Clever and Resourceful Strategies for Generating More Real Estate Leads
As a real estate professional, you’re only as good as the number of leads you have coming in. If your lead funnel is dry, then your revenue is dry as well. The only way to get back on track is to introduce fresh (and pre-qualified) leads back into your funnel.
Give These Lead Generation Ideas a Try
Talk to any realtor or real estate investor who got their start before the internet boom and they can tell you stories of how they built their careers on cold calling and door knocking. But here’s the thing: Cold calling and door knocking are no longer effective – even as last resort options. In today’s digital age, there are dozens of superior strategies that are more effective and less awkward. Take a look:
- Circle of Influence Meetings
You don’t have to be a politician or CEO to have a circle of influence. We all have our own circles of influence (COIs), regardless of career or socioeconomic status. The key is to tap into this influence as much as possible by regularly engaging with these individuals.
Consider setting up one or two lunch meetings every week with members of your COI. The goal of these lunch meetings is to simply connect and see how they’re doing. Make the meetings about them. Not only does this make them feel good (which improves their perception of you), but it implants a desire within them to see how you are doing. This gives you an in to mention current real estate deals you’re working on.
The goal is not to bring on an investor or client with every lunch meeting you have. You’re simply trying to make people aware of what you’re doing, so that you become the top-of-mind resource for your COI anytime a real estate question or opportunity arises.
While you never want to come across as overly self-promoting during these meetings, it’s always a good idea to keep a few printed booklets in your briefcase or purse. Then if someone is interested in learning more, you can slip them one after the lunch meeting concludes.
- Put Yourself Out There
In addition to nurturing your current COI, you should always be actively engaging with new people and growing your network. And guess what? You don’t have to attend any cheesy networking meetups or conferences to do this. Just go out and meet new people!
Meeting new people is as easy as volunteering at a local organization, taking your dog to the dog park, joining a gym, or hosting a neighborhood block party. As you meet new people, the conversation of “what you do” will naturally come up. Some people won’t necessarily care that you’re in real estate, but others will be hooked.
- Enhance Your LinkedIn Profile
Most social media marketers are focused on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. However, in the real estate world, there’s one social network that performs better than all of these combined. We’re talking about LinkedIn.
When it comes to professional networking, no platform outmatches LinkedIn. It’s the ultimate place for branding yourself and promoting yourself in a professional manner. Brush up your profile by taking a professional headshot and designing a sleek banner with a specific call-to-action. Then work on regularly sharing quality content and engaging with your audience. (LinkedIn is very much a reciprocal network. The more you like, comment, and share other posts, the more people will do the same with your content.)
- Build an Email List
If you’re serious about generating real estate leads, you have to play the long game. In other words, think about how you can create a slippery funnel that generates a steady flow of leads for months and years. And by all accounts, the best strategy is to create an email list.
The easiest formula for building an email list is as follows:
- Run simple Facebook ads to your specific target audience.
- Send the traffic to a simple, carefully optimized landing page.
- Ask people for their email address in exchange for a compelling lead magnet.
- Collect email addresses and nurture your list with regular value-adding emails.
The beauty of having an email list is that it gives you an audience of people you can engage with the push of a button. Eventually, you’ll be able to send opportunities to your list and find buyers/sellers/investors with minimal legwork required.
There Has to Be a Better Way
If someone tells you to start knocking on doors or calling through the phone book for leads, you need to find a better mentor. We’re living in 2021 and there are dozens of better lead generation ideas and techniques to choose from. Pick a couple out from this article and use them to feed your funnel warm, pre-qualified leads at scale.