Generating Home Buyer Leads - 9 Things I've Learned Over the Years

© 2010, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

In this article, I plan to share everything I've learned about generating home buyer leads through a real estate website. These lessons come from the work I've done on the Home Buying Institute website over the last five years or so. In that time, I've been fortunate enough to attract millions of visitors and produce thousands of leads from home buyers and mortgage shoppers.

Please don't think I'm bragging by telling you this. There are plenty of folks who generate more buyer leads than I do. I'm only dropping these stats so you'll be comfortable with the information I'm about to share. You can rest assured that it comes from years of direct experimentation -- and not hearsay or speculation.

How to Produce Buyer Leads Online

So without further ado, here are some of the lessons I've learned about home buyer leads and how to produce them.

1. Go Long. You need to prepare yourself for a sustained campaign. Internet marketing and lead generation require a steady effort over time. It's not a one-shot deal. Think of a marathon instead of a sprint. The upside of this is that you can afford to stumble a bit in the early days, because there's plenty of time for trial and error.
2. Offer Value. When it comes to Internet marketing and lead generation, value is the key to success. The more value a home buyer perceives in a certain action, the more likely they are to take that action. If the action you desire is to have people contact you, you'll need to explain the value and benefits of that action. This value might come in many forms -- instant answers to their home-buying questions, an easier home search, etc. More value equals more buyers leads.
   
3. Learn SEO. You should learn everything you can about search engine optimization, as it applies to your real estate website. It's one of the best ways to generate hot buyer leads, because it attracts people who are actively seeking real estate information. Search engine optimization goes hand in hand with lead generation. That's why I've written step-by-step guides for each topic.
   
4. Write Plenty. When writing content for your website or blog, you should cast your net far and wide. You would be surprised by the wide variety of search phrases that home buyers use when researching real estate online. So by creating more content, you'll gain more website traffic. Write about current events in your city, real estate trends, mortgage topics, home staging, new neighborhoods and subdivisions, home builders who operate in the area ... you get the idea.
5. Combine Techniques. If you want to get the most home buyer leads from your website, you need to use more than one lead-generation technique. This also means you must experiment to find out which techniques work best for your website. My Real Estate Web Leads e-book offers plenty of ideas to get your started. I recommend following the rule of three. Find three techniques that work for you, and then integrate all three of them into your website.
6. Experiment Constantly. Other agents might tell you what has worked for them in the past, and you can certainly learn from this. But you shouldn't feel that you need to duplicate their techniques to the letter. Likewise, just because a certain technique failed for somebody else doesn't mean it won't work for you. You need to learn for yourself what works best on your website. Build your lead-generation program around your own trial and error -- not what you hear from others.
7. Remove Distractions. I've seen agent websites with a tremendous amount of clutter on them. In fact, it seems to be a trend in the real estate industry (more so than any other industry I've worked with over the years). Some agents love to scatter buttons, logos, graphics, "widgets" and other virtual knick-knacks all over their websites. This creates distraction and dilutes whatever lead-generation techniques you may have in place. Trust me on this one -- you'll produce more home buyer leads with a clean, uncluttered website.
8. Double Dip. Do you already have a real estate website that produces home buyer leads on a regular basis? If so, you should consider launching website #2. If you're happy with the success of your current site, but you still want more leads from local home buyers, you'll benefit from a second website. You might even give your new website a related but slightly different focus from the original. For instance, you could create an online guide to local neighborhoods and communities -- a great strategy for generating buyers leads and inquiries!
9. PPC Wisely. Pay-per-click programs (such as Google's AdWords and Yahoo's Sponsored Search) can help you generate leads from home buyers in your area. But you have to know what you're doing before using such a program, or you could end up wasting your money. Here are some of the most common mistakes I've seen agents make in this arena: (1) ineffective landing pages, or no landing pages at all; (2) overbidding on keywords; (3) targeting keywords that are either too competitive or too general in nature; (4) lack of follow-through in terms of lead capture. If all of this is Greek to you, then you should avoid using PPC until you've done some homework.
   

Internet marketing is all about trial and error. You must directly experiment with different techniques to find out what works for you. But you can also learn a lot from the mistakes and successes of others. That's the purpose of this article. I hope the lessons I've learned (above) help you generate home buyer leads through your real estate website.

If you'd like to learn more about real estate lead generation, I recommend that you download a copy of my e-book on the subject. It explains ten effective techniques for getting more buyer leads through your website.