Posts Tagged "lead nurturing"
Real Estate Marketing Leads: 4 Myths (and How to Disprove Them)
Don’t let these four myths get in the way of creating an effective strategy for capturing real estate leads.
Highlights:
- As you start to develop your lead-capture strategy, don’t let certain myths and misunderstandings derail your efforts.
- If you confine yourself to one or even two methods of finding leads, you’re unnecessarily limiting your potential.
- The better you understand your prospects, the more you’ll be able to meet their needs and turn them into customers.
One of the most pressing challenges for all real estate professionals is to get a steady supply of real estate leads. But as you start to develop your lead-capture strategy, don’t let certain myths and misunderstandings derail your efforts.
Let’s look at four of the top myths when it comes to real estate leads.
Myth #1: Real estate leads that don’t buy immediately are worthless
It can be tempting to fall into black-and-white thinking when it comes to leads. When prospects don’t show an immediate interest in making a purchase, you might dismiss them as dead leads. That’s a mistake in any field, but especially in the realm of real estate. The only leads that are truly dead or worthless are ones where you have no accurate contact information, or they have specifically told you not to contact them again.
Just because a lead doesn’t require your services right now doesn’t mean he or she never will. Real estate purchasing is closely tied to people’s circumstances, which can change over time. That’s why it makes sense to look at every promising lead as a long-term prospect with whom you should periodically follow up.
Myth #2: There’s only one way to find leads
Real estate marketers have a wide selection of lead generating strategies to choose from. These include:
- Advertising (online and offline)
- Social media
- Billboards
- Blogging: A real estate blog is a powerful way to build your credibility as well as SEO.
- Direct mail
You may develop certain preferences for finding leads. However, if you confine yourself to one or even two methods, you’re unnecessarily limiting your potential. An omnichannel lead generating strategy is your best approach.
It’s good to combine high-tech and old-school methods, for example. You certainly need to take advantage of digital marketing, which includes an up-to-date website and social media presence. At the same time, offline strategies are still effective as well. The more ways you have to engage with prospects, the more qualified leads you’ll attract.
Myth #3: It’s more important to acquire leads than to nurture them
Lead generation is only the first step in the real estate marketing process. If you’re too caught up in the lead generation process, you may only make a brief effort with each lead before putting it aside and looking at the next one. Instead, you need to think in terms of lead management and nurturing. This includes:
- Segmenting leads so you know what type of offers to put in front of each prospect. This is fairly easy to do with web leads. You can, for example, set up separate SEO, social media, and email marketing campaigns based on different keywords and topics.
- Learning the best ways to contact each lead. Some people prefer to be contacted by phone, email, or social media, for example.
- Following up regularly. You don’t want to bombard prospects with messages. However, you do want to be proactive and reach out to leads every so often.
Lead nurturing and management really come down to building relationships with prospects.
Myth #4: Once you’ve closed, you can neglect the lead
Closing a sale is always exhilarating. You shouldn’t, however, think of a successful closing as the end of the process. Think of it, rather, as the start of a long-term, mutually beneficial relationship. It’s important to show clients that you care about them, even after the sale.
- Ask clients to complete a survey. This provides insight into areas where you can improve.
- Send holiday and birthday greetings.
- Send occasional emails or make calls asking if there’s anything you can do for them.
- Request referrals. Your past clients are often one of your best sources for finding future clients.
Avoid These Myths
Make sure you recognize these myths for real estate leads so you don’t fall prey to them. It’s important to remember that each lead is a unique individual with specific characteristics and preferences. Many mistakes occur when business owners and investors generalize too much about their leads. The better you understand your prospects, the more you’ll be able to meet their needs and turn them into customers.
Related posts:
- How Inbound Marketing for Real Estate Works to Improve Sales
- How to Explain Content Marketing ROI to Win (or Keep) Buy-In
- 6 Signs It’s Time to Consider Outsourcing Your Real Estate Marketing
Posts Tagged "lead nurturing"
5 Marketing Automation Ideas for Real Estate
Real estate marketers using marketing automation can save time and money while increasing leads, conversions, and overall marketing success.
One of the biggest marketing trends this year is automation. HubSpot recently reported that businesses using marketing automation to nurture leads received a whopping 451% increase in qualified leads. So how can real estate marketing professionals reap these benefits while saving time and money on their efforts?
If you’re using it right, marketing automation software can deliver real-time, personalized messages to prospective buyers and renters at every step of the lead-generation process. You can tailor custom email messages based on indicated interests, streamline social media efforts with scheduled posts, evaluate the success of your efforts, and adjust your strategy accordingly.
Check out these five ways that marketing automation can help you sell real estate, with suggested tools for each idea.
5 marketing automation ideas for real estate
1) Social media
Keeping your posts on multiple platforms up to date, consistent, and engaging can be a major time drain. Automating your social media marketing efforts lets you plan ahead and schedule updates on some or all of your social media channels, and lets you easily strategize about peak posting times.
Suggested tool: Sprout Social
2) Email
Having a segmented email list — sorted by when someone joined the list, what emails they’ve opened, their demographics, etc. — is key. This way, you can ensure you’re sending the most relevant information to your prospects, keeping them invested (and keeping you out of their spam folder). Once you set up a template, plugging in your content is easy. You’re able to manage your contact list and schedule emails in advance.
Suggested tool: MailChimp
3) Text messages
There’s a good chance you’re reading this on your cell phone, and, if not, it’s probably close by. Savvy marketers are taking advantage of the ubiquitous nature of mobile devices and using texting to reach audiences with a short message that they’re highly likely to read.
Suggested tool: TextMarks
4) Direct mail
While any number of virtual marketing platforms are beneficial, direct mail is still a powerful tool for real estate. It can be highly time-consuming to manage direct mail campaigns and mailing lists, but automation software that lets you generate geographically or demographically targeted mailing lists can help you reach your ideal audience.
Suggested tool: TriggerMarketing
5) Lead generation and nurturing
Converting website visitors to leads is always the goal, but it often comes with a back-breaking load of time-consuming labor. The right software lets you move your prospect through the sales funnel automatically, sending emails to educate them on the next steps, and scheduling them for viewings.
Suggested tool: SmartZip
What marketing automation tools are you using in your real estate marketing?
Related posts:
- What Metrics Should You Track in Real Estate Marketing?
- Social Media Can Be a Strategic Weapon in Real Estate Marketing
- When Traditional Real Estate Marketing Methods Stop Working, Try Digital Marketing
Posts Tagged "lead nurturing"
4 Ways a Blog Can Help You Sell Real Estate
A blog can help you sell real estate by increasing search engine visibility, building relationships and trust, and nurturing leads.
You might think that it seems silly to keep up a blog for your property or real estate company. Blogging can be a significant time investment, and you may wonder who would even want to read your blog after all. But blogs do so much more for real estate than provide news and updates to a small community of interested parties.
A small investment of time and resources can mean big gains for your business. Every time you publish a blog post, you increase the chances that a user searching the internet for real estate will find your website. Here’s why.
4 ways a blog can help you sell real estate
1) Increasing search engine visibility
Search engine algorithms are getting more and more sophisticated. As they do, your site’s content becomes increasingly important.
Your content helps inform search engines about your site, improving your rank in relevant search queries (people who are searching for properties or companies like yours). As you choose content for your blog posts, be mindful of the search topics for which you want to rank highly. Every time you publish a post, you create a new chance to reach someone looking for a property like yours.
2) Building relationships
As your blog starts to gain visibility, you might find that other bloggers will start interacting with you. This can be an amazing asset.
Real estate is an industry built on collaboration. Cultivating good and lasting relationships with partners and prospects helps you build credibility in the industry.
Take a little time each day to read relevant industry blogs — and if you find them particularly relevant or interesting, share them.
3) Nurturing leads
Blog content is ideal to share (and link to) in email or social media marketing campaigns. It can help undecided leads learn more about your property and sway them in a positive direction.
Create segmented lists of email addresses based on the needs and interests of the different groups you’re trying to reach, and send targeted content from your blog their way. Sharing your blog posts on your social media accounts helps give validity and authority to your company, as you disseminate content you created yourself.
4) Becoming a trusted resource
We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: Content marketing is all about being a resource for your audience. At the end of the day, your expertise and ideas are at least as valuable as your properties. People want to hire trustworthy and knowledgeable real estate experts. If you can answer the needs and questions of your potential buyers and renters, you cultivate lasting and fruitful relationships with them.
Related posts:
- Drive More Traffic and Generate More Leads with Your Real Estate Blog with our Editorial Calendar Template
- Social Media Trends for 2018 Real Estate Marketers Need to Know
- How Will Facebook Marketplace Housing Affect Real Estate Marketers?
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