ways for you to not only improve your real estate lead generation, but also to work with a more diverse group or potential clients.
Customer acquisition for real estate: a guide
1. Providing a property valuation calculator
With CASAFARI’s Lead Magnet you can provide your clients with an online property valuation. The real estate leads will have to add their contact information and details about their property (or the property they want), so our tool finds the most accurate comparables among more than 200 million listings in over 30,000 sources.
After comparing the properties, the property valuation calculator will create a quick report about the ideal asking price so the property is according to the reality of the housing market.
For your potential clients, this is a way of getting precious information for free. For you, you get a tool specially designed for customer acquisition for real estate, growing your portfolio of real estate leads effortlessly 24h a day. Another useful characteristic is that you receive all the information about the property that the potential client provided, already qualifying this lead.
CASAFARI’s Lead Magnet may be integrated with your website or you can get it on a microsite customized for you.
Lead Magnet: convert real estate leads into sellers and buyers with CASAFARI
2. Handing out business cards
This one may seem pretty basic, right? Every estate agent knows that they should have a few cards up their sleeve to use when they are going to a dinner with friends, a meeting with neighbours, the birthday party of a friend of their kid’s and other social gatherings. In any event you might meet someone by chance that’s in need of your services and that can become a real estate lead.
But here’s the catch: your business card shouldn’t display only your name, mobile number, email address and company. Go beyond merely adding your contact information: give your audience a way to connect with you in other communication channels where they can find interesting information about your business.
You may use a QR code to direct them to other properties on your website, to a property valuation calculator to help them know an average asking price for their house, to amazing articles on your blog, to your instagram profile to provide useful information for them, among other possibilities.
This way, if those real estate leads ever forget where they put your business card, at least they’ll have other ways of contacting you, getting to know your work and start trusting you as an expert.
3. Creating social media content
Real estate marketing is a precious resource for estate agents: it helps building a personal brand, establishing a deeper connection with potential clients and sealing more deals.
By creating relevant content for buyers and sellers, owners and tenants, you not only position yourself as an authority about the property market, but also reach more people. The audience will share the posts, introducing you to new followers. They will tag friends and they will get to know your work. You will naturally attract people interested in the themes you talk about.
And, of course, that can be converted into real estate leads when they ask for help in private messages, in the comments or when they send you an email because of the trust you built.
Your content may publicize the properties on your portfolio, let clients know what to look for when visiting a property, help them understand the bureaucracies of buying and selling properties and more.
4. Publicizing your property portfolio on real estate portals
Another important and very well-known way of working with lead generation for real estate is to list what’s new on your property portfolio on specialized portals. This action is relevant both because they are usually the first place where homebuyers go when searching for their new home and because they can attract real estate leads that wouldn’t find you otherwise.
But it’s also important to take a look at how you’re doing it. To perform well in this environment, your listings should display a few things, such as:
- Captivating titles
- Thorough descriptions
- Good quality visual resources
- Updated contact information
Find out more about listing your properties in real estate portals.
Real estate portals: 5 tips to catch more leads
5. Updating your real estate website
Other than bringing credibility to your business, there are many benefits of having your real estate website. It allows direct communication between you and real estate leads, for an instance. But there are two very relevant reasons to have your own platform.
First of all, this is your own communication channel. If your Instagram profile stops delivering your content to your followers or gets substituted for a new trending social media, for example, you’d still have a place in which all information about your work is safe and sound. In this environment, you’re the one making the rules, so you get to choose what’s displayed and what’s not.
And, second of all, you can use marketing techniques to optimize your content to be found on search engines. This way, you can be seen as a result of searches made on Google by potential homebuyers for properties near your business. Meaning, you’re attracting real estate leads without spending a single penny.
Besides, it’s always useful to have your website updated in case previous clients recommend you to new people that might search for you straight on your website.
6. Advertising in Google Ads
And while we are talking about Google, you can also invest in publicizing your work on Google with ads. You can advertise the real estate agency website, your microsite with the property valuation calculator or even one specific property. Here are some examples:
The functioning is quite simple: your ads are going to be shown to people that search for what you have to offer and you will pay per click. If the person likes what they see when they reach your content, then you get the chance of gathering qualified real estate leads, those that already fit the profile you’re looking for.
The main advantage here is that people who don’t know you, your company or that didn’t get a recommendation from past clients can also find you and become a client.
7. Counting with word-of-mouth
Word-of-mouth is probably the oldest form of advertising. It consists in simply providing an amazing service, so good that it motivates people to recommend you to their friends, family and coworkers. They are so powerful because they act as social proof: people tend to believe in recommendations from someone they already know, so these recommendations reinforce your credibility.
But nobody said you couldn’t give your current clients extra reasons to recommend you, right?
To increase the lead generation for real estate, the estate agent can offer discounts on the services or provide a smaller free service for those clients who bring you someone willing to hire you. Once the contract is signed, your clients get their reward and you add an extra contact to your list of real estate leads.
8. Writing on a blog
One way to power your customer acquisition for real estate is to provide useful content for owners and tenants, homebuyers and sellers. Try imagining what kind of information they could search for on Google when trying to buy, sell or rent a property and produce content that answers their questions and needs.
This helps not only attract real estate leads, but also to nurture them with knowledge about the housing market, qualifying this audience. Why is that important? Because confident and well-informed potential clients are more willing to take the next step and become real estate investors. So, keep them interested, update them with interesting data about the property market.
And how are they converted into leads, you might ask. It’s simple: after reading your quality content, they see you as an authority, believe in you as professional and have you at the top of their mind when they think about a real estate professional. You make yourself trusted, believed, needed. So, they will come for you when in need of your services.
Another way of encouraging this conversion is by sending weekly, bi-weekly or even monthly newsletters to let your readers know there are new pieces of content in your blog. To receive it on their email inboxes they need to provide… Yes, you guessed it, their contact information!
9. Distributing brochures
Despite being an old-school method of marketing and a hard one to measure the effectiveness, handing brochures can be useful to generate specific profiles of real estate leads. This is an important way of communicating your work to a more technologically illiterate audience.
Meaning that, when it comes to your strategy of customer acquisition for real estate, in order not to spare your investments, a good idea would be to approach the distribution of the printed material in a smart way. Aim for neighbourhoods where the population is older, for example. Since technology can impose challenges to them, it’s hard to imagine the elderly reading your blog posts or interacting with social media.
And, as well as with the business cards, use this material for your advantage and go beyond the basics. Use statements that speak loudly to the target’s fears, needs and intentions. Also, showcase positive testimonials about your work of people they can relate to and display numbers that increase your authority.
10. Putting up signs
While we are talking about customer acquisition for real estate in a non-digital way, putting up a sign on the window or balcony of a property for sale or rent could work. It might catch the attention of passersby that will get in touch with you.
To increase the chances of your sign being well-received by various profiles of potential clients, add to it not only your mobile phone number, but also your email address, website or social media.
11. Scheduling lectures
Your knowledge can be useful to increase your authority and credibility, especially when it comes to a profile of potential clients that is facing the property market for the first time.
Try to organize brief masterclasses for first-time homebuyers or people that wish to become property investors, so they can get insightful information about the housing market. They will need to send you their contact information to receive the password for the class or to register for it – and that’s when you get your real estate leads.
12. Creating a broadcast list
A broadcast list is a channel in which you can talk to a wide audience at once and tools such as WhatsApp or Telegram allow you to do so.
On your broadcast list, you should offer an advantage, like exclusive content, information that’s publicized on the list before than in any other communication channel or be informed about new properties available in a specific area. Being part of it must be something that your target audience wishes for.
And, of course, for them to enter this exclusive world, they will need to send you their contact information, becoming real estate leads.
13. Setting alerts on CASAFARI
Another way that CASAFARI helps you with customer acquisition for real estate is through our Property Sourcing. Inside our tool you can save searches for specific kinds of properties to be notified daily in case new results show up on the housing market.
One of the most interesting filters you can activate is the search for FSBO properties, so you can approach private-sellers as soon as they enter the market. So, you can search for FSBO houses in the area you work and get notified when they show up, increasing the results of your customer acquisition for real estate.
Gather more property leads with CASAFARI: get to know Alerts
14. Hosting events
You can also increase your customer acquisition for real estate in a less digital way by hosting events in homes for sale of your property portfolio. It’s a way of showcasing the property and showing its versatility, while positioning you as the host. And, in the role of the host, you get the chance to talk to everyone invited, explaining your work and boosting your real estate lead generation.
As for the guest list, to increase your chances of conversions, think strategically: ask yourself which profiles of clients would fit perfectly in a home like this? You can send invitations to the seller client’s contact list and even to the property’s neighbours from adjacent streets, for example. This way, you will attract people that already like the area or that might be interested in the property itself.Don’t forget to set the mood for the event: invest in home staging techniques so the visitors feel instantly at home when they arrive.
Home staging: what is it and tips for estate agents
15. Offering downloadable materials
Customer acquisition for real estate can also be improved by offering for download interesting and rich materials to your target audience, so they can deepen their knowledge about the housing market.
Imagine providing periodical in-depth analysis about the state of the market, so they know if it’s the right time to become real estate investors, for example. Other examples would be helping them understand where are the main areas in which investing is a good idea or how much they should pay for renting or buying a property with X or Y characteristics.
By nurturing your real estate leads, you are developing a trusting relationship with them that increases conversions when they are ready to buy, sell or rent a property.
To create such materials, you can resort to CASAFARI’s Market Analytics and Comparative Market Analysis. Market Analytics will show you information about price distribution per area, per asset classes and market stock, all of this currently and through time. As for the CMA, it analyzes a property, finds its most accurate comparables and informs the ideal asking price, to help you build the pricing strategy.
CASAFARI Market Analytics: follow the property market trends
How CASAFARI’s market analysis helps estate agents sell more and faster
So, basically, you can use both tools to search for information and compile your conclusions in documents worth downloading and reading.
16. Partnering with law firms
There are a few Law firms that might be interested in having an estate agent as a partner. For the agent, this is a way of getting more real estate leads, whereas for the law firm, it complements their service and makes clients feel like all their necessities are being cared for.
In cases of divorces, for example, quite often either the family needs to sell their home or one of the parts needs to look for a new place to live in. The same goes for cases of inheritance: the inventory upon the death of a family member might bring the need to sell or rent a property. Even firms that deal with business law might need your help, since companies often need to go to a bigger office or open a branch elsewhere.
17. Joining a Chamber of Commerce
Joining the chamber of commerce of your neighbourhood can help you attract real estate leads among your neighbours. They usually hold a website or catalog of services provided by people in the community, which is often useful for those new to an area.
You can even offer a discount or extra services to those contacts coming from the chamber of commerce, to encourage them to get in touch.
18. Networking with other estate agents
As you know, estate agents usually work in niches or by specialty. So, bonding with other professionals can bring you many real estate leads in the form of recommendations.
If you take care of rentals, look for estate agents that deal only with buying and selling properties. If you work with residential properties, partner with those that work with commercial real estate. This way, you can trade qualified leads in a win-win situation.
19. Joining groups in social media
If there are any groups on Facebook, WhatsApp, Telegram or any other social media for people that live or wish to live in the area you work, join them and check the comments ever so often. Among these people, you will surely see comments of people in need of help to find a home, the perfect opportunity to present your work and gather some leads.
20. Activating your public relations
Although this is not a common way of working your customer acquisition for real estate, being present on the media for sure brings you credibility and attracts new potential clients. You can be interviewed for an article about the rise in rental prices, about which areas of the city are boosting with tourism or even where are the places in which prices have soared for homebuyers, for example.
Remember that old friend of yours that works for a TV channel or on the local newspaper? In order to do so, it’s time to either reach out to them, hire a PR company or even proactively send article proposals to local media. In case they are interested in the topic, it’s highly likely that you will be interviewed.
Bonus tip: Keeping in touch with former clients
Did you know that Philip Kotler, considered to be the father of Marketing as we know it, once said that it can cost up to 5 to 7 times more to acquire new clients than to retain the ones you already have?
Translating this sentence to the property market, as a part of your customer acquisition for real estate, it’s important to keep in touch with past clients. After all, clients with rental contracts close to the deadline could become real estate leads again if they want a new rental or wish to buy a property.
Keep track, with the help of CASAFARI CRM, of when the contracts are about to expire and get in touch with them before they even think about looking for anyone else.
CASAFARI CRM: Get to know the Free Plan
Waste no more time: subscribe now to CASAFARI and get access to our tools to speed up your customer acquisition for real estate!
Highlighted photo by Gabrielle Henderson on Unsplash
