How do you generate your real estate leads? Are you still knocking on doors or have you embraced modern technology?
Traditionally, real estate agents favored getting out into their neighborhood, knocking on doors, and introducing themselves to potential customers. Or buying lists of contacts, picking up the phone, and cold calling.
While there’s nothing wrong with traditional outbound marketing methods, there are plenty more ways to get leads in the digital age.
Real estate agents can use search engines, social media, blogs, videos, and other online channels to attract, engage, and nurture leads.
In this article, you’ll discover 19 ways to generate leads for your business and bring more customers through the door.
What is Lead Generation for Real Estate?
Lead generation is a marketing term that describes the process of attracting and converting a prospect into someone who’s interested in your products or services. For a real estate business, that would be someone who’s interested in using your services to rent, buy or sell their house.
Key Pillars of a Real Estate Lead Generation System
There are two categories for generating leads: inbound and outbound.
Inbound marketing is a way of attracting people to your business through the creation and promotion of related content and incentives. It’s the modern, digital way of marketing. Typical inbound activities include content marketing, social media marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and advertising.
As you can see in the diagram below, generating leads comes right in the middle of the inbound marketing methodology:
Outbound marketing starts with some basic knowledge of your target audience. It’s what some may refer to as traditional marketing. Typical outbound activities include direct mail, telemarketing, email marketing, and event marketing.
A survey by Databox found that cold emailing was the most effective outbound marketing tactic:
A successful lead generation system uses both inbound and outbound marketing to attract prospects and convert them into leads before they become customers.
No matter which way you’re generating leads, It’s important to tailor your activities to each prospect as they progress through the three main stages of their customer journey:
- The Awareness Stage (Top of Funnel) – is when the prospect knows they have a problem, but don’t know how to solve it.
- The Evaluation Stage (Middle of Funnel) – is when the prospect is aware that you exist and you have a solution to their problem, but are considering their options.
- The Conversion Stage (Bottom of Funnel) – is when the prospect is almost ready to buy your solution, but may have a few final questions.
Depending on your marketing activity, you’ll capture leads in a variety of ways. For instance, people could be filling out printed forms at events like open houses, or they might complete an online form to request further information about your services or a specific property.
Whatever the situation, it’s important to consolidate all those leads into one system where you can track progress. Use a real estate Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool to manage and follow up with leads in one place.
How to get real estate leads on my website?
1. Local SEO
Today, 44% of real estate buyers start their home search online, and 95% use the internet at some point in the buying process.
Therefore, it’s critical that your website ranks in Google when people are searching for agents to help them buy or sell a property. You do this with local search engine optimization (SEO).
Specifically, optimizing your website and Google My Business page to show up highly in Google Maps when people are searching for your target keywords:
Ranking highly in the map pack will help generate new leads, foot traffic, phone calls and website visits for your business.
Check out this detailed real estate SEO guide to learn more about ranking your agency or brokerage highly in Google’s local map listings.
2. Landing Pages
eal estate professionals have a hard time turning clicks into conversions. In fact, real estate businesses only convert 2.47 percent of Google PPC traffic. This is a shame, especially when you consider the investment (time and money) that goes into getting qualified traffic to your website. The problem is that most real estate professionals send traffic to pages on their website that are not optimized to capture email addresses and generate phone calls. In other words, they don’t use custom landing pages to convert readers into leads.
HubSpot found that companies with 10 to 15 landing pages increase real estate lead generation by 55%:
Realtors and brokers can use many different types of landing pages to capture leads. Here are some examples:
- Book an appointment landing pages
- Home valuation landing pages
- Community landing pages (below)
- Buyer guide landing pages
- Luxury listing landing pages
If you’d like to see examples of different real estate landing pages and learn how to increase your conversions, check out this comprehensive guide.
3. Reverse Engineer the Competition
One of the fastest ways to generate more leads for your business is to find out where your top performing competitors are getting their online leads, and replicate the strategy. This eliminates a lot of the guesswork, especially if you’re just starting out within an agency or brokerage. You can use a tool like SimilarWeb to view the channels driving the most online traffic to the competition and apply the same lead generation tactics:
For example, you can see that Max Real Estate Exposure is getting most of its traffic from search engines like Google. This would tell me that SEO is a huge potential source of quality leads.
You can also see that the business is getting some traffic from referral and social media sites. Therefore, it’s probably a good idea to drill in and identify the specific sources:
You can pick the referral and social media sites driving the most traffic, and start investing some budget in promoting your business across those sources.
When it comes to marketing automation and lead generation, don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Find out what top performers are doing, and model your strategy around that. It’s the quickest way to get started with a proven roadmap.
5. Community Pages
When a house buyer is moving into a new area, they’ll likely carry out extensive research about the whole community as well as the real estate market. That’s where community pages come in.
By creating community pages on your website, you can become the go-to resource for your area. Community pages can include topics like:
- Climate
- Demographics
- Economy
- Local businesses
- Schools and colleges
- Leisure amenities
- Medical facilities
- Transportation
- Shopping
- Restaurants
For example, Newport Bay Realty features neighborhood details on their website:
Include links to your real estate business alongside the community information so that visitors associate one with another. And remember to optimize your web pages for the different keywords, so they show up in Google or other search engines’ results.
This strategy is likely to secure both buyer and seller leads as it builds strong narration around your activities. Being engaged and well informed about what is going on in the areas you operate in is a strong suit of any market leader in the real estate industry. Try to keep up to date and mention any interesting new business on your website that makes the area a better place to live.
6. Virtual Tours
Traditional real estate marketing consists of photos and written copy. But there’s a smarter modern way to attract buyers and investors. Instead of inviting prospects to see a property, you can offer them a virtual tour from the comfort of their home.
A professional 360-degree virtual tour is a super way to showcase homes on websites, social media, and Google Maps so that your listings stand out from the crowd. And for buyer leads outside your location, this is an excellent time-saver as they can narrow their search before traveling to inspect the property.
7. Google Ads
It’s not easy to claim the top spot in Google’s search results page. If you want to speed up the process, then it makes sense to use paid search. Google Ads is one of the best PPC platforms to help you in the real estate lead generation in your local area.
KEYWORD TARGETING
Using relevant keywords in your ads increases your chances of a top listing on the search results page. Choose words that are relevant to your content or listings to reach users searching those same terms.
For example, you could use the keywords “Boston” and “Condos for sale” to target people searching for “Boston condos for sale”:
Clicking on the link in the ad takes people straight to your condo listings:
Another option might be to target your company name and location as some people will search for your brand directly.
According to Search Engine Journal:
“Shoppers searching for your specific brand name are more than likely also your hottest leads.”
If you don’t use your brand name, it’s likely that a competitor will use it and appear above your branded organic listing. (See more below).
RETARGETING WEBSITE VISITORS
You can generate leads by remarketing to people who’ve already visited your website to check out listings and content.
For example, if someone visits your webpage about your selling process, then you could retarget them with an ad about properties you recently sold. Or if someone visits a specific listing, you could retarget them with an ad that offers the floorplan in exchange for their email addresses.
Retargeting people who’ve already shown an interest in your content increases your chances of getting more quality leads.
BIDDING ON COMPETITOR NAME AND BRAND KEYWORDS
As mentioned above, there’s no rule to prevent you from bidding on your competitors’ brand keywords. As long as you don’t include their brand name or trademark in your ad copy.
There are three good reasons to bid on your competitors’ brand keywords:
- Cheap traffic – Brand name keywords are relatively cheap clicks compared to generic keywords in Google Ads because the demand is low.
- High-quality traffic – Visitors are interested in the same thing your competitors are offering – real estate – so lead conversion is more likey.
- Brand exposure – Advertising on your competitors’ brand keywords puts you in a strong position to make potential customers aware of your brand.
Another option might be to target your company name and location as some people will search for your brand directly.
According to Search Engine Journal:
“Shoppers searching for your specific brand name are more than likely also your hottest leads.”
If you don’t use your brand name, it’s likely that a competitor will use it and appear above your branded organic listing. (See more below).
RETARGETING WEBSITE VISITORS
You can generate leads by remarketing to people who’ve already visited your website to check out listings and content.
For example, if someone visits your webpage about your selling process, then you could retarget them with an ad about properties you recently sold. Or if someone visits a specific listing, you could retarget them with an ad that offers the floorplan in exchange for their email address.
Retargeting people who’ve already shown an interest in your content increases your chances of getting more quality leads.
BIDDING ON COMPETITOR NAME AND BRAND KEYWORDS
As mentioned above, there’s no rule to prevent you from bidding on your competitors’ brand keywords. As long as you don’t include their brand name or trademark in your ad copy.
There are three good reasons to bid on your competitors’ brand keywords:
- Cheap traffic – Brand name keywords are relatively cheap clicks compared to generic keywords in Google Ads because the demand is low.
- High-quality traffic – Visitors are interested in the same thing your competitors are offering – real estate – so they’re more likely to convert into a lead.
- Brand exposure – Advertising on your competitors’ brand keywords puts you in a strong position to make potential customers aware of your brand.
8. FSBOs
For sale by owner (FSBO) listings are properties that are listed for sale by their owners rather than by a real estate agent. Consequently, they’re classed as warm leads to target because you already know the owners want to sell.
You can find potential FSBO leads in:
- Craigslist – check your local market real estate listings
- Zillow – check the “make me move” or FSBO listings
- Local newspaper websites – e.g. Home Find on The Boston Herald, or Real Estate on The Boston Globe
Once you’ve found a lead, it’s up to you to convince them they have a better chance of selling for a higher price when they use your services rather than going alone.
9. Video
When three-quarters of brands see higher return on investment with their video marketing strategies than any other tactic, you know it’s a viable resource for your own business.
People love visuals, especially in real estate searches. While having a ton of great infographics and SlideShares on your website is one way to attract attention and keep visitors perusing your pages, it’s really video that’s the essential marketing technique that nurtures real estate generation for agents and brokers across the country these days better than many other (more expensive and time-consuming) marketing efforts.
According to the National Association of Realtors, 36% of people use video as an informative source during the home search.
While the value of video is clear, the challenge is creating and publishing your own.
If you’re looking for inspiration check out this list to see some of the best real estate videos from across the web, or learn how to better market your videos in this guide.
10. Strategic Blogging
If you want blogging to generate leads for your business, then you have to include it in your overall inbound marketing strategy. Publishing the odd blog post here and there won’t work. Instead, you need to have a long-term plan.
Use your blog to provide valuable information to visitors so that it positions you as a trusted and credible resource. Buyers and sellers are not only searching for properties, but they’re also looking for supporting information.
For example, take a look at the Rivertown Rose or Andrea Achimas who offer tips and advice on a variety of home-related topics including:
- Buying – Despite rising interest rates, now is the time to buy a home The Risks and Rewards of Purchasing a Bank-Owned Home
- Selling – Home Sales – First Quarter in Hastings-on-Hudson
11. Real estate Leads through downloadables
Free but exclusive content is always attractive for customers who are interested in a given subject. You can pair with an interior designer, finances specialist, community representative to create a downloadable ebook or a set of ideas from how to decorate your home, through home budget planning to getting to know your new neighborhood better.
Prospective buyers will appreciate every written material that matches their current interest and that might be: decorating their new homes, tips on saving money in the process of moving houses and getting to know the neighborhood they are about to move in: its schools, participatory budget projects and so on.
12. Lead generation through a Live Chat
Visitors to your website don’t always want to fill out forms or call you. But they might be happy to engage in a live chat to get their questions answered instantly. There are plenty of Live Chat apps available including FreshChat, Intercom, and Drift, Most apps include the option to auto-respond to website visitors and then determine if a human response is required.
13. Automated Text Messages work best for sellers leads
Real estate text message marketing lets you engage potential buyers with information about suitable properties. And you can take this one step further with automated text messages.
For example, people interested in your Boston condos could text ‘CONDO’ to your designated shortcode (e.g. 29786), and your system would send information about listings in that area.
According to a Gallup survey, texting is far faster and better received compared to calls and emails:
- 90% of sellers said they’d prefer to be texted, compared to 10% who preferred to be called.
- 99% of texts are read and have an average response time of 90 seconds.
This kind of marketing automation will save you a lot of time that you can use on other activities!
14. Email Segmentation: nurturing the leads produced
Most of the people who receive your newsletters, digests, and other promotional emails are already seller leads or buyer leads you track and organize in your lead management software.
What some agents don’t realize, though, is that not every lead is created equal. There’s the obvious buyer vs. seller dynamic. However, there are plenty of other lead characteristics that distinguish each lead from another.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it (hint: You’ll want to accept it) is to bucket your prospects into distinct lists so you can send different types of email to them and track lead activity by inspecting whether the receivers interact with your newsletter.
It’s through this segmentation you’ll maximize the ROI of your email campaigns (not to mention prevent you from blasting emails to leads who have long been cold and are no longer worth pursuing).
Sure, a number of these contacts are likely already leads, but what sending consistent, strong emails like this does is help many agents distinguish weak leads from strong leads in their database.
In the marketing sphere, these strong real estate leads are classed as sales-qualified leads (SQLs), meaning they’re more likely to be converted into potential clients and, thus, deserve more attention with one’s real estate marketing strategy.
15. AI Chat Bot generates leads
Artificial Intelligence made its way to real estate business, too! Integrating an AI Chat Bot is an easy and efficient way to boost your real estate lead generation automatically. Every time someone visits your website, a chat window pops up, inviting visitors to type their inquiry and leave contact information. Chatbots are able to answer commonly asked questions and provide information they are asked about, which keeps the visitor engaged.
Facebook is ideally suited to real estate lead generation as it’s a visual platform. In 2024, it’s still one of the largest social media network with almost billions active monthly users:
And as people spend time there on a daily basis, you have a captive audience. Here are some tips on getting your real estate leads through Facebook.
1. Optimize Your Facebook Page
Though advertising is a premier opportunity for you on Facebook, polishing your profile will be inevitable if you want your personal brand to thrive.
Even if you have a large budget to spend on Facebook ads, they won’t bring you expected results if your profile is not credible and taken care of. And, most importantly, you can still secure leads without spending a dime on Facebook marketing tools.
With some savvy optimization techniques, consistent engagement, and regular status updates featuring photos and videos of your listings, market, and clients, agents generate more interest in their personal brands and property listings.
Atoka Properties makes a product use of its Facebook page:
Frequent, engaging posts, consistent visuals, new and sold listings, and a lot of community make Atoka Properties’ Facebook Business Page a great business asset that creates its market leader image.
Any online locale where you plant your flag and build upon your digital foundation — whether it’s your site, your real estate sites, Facebook profile, another social network, or a separate blog — requires equal amounts of effort. Atoka Properties clearly understands this mindset, as they treat the Facebook presence just like they do their Placester real estate website.
2. Facebook Groups
Social media users like to gather in groups (public and private ones) that are focused around a certain topic. There are plenty of groups on Facebook created and joined by people who are currently actively looking for a new property, moving houses or who are preparing to sell their house. Although professionals are not always welcome in some of the groups, it is worth snooping around and seeing whether there is any room for you to offer your cooperation and generate real estate leads or at least make people see your real estate sites.
Joining a Facebook group will also allow you to understand your clients better and learn about their experiences that will help you in the lead generation process.
3. Facebook Live Q&A session with potential clients
Although as a real estate agent you don’t have to knock on the doors literally, building relationships is still inevitable if you want to be successful. Meeting people online, creating a personal connection and scheduling Q&A sessions for your potential clients is a great way to let them know you and build your community on social media.
Answering questions live will also boost your professional image and prove that you’re an expert in your field. During live sessions you can not only answer the frequently asked questions but also promote your listings and simply chat with other users. The advantage of Facebook lives is that even if your follower doesn’t know that you have scheduled a session, they will see it on their feed and they don’t have to sign up for the event beforehand.
4. Lead generation through Facebook Ads
Advertising on Facebook is effective as long as you take advantage of the granular targeting options to ensure your ad reaches your ideal audience:
Targeting
Choose from interests, behaviors, and demographics. For example, you can target by zip code, age ranges, income, home ownership, and people “likely to move.” While targeting, you can also create a target group of “look alike” that will promote your ad among people similar to those who already follow your profile, or to those who have visited your site.
Objective
Select from different campaign objectives including Lead Generation, Brand Awareness, Engagement, Reach, lead Conversion, etc.
Ad Type
Choose from different options including Canvas Ads, Carousel Ads, Video Ads, Collection Ads, Slideshow Ads, and Photo Ads.
Armed with this data you can create, target, and track the success of your laser-focused ads.
Here are two types of campaign to consider:
NEW LISTINGS
Advertising new listings to your chosen target audience on Facebook is a great way to generate real estate leads. The key is to make the advert visually stunning, whether you choose photos or video. Use the best professional images for each property to make it stand out as people scroll their Facebook feed.
ALREADY SOLD
Showcasing properties you’ve already sold is a great way to promote your brand and attract real estate seller leads. When you run a Facebook ad featuring the expired listings and the average home price that’s targeted to an audience within the same area, you can attract real estate leads that are ready to act now (hot leads) and promote your credentials to those who are in the first stages of making their purchase decisions.
Traditional real estate lead generation
Although online lead generation is currently believed to be the most profitable one, don’t forget about traditional ways of generating leads. People still appreciate face to face contact, approachable attitude and dealing with a real person. Which ways of lead generation stood the test of time?
1. Referrals
Referrals are a powerful and reliable source for new leads. The 2018 survey of home buyers and sellers by the NAR found that:
- 41% of buyers used an agent that was referred to them by a friend, neighbor, or relative and 12% used an agent that they had worked with before to buy or sell a home.
- 63% of sellers found their agent through a referral from a friend, neighbor, or relative or used an agent they had worked with before to buy or sell a home.
The best part is that referrals are free. All you have to do is maintain a good relationship with your contacts so that you’re first in mind when they have a friend or colleague who wants to sell their property.
If you’re just starting your real estate industry, then build your contacts through friends and family until your client list grows.
2. Open Houses
Runningopen houses is another excellent way to generate leads. Even if the open house property doesn’t sell, you can still get a list of potential buyers.
The key is to have a system:
- Attract visitors
The first step is to make potential buyers aware of the open houses. You can use door hangers, flyers, and postcards in the neighborhood, promote on social media, and highlight your listings: On the day of the event, use signposts on neighboring streets to direct people to the open house.If you are a new agent in the neighborhood, use it as an opportunity to get people to know you. Although open houses are designed to generate buyers leads, they work great for prospective sellers, too. You will build your image of an engaged agent with a robust client network and lead conversions.
- Capture names
Once you have visitors coming to the open house, make sure you capture their contact details. You could use a formal sign-in sheet as people enter the open house. Or you could engage in conversation and ask for their details informally. Either way, follow up with a call or an email to your leads after the event.
3. Local Partnerships
You’re not the only business in your area. So why not join forces with other business owners where you can help one another. Join your local chamber of commerce where you can network and make connections with fellow business men and women. This will build a positive image of your personal brand, too!
For example, many divorce settlements force marital homes to be sold. Consider partnering with a local divorce attorney who would be happy to recommend your services in such situations.
4. Get Referrals from other Realtors
When you attend conferences, you have an excellent opportunity to network with other real estate agents from outside your area. Taking the time to build professional relationships with multiple agents will serve you in near future.
For example, when people have to relocate to your area, those national realtors can refer their top leads to you.
5. Pitch local investors
If you’re working in an area that has a lot of investment potential, then why not pitch local investors directly? You could save time marketing and advertising properties if you have investors lined-up already.
An investor is going to be more savvy than your typical first-time buyer, so you’ll need to play smart and professional to make a good impression and strike quick deals.
How many real estate leads do I need?
This is a question that doesn’t have a clear answer and every real estate agent will need to run a predictive analytics and calculate the number of real estate leads they need to secure satisfactory income. In general, studies show that only 10-15% of real estate leads become real clients. That being said, you will need to generate leads in a number much higher than your projected closed deals.
While collecting your leads, remember that their quality is more important than the general number of leads you have and that it might be expensive to manage leads if you have too many of them. Nurturing leads generates costs – if you have too many leads that can be described as cold (i.e. people who are not interested in your product at all) or expired leads, your nurturing activities and marketing efforts might turn out to be counterproductive.
Can agents pay for leads?
Agents can use multiple paid solutions for real estate lead generation. One of them is establishing a cooperation with another lead generation company who will provide leads for them, for example in a pay-per-lead model. Many agents bet on buying leads, which in general is not advisable. Many of the leads will certainly turn out to be low-quality cold leads. Although buying lead bundles is a common practice, you should treat it as a last resort or an additional activity to test out – the lead quality is more important than the general number of leads that you have collected.
In a nutshell…
With only a small percentage of leads turning into real deals, it takes time and patience to collect enough top quality leads to build a steady stream and earn your salary. While going to great lengths in your lead generation process, don’t forget to nurture those you already have and reach out to them regularly – this is a number one rule for all industry leaders. One thing is for sure: in the mundane process of real estate lead generation consistency, creativity and knowing your audience will pay off.
