You Can Have My Real Estate Agent Leads

© 2010, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

You can have all of the real estate agent leads you want. Seriously. I'll even show you how to go about it. You see, lead generation is not a complex science or skill. It just takes a lot of hard work and persistence.

This article is a compilation of the lessons I've learned over the years. As a marketing consultant, I've helped many real estate agents generate leads with their websites and blogs. And through this process of trial and error, I've learned which techniques work best for producing real estate agent leads online ... and which ones are a waste of time. Here's a list of those proven techniques.

Real Estate Lead Strategies

Start by writing a lot of website content. Using a blog is the easiest way to do this, because it reduces the entire publishing process down to a few steps. We will talk more about this as we go. But for now, just realize that you need to create lots of content if you want to get lots of traffic. And traffic is the first step to generating real estate agent leads through your blog or website.

Don't just write any website content. Write articles and reports based on your local real estate scene. Use tools like this one and that one to create a list of relevant keywords ... the kind of phrases your target audience would search through Google, Yahoo and Bing. Relevant content will help you generate quality traffic, and this is paramount to getting real estate agent leads online. You can learn more about keyword strategies here.

While you're expanding your content base, you should start implementing some lead-generation strategies. You can use chat programs for this purpose, or contact forms, or a wide variety of other ideas. But you've got to encourage people to "raise their hands" in some way. You need to promote interaction. I've written an e-book that compiles my favorite techniques for generating agent leads, so you might want to download a copy and give it a read. You'll be glad you did!

Don't just use one lead-generation technique on your website. Use two or three. Experiment with different strategies. See what works best for you, given your particular audience, your website, etc. If one technique works like gangbusters, and the other two are a bust, then get rid of the dead weight and focus your energy on the one that works. Then introduce a new technique to see how it works. This process never ends, by the way. I've been doing it for many years, and I learn something new every week.

Take the advice of other people (including me) with a grain of salt. When it comes to producing real estate agent leads, nothing is written is stone. What works for John might be a bust for Jane, and vice versa. Maybe John did a poor job implementing the strategy, while Jane pulled it off perfectly. Same strategy -- two different stories. Harvest ideas from other agents, but take their "case studies" with a grain of salt. They are personal experiences that may or may not apply to you.

Do you have a search engine optimization (SEO) program? If not, you're falling behind. I have to be blunt here, because there's no time to waste. All of your successful competitors are working hard on their search engine visibility. I guarantee it. Why? Because you can't generate real estate agent leads without traffic, and search engines are the best way to produce a steady stream of traffic.

Learn to capitalize on the web traffic you have right now, before trying to boost your traffic. I once had a client who was convinced he needed more website traffic, because he was not getting very many leads through the site. I reviewed his website analytics and found that he was getting about 1,000 visitors per week. That's plenty of traffic for an agent website! He just wasn't doing anything to get those people to raise their hands. Work with what you've got. Put your lead-generation strategies in place today. And then work on boosting your website visibility and traffic. First things first.

Let me restate that last point differently. (It's important enough to warrant repetition.) Web traffic alone does nothing for you. If 500 people visit your website each day, but leave the site without interacting with you, then you've gained nothing. You must convert traffic into real estate leads, and then you must follow up with those leads to turn them into clients. It's a series of steps. Website visibility comes first, and it's the hardest part of the process. This will increase your site traffic. And then, if you do something to encourage interaction, you'll turn traffic into real estate agent leads ... or not. It's all up to you.

Generating Leads With a Real Estate Landing Page

© 2010, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Landing pages are a great way to generate real estate leads through your website. But many agents don't know (A) what a landing page is to begin with, and (B) how to use them to produce leads. In today's lesson, I'll talk about each of these things. I'll also give you a sample landing page to reinforce the lesson, and to get your marketing wheels turning.

What is a Landing Page Anyway?

Within the context of Internet marketing, a landing page is where a person "lands" upon reaching a certain website. So in a sense, every page of your real estate website could be a landing page, because you never know where somebody will land upon finding the site.

But you can also create specific landing pages for specific purposes. For example, people who use sponsored search / pay-per-click marketing in Google and Yahoo usually have landing pages as part of that program. Or at least they should. So when the search engine user clicks on a sponsored ad, they are sent to a specific landing page that is relevant to their search and the overall ad campaign (as opposed to sending them to the website's home page, which is just plain silly).

Using Them to Generate Real Estate Leads

Let's say that Jane Doe (a hypothetical real estate agent) specializes in short sales to help homeowners avoid foreclosure. Home foreclosures have reached record levels this year, so can see the relevance and timeliness of this approach. Jane has worked hard to create a homeowners guide to foreclosure avoidance in her city.

Here's how I would present this on a landing page in order to generate leads from it. I've stripped away the other website elements to focus your attention on the page itself:


View full-size image

The job of this particular landing page is simple. It must be designed to (A) increase the visitor's desire for the booklet and (B) make it really easy for them to request the item.

Analyzing the Landing Page

Landing pages will vary based on the offer, the marketing strategy, the product or service, etc. But they all have certain traits in common. Or at least they should have these traits. Here are some things to notice about Jane's landing page, as well as the lead-generation strategy she is using.

• The page's headline identifies the audience and subject matter, using straightforward language. This tells impatient readers what the page is about within seconds.
• The introductory statement (in italics) reinforces the headline and expands on the promise made by the headline. It also includes a call-to-action hyperlink.
• A "virtual cover" image is used for visual enticement. This technique has been proven to increase conversion rates, when compared to a text-only description.
• The key selling points of this booklet are featured in bullet points.
• The last bullet point is a hyperlink that repeats the call to action. By offering multiple links (and even a button), Jane is increasing the likelihood of a click-through.
• In case the reader skims past the first two hyperlinks / calls to action, there is a gigantic button at the bottom that they cannot miss.
• The copy is also keyword-rich for various "San Diego foreclosure" types of phrases. This will help with search engine visibility. It's not a lead generation technique, but it's worth mentioning here. You need traffic before you can get leads!

Logistical Odds & Ends

So what happens when somebody clicks one of the hyperlinks or the button? Well, this is up to you. There are several things you could do here. But the important thing is that you either (A) capture the lead for eventual follow-up or (B) get the reader to contact you directly. Based on your preference, you could then do one of the following:

• Use a form with a thank-you page. With this option, the reader would fill out a brief form to the request the booklet. The form would ask for only basic contact information, such as name and email address. Once the reader completes the form, they would be sent to a thank-you page where they download the PDF booklet.
• Use a form with an auto-responder. This is similar to the last option, only here the booklet (or a link to download it) would be sent to the person by an auto-responder email. This is a good way to encourage people to subscribe to a newsletter, as well. The benefit is that the person has to use a legitimate email address to get the booklet.
• Have people email you for the booklet. This is an easier strategy to put in place, but it may work just as well as the other two. Here, the reader simply emails you to request the free booklet. It's a low-tech approach, but the end result is the same.

Driving Traffic to the Page

This is not a lesson on increasing your website traffic, but on generating leads from the traffic you already have. However, this is a great opportunity to offer some traffic-generating techniques that our fictitious Jane Doe might use to get people to her landing page. If I were Jane, I would do the following things for starters:

• Submit a press release online to announce the booklet.
• Submit the same press release to local news outlets.
• Optimize the landing page for good search-engine rankings.
• Experiment with pay-per-click marketing, such as Google AdWords.
• Put a prominent link to this page on the home page and elsewhere.
• Mention the booklet in a newsletter blast, if such a program is used.

I would also do anything else I could think of to drive traffic to this page. The search engine optimization / SEO strategy is especially useful, because it provides lasting benefits. It's a great way to get a steady amount of qualified traffic to this landing page, which will directly relate to an increase in leads generated.

P.S. -- If you want to learn more about generating traffic through search engine optimization, you might want to check out my book on that subject. You can find it at www.TopTenAgent.com.

Flipping a Real Estate Blog - A Lead Generation Makeover

© 2010, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

In the past, I've often written about lead generation techniques that you can apply to your real estate blog. Now it's time for a visual demonstration. Below, I've "flipped" a blog to demonstrate just how easy it is to add lead generators to it. First, we will start with the before-and-after images of the blog, and then I'll explain the changes I've made.

Before — A Basic Real Estate Blog

This is a blog I designed, based on an actual real estate agent's blog. I changed the city and the title of the blog so there wouldn't be any copyright issues. But aside from that, this is a common layout that I've seen on dozens of real estate blogs.


Click here to enlarge the image

From a design standpoint, there's nothing wrong with this blog. It's very easy to read with a nice, clean layout. But it doesn't work hard enough to generate leads, so I added some lead-generation techniques to it (see "after" image below).

After — Same Blog with Lead Generators

In the image below, I have added several features that will help this real estate agent generate more leads through the blog. The overall design and layout is the same, but I've added (1) a chat box to the sidebar area, (2) a Q&A feature above the blog entry itself, and (3) a toll-free number in the header area.


Click here to enlarge the image

Lead Generation Techniques - A Closer Look

The changes I've implemented above could be done on any blog. It would probably be easiest if you were using the Wordpress platform, but it could be accomplished with any blogging program. Best of all, it would be a one-time change to the blog template. After that, the lead-generation items would appear on all of the posts / entries, without any effort from you.

In order to generate more leads, I made three specific changes to this real estate agent's blog. Here's a brief discussion of each one.

• Toll-free number -- A lot of people researching real estate in a given city will actually live somewhere else, in another city or state. I'm talking, of course, about relocation people. By adding a toll-free number to the blog (and putting it in a high-visibility area as I've done above), you'll get more calls from local buyers and relocation folks alike. This technique for lead generation has been proven time and time again.
• Chat box -- There are dozens of free chat programs you can install onto your web server. Once the program is installed, you can easily add a chat box to the sidebar area of your blog, like I've done above. Granted, somebody has to be around a computer throughout the business day (like a customer service person or an office manager). But it can be highly effective under the right circumstances. It's a good way to get people talking to you in the spur of the moment.
• Q&A form -- The box you see above the article itself is just a simple HTML form. You can code it into your blog template so it appears above each entry, as shown in the picture above. This is a great way to generate leads, because it prompts people to ask a specific question about a specific page they are reading. And (most importantly) it makes it really easy for them to contact you in the moment. They submit their email address and their question, and the information is then sent to you by email. You've just captured a new lead.
  

All of these changes are fairly simple to make. The phone number is the easiest, of course. The Q&A box shown above the article is second-easiest. And the chat box is slightly more tricky (but still easy). If you would like to learn more about real estate lead generation tactics like the ones shown above, check out my e-book on the topic.

Some Helpful Tools & Websites

If you would like to create a simple form to add to your blog pages, like I've done in the "After" version above, you have a fairly simple task ahead of you. Anyone familiar with basic HTML code can create one for you. There are also some pretty slick websites online that will generate HTML forms for you, such as PHPform.org.

You can also generate HTML forms online through these websites:

• Emailmeform.com
• Wufoo.com
• Formsite.com

You might also want to check with your current web hosting provider. They often have forms that you can install on your website quickly and easily. Creating the HTML form itself is simple, but you'll also need a script that tells the form what to do when people click on "submit" (i.e., send the information to you by email). Some of the form-generator websites listed above will handle this for you.

As for the online chat programs, there are plenty of those available too. Check out any of the websites below to see some of these programs. Some can be installed onto your own web server, while others are hosted remotely (though the chat box still launches from your site).

• Boldchat.com
• Volusion.com
• ProvideSupport.com

There are dozens of other products like these, so you'll have no trouble finding more of them for comparison purposes. I hope you've enjoyed this lesson on lead generation with real estate blogs, and I wish you well in your implementation of these techniques. Good luck!

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.

17 Ways to Generate More Real Estate Leads Online

© 2010, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Viable leads are the lifeblood of any real estate business. They are the seeds from which new business relationships grow. They are, in essence, the key to client acquisition.

But many agents are at loss when it comes to generating real estate leads on a regular basis. Sure, they realize the importance of it. And they know they have to be proactive in order to generate new leads and grow their businesses over time. But when it comes to the actual implementation of strategies and techniques, these agents get stuck.

In this article, I've compiled a list of 17 techniques you can use to produce more real estate leads online. All of the strategies involve the use of your website, your blog, search engine optimization and other web-based elements.

And if you're really serious about this topic, you'll be glad to know that all of these items are covered in detail in my lead generation book for agents. It's the best-selling ebook in the history of this website, and you'll find out why when download your copy!

But I digress. Let's move on to the mission at hand. Here's a helpful list of techniques for producing viable real estate leads through your website or blog:

How to Produce Real Estate Website Leads

1. Clean up your website. I am constantly amazed by how unbelievably cluttered a lot of real estate websites are. What hope do you have of generating leads if people can't find anything on your site? Start this process by determining your "action paths" (next item).
2. If you want people to take a certain action on your website, you need to (A) define what that path is and (B) make the path very easy to follow. Map it out on paper. Think about the goals people have when they visit your site. Help them find their way, and they'll be more likely to stick around.
3. Assign value to every action you ask people to take. Increase the value of what you're offering. Tell people what's in it for them. The stronger the value of your offer, the more real estate leads you stand to gain. If you have nothing of value to offer people, then you're not ready to market your services -- go back to the drawing board.
4. Understand the difference between web traffic and leads. I once spoke to an agent who claimed to have over 1,000 unique visitors to his website every week. Care to guess how many inquiries he was producing from that traffic? Zero! He thought traffic was the ultimate goal, when in truth it's merely a stepping stone. Don't make this same mistake.
   
5. Use multiple strategies to produce leads through your website and/or blog. As we progress through this list, I'll offer plenty of ideas you can implement across your site. But the best strategy for real estate lead generation is a combined strategy, one that employs various techniques.
6. Experiment with FAQ programs. These are software tools that you can install onto your blog or website. It adds interactivity to your site, which increases the likelihood that people will contact you in some way. (This is explained in more detail in the lead generation manual, by the way.)
   
7. Experiment with chat programs. You have no doubt encountered a customer service chat program while surfing the web in the past. Many companies use them these days. If you have an office manager or customer service rep who's in front of a computer during business hours, you could pick up some extra real estate leads with a chat program. (This is also explained in the e-book.)
   
8. If you don't have a real estate blog already, it's time to start one. You can have a blog up and running in a couple of days, and it's a great way to encourage participation from readers. Many of the people who leave comments on your blog will be local buyers or sellers, which means they could become your next client.
9. Blog often to increase traffic to your website. This is the primary benefit of blogging programs -- they make it incredibly easy to publish new content on a regular basis. The more information you publish, the more search engine visibility you'll enjoy. This in turn will increase your web traffic and (if you use the other techniques on this list) the number of real estate leads you produce. Here are some content ideas to get you started.
10. Create landing pages to capture more real estate leads through your website. A landing page is a "stripped down" web page that presents something of value and asks for a certain action on the visitor's part. It removes all other distractions and thereby increases the likelihood of a conversion.
    
11. Increase traffic to your key pages, the ones where you have lead generation techniques in place. Make sure they're a prominent part of your main menu. Practice cross-linking across your site to send more people to your key pages. Try using callout graphics / links to direct people where you want them to go.
12. Generate more leads by improving the overall quality of your website. If you have a well-designed and neatly organized website, people will be more inclined to trust you. Trust is the first step to encouraging a response from your visitors.
    
13. Put your phone number in a prominent location on every page. Hint -- mot people will look for it in the upper-right section of your header. This is where phone numbers usually occur on business websites. This simple technique has been proven, time and time again, to increase the number of leads and inquiries.
14. Why not launch a second website, blog or web forum? If you're still struggling with the first site, keep your focus on that. But if you already have a successful web presence that produces traffic and leads, why not duplicate that success? It won't cost you much, aside from your time and energy. And it could potentially double your lead-generation and client-acquisition rates.
15. Use your website in conjunction with offline events, such as home buying seminars and other educational events. You might even experiment with online "webinars" using a software product like GoToMeeting. Of course, you'll need decent levels of site traffic to get people to sign up, which is the key to success with all of these techniques.
    
16. Partner with local mortgage brokers, home appraisers and others in related fields. When used properly, cross-marketing can be an effective tool for business growth. And you can take this technique onto your website as well, by creating a separate "pitch" page for each professional in your network. Of course, they would do the same for you.
    
17. Come up with the next "big idea" in real estate lead generation. This list represents things I've done in the past, for my own websites and those of my clients. Often, however, the best ideas are the new ones -- the techniques nobody has ever tried before. So put on your thinking cap and come up with your own unique strategy for attracting clients online.
    

Top 10 Lead Generation Techniques - Explained

If you found this list helpful, and you'd like to learn more about the various ways to generate real estate leads online, you should download a copy of this e-book. You can get a copy today and start putting it to use tomorrow.



In this book, I've outlined the strategies that have worked best for me on the Home Buying Institute website, and also on the website of past clients. In other words, it's like a "greatest hits" collection of lead generation techniques.

Free Real Estate Leads Every Day

© 2010, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

What could you do with a handful of free real estate leads each and every day? How much would that be worth to your business? It would be priceless, wouldn't it?

Well, in this blog post, I'm going to tell you how you can generate a steady stream of free leads through your real estate website or blog. And I'm going to use a pair of blogs on my home buying website as a real-world example.

A little while back, I converted one of the blogs at the Home Buying Institute into a Q&A tool for consumers. All I really did was add a box to the sidebar that allows people to type their questions directly into the blog. When they click "send," the question gets sent to me by email, and the visitor gets redirected to a thank-you page that tells them their question has been received.

Since I implemented this strategy, I've been flooded with questions about mortgage loans, credit scores, and other home buying topics. Now, I don't ask for people's name or contact info, because I'm using this as a free public service -- not as a lead generator. But you could easily adapt this technique on your own website to generate free real estate leads from buyers and/or sellers in your area. Take the technique I'm using, add a form field for the person's email address, and you have a lead generator for your website or blog.

Free Leads Are Only One of the Benefits

There's more to this strategy than meets the eye. At first glance, it appears to be a way to produce real estate leads online ... and it is. But it's also a strategy for content development and search engine visibility.

Each time somebody asks a question through my blog, I post my response onto the blog itself. The thank-you page tells the visitor this, so they know to check back in a day or two. So each Q&A session becomes a new page of content, in the form of a blog post. On average, I answer about three questions per day through the main blog and the credit help blog. So in a year's time, that adds up to more than 1,000 pages of keyword-rich content.

You can see the multiple benefits of this strategy. It can help you generate free real estate leads through your site, but it's also a great way to expand your content over time. This in turn will help to increase your website traffic.

Also, because each question is about a specific topic, the entire Q&A article is naturally optimized for good search engine visibility. Here's an example of what I mean:

Let's say you're a real estate agent in Columbia, Maryland, and somebody asks a question about home inspections when buying a house. If you answer that person's question on the blog, you would have some keyword-rich content about home inspections in Columbia, Maryland. So anyone searching that phrase would have a good chance of finding your website, and they would likely be impressed by (A) your real estate expertise and (B) your willingness to help others. Heck, they might even ask a question of their own, which gives you yet another real estate lead through the website ... and more keyword-rich content ... and more search engine visibility ... and more website traffic.

You can see how this would have a snowball effect over time. More activity means more free real estate leads for you. More responses mean better search engine visibility, which brings traffic and leads along with it. You get out of it what you put into it, and if you put a lot into it there's no limit to what you can do.

So the benefits are really three-fold:

• You are positioning yourself as an expert in the local real estate scene.
• You are establishing a channel for free real estate leads on a regular basis.
• You are expanding your website with keyword-rich content relevant to your audience.
• You are increasing your search engine visibility and potential for website traffic.

If you already have a blog where you could execute a strategy like this, you can put the whole thing in motion for free by following these steps:

1. Customize your blog so it looks and works like a Q&A tool.
2. Set up a separate blog for this purpose, if need be.
3. Put a form on the sidebar (or top) where people can enter their questions.
4. Include form fields for the person's name, email address and question.
5. Set up the form so it sends the question / lead to you by email.

You can post responses to the blog and then send the person a courtesy email to let them know it's online ... and to ask if they need help from a skilled agent like you.

Property Listings as Lead Generation Tool?

© 2010, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip 65 of 100 - Grant Exclusive Access to Generate Leads

Do you grant access to property listings as form of website lead generation, by asking people to sign in to view property listings in the area? I know a lot of real estate agents use this as a lead generation techniques, so I would like to offer some pointers on the subject.

By the way, if you're really curious about the subject of generating leads online, I invite you to download my new book real estate web leads.

The concept here is a simple one. You require people to sign in to a certain area of your real estate website in order to access property listings. Thus, you would acquire contact information as part of the exchange. This is a practice used by many real estate agent websites as well as the big realty search engine sites.

But this strategy can be a double-edged sword, so there are many things to consider. For one thing, you have to realize that people are becoming increasingly aware of all the real estate search tools online today, and they also know that many of them are free. So if you put up an obstacle between your website visitors and the listing data, they might jump ship and visit another website to search for listings.

Of course, depending on the listings tool you have on your website, you may be able to sell the advantages of signing in. For example, maybe you could offer free access to the property listings / search tool, but give people the option to create an account. This would allow them to save their searches and access the data more quickly in the future -- a real benefit to somebody looking for a home. This way, you would avoid turning people away, but you would still retain some of the lead generation potential.

Like everything else with real estate marketing and lead generation, you will need to experiment to see what works on your website and with your audience.

Now let's put on our thinking caps to see if we can come up with a twist on this concept. What is you had a password-protected area of your website that offered exclusive content? For example, maybe you offer basic listings on the public part of the website, but you offer enhanced listing data and virtual tours in the "Members Only" section of the site.

But why stop there? You could even combine this with the booklet strategy from the previous chapter. In fact, you could create a whole "store" full of goodies inside the members only / password-protected area. Access to exclusive listings, access to recent sales stats, information about future developments and construction plans, whatever booklet you have created, virtual tours and additional listing photos. You get the idea.

Of course, it would be free for people to obtain a password, but they would provide their email address as part of the sign-up process. And you've just captured a lead from a qualified prospective client.

Real Estate Leads - Top Concern Among Agents

© 2010, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Generating leads from a real estate website is one of the top concerns among real estate agents and brokers these days -- at least for the agents I speak to in my line of work. So I thought I'd publish a short series of blog posts on the subject of real estate lead generation online.



But first, let's start with some basic terminology so we are all on the same page. When I refer to website lead generation in this context, I'm referring to the act of generating inquiries through your real estate website. In other words, getting names and contact information from people who are interested in your services or the properties you have listed.

When it comes to Internet marketing, real estate leads are the first step to gaining clients via the web. And they come in many forms. A person might leave a comment on your blog (with their name and email address), they might fill out an-information-request form on your website, or they might email you directly. These are all forms of web-based leads ... and they are extremely valuable to your business.

You might have heard the term "conversion" used in marketing circles. In some respects, this term is synonymous with lead generation. An onsite conversion takes place when a website visitor goes from being just a visitor to something else as well. For example, if somebody visits your real estate website and subscribes to your email newsletter, an onsite conversion has taken place. The person has "converted" from a casual visitor to a newsletter subscriber.

With that definition out of the way, let's talk about the first (and most important) step to real estate lead generation online. Let's talk about the way you define your conversion goals.

Define Your Lead Generation Goals

Now this might seem a little obvious, but you'd be surprised by how many real estate agent are stumped when I ask something like: "What are your top three conversion goals on your website?"

Some will explain that their goal is to get more clients. But this is not a specific goal for website lead generation / conversion. Of course you want new clients. Every real estate agent does. But that's just the end-goal of your Internet marketing efforts. It's not a well-defined conversion goal.

Once in a while, I'll encounter a real estate marketer who has this concept figured out. He or she will respond to my question by saying something like: "I want my website visitors to do one of three things ... download a neighborhood report from the home page, click on the big green 'chat' button to contact customer service, or contact us by phone or email."

Now we are getting somewhere! This hypothetical real estate company has really thought about their goals for lead generation, and they have some things in place to help them achieve those goals. But before they could create those enticing neighborhood reports or integrate the online chat tool within their site, they had to define their conversion / lead generation goals.

As we progress through this tutorial on real estate lead generation via the Web, we will talk about some other techniques and tools you can use. But you can't
You cannot move on to the other conversion techniques mentioned below until you have clearly defined your website conversion goals, and how they will ultimately lead to new business.

My Real Estate Website Doesn't Produce Leads

© 2010, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

This seems to be the number-one concern among real estate agents these days ... a website that doesn't produce any viable real estate leads. Or one that doesn't produce any leads at all.

Sometimes the answer is obvious. Other times, it calls for some speculation. For example, some websites have such obvious problems that you can spot them at a glance. Maybe there are no lead generation systems in place at all, or perhaps the website doesn't function properly.

In other cases, however, the website may appear to be well-designed from a lead generation standpoint, but it still does not produce any real estate leads. This is a tougher scenario to evaluate.

In the latter case, the lack of real estate leads could just be because of the market. After all, if there's not a lot of real estate activity in your area, you can't expect a steady stream of leads to pour through your real estate website. In many cities -- from Nashville to Tucson and elsewhere -- this is what we are seeing right now. And in this case, you simply have to look at your traffic stats. Are you even getting any traffic on a daily basis? If not, you have no hope of producing real estate leads from the website.

If your stats reveal a steady stream of website traffic day in and day out, but you are not getting any leads from the website, then there is something lacking from a lead generation standpoint. In such cases, these are the things I usually troubleshoot first:

Does the website offer any reason why people should contact the agent, or fill out the form, or whatever the conversion goal is? If not, this needs to be addressed first and foremost.

Are the conversion points easy to find, or is the real estate website in such a messy state that visitors can't find their way around? This is a usability issue, and one of the ways you can spot it is through high percentages of people who hit the home page only to leave right away (without clicking further into the website).

These are the things I would start with when troubleshooting a real estate website with good traffic levels but poor lead generation. Often, it's just a matter of cleaning things up and presenting something of value that people would want.

I also see a lot of those "Free Reports" offered on real estate websites, presumably for lead generation purposes. Many of the so-called reports I encounter are poorly positioned in several ways. First of all, they will consist of information the web visitor can easily find elsewhere online. For example, "Top 10 Tips for Buying a Home" is so worn out and overused that it's sad really. Without much effort, I could probably Google that phrase and find it plastered all across the Web.

So who is going to offer their email address in exchange for a generic article they can find on thousands of other websites? Consumers are web-savvy these days, and they know how to ignore useless info and find the good stuff.

So let's say you took the "free report" concept and injected it with steroids and other performance-enhancing substances ... metaphorically speaking of course. Let's say you created an actual e-booklet, in PDF format. And let's say that it was all about the local real estate scene in your area. Suddenly, the booklet becomes something that people cannot find anywhere else, thus the perceived value of the item increases.

Now let's take this further and hire a graphic designer to create a "virtual cover" for the booklet -- one that you can use to promote it on your website. People believe in what they see, so sometimes a little visual entice is all it takes to get people to starting filling out those web forms.

But we're not done yet. Let's create a press release and distribute it online to announce this insightful new guide to the real estate scene in [your town] ... jam-packed with recent sales statistics, development news, residential reports and more. A must-read for anyone planning to buy a home in [your town].

I've shared enough. You get the idea. But suffice to say these are only steps 1 through 7 of about 15 steps I would take ... if I were serious about generating leads through my real estate website. I offer these kinds of ideas and strategies all the time, but very few people implement them. And do you want to know why?

Because nobody ever said lead generation was easy!

Those who put in the extra effort will reap the extra rewards. And those who keep peddling their "Top Ten Tips for Buying a Home" will probably find another line of work at some point.

Yahoo Real Estate Leads Available to More Brokers

© 2010, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Yahoo is making its real estate leads available to more franchises and brokerages. If you're not familiar with Yahoo Real Estate, it's a multipurpose portal with all kinds of real estate tools -- home valuation, property listings, and many other resources.

And because it's operated by Yahoo (one of the smartest Internet companies, in my opinion), it is incredibly easy to use and highly visible to a vast audience.

So ... as you might imagine, the site gets a ton of real estate leads as a result of all that traffic and visibility. And everyone knows that quality leads are one of the hardest things to come by in the real estate business. Well, Yahoo has plenty of them. And if you work for one of the increasing number of real estate companies who partner with Yahoo Real Estate, consider yourself lucky.

Read the full story here

Real Estate Buyer Leads - You Get What You Pay For

© 2010, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

I was doing some Internet research recently to see what type of lead generation phrases are being searched through Google, Yahoo, etc. And I was surprised to see the word "free" come up quite a bit.

In other words, it seems that a lot of real estate agents are using the Internet to try and find a source for free real estate leads.

Here's a quick word about real estate buyer leads (regardless of the source), based on my own experiences working with agents over the years. You get what you pay for!

Essentially, there are two types of buyer lead sources that real estate agents can pursue. You can either generate the leads yourself, or you can buy into a lead referral program. If you want to increase the number of buyer leads you get from your own website, check out this article on the subject.

Real Estate Web Leads - The Book

After repeated requests, I've finally created a book on website lead generation for rel estate agents. This book is a compilation of the techniques I've used over the years.

If you want to by real estate leads from some other source, keep the "you get what you pay for" principle in mind. With regard to free buyer leads, consider this. It takes a lot of time, energy and money to initiate and sustain a lead-gathering program. So why would somebody want to give those valuable leads away for free. I can't think of a reason ... unless the leads are junk, or there is some other catch to the "free" offer.

Two Types of Buyer Leads

Here's the difference between real estate buyer leads that are worth paying for, and those that are marketed as being "free"...

• Valuable leads worth buying are basically the names and contact info of people who are actively seeking home buying information in your area. In other words, these people are your ideal audience -- they are in need of real estate information (and probably services as well).
• Low-value leads are usually nothing more than the names and contact information of regular folks ... with no consideration as to whether or not they are in the market for a home. These are the "discount leads" and free leads you see offered on a lot of shady websites.

The difference, of course, is that the high-value leads are much easier to turn into clients, because you know that they are (A) in your local area and (B) actively shopping for a home in the area as well. Low-value leads are basically people you know nothing about, aside from their name and contact info. Why would you even contact people like that?

Learn the Laws of Lead Generation - Tip #61 of 100

© 2010, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip 61 of 100 - Learn the "Laws" of Lead Generation

Okay, so they're not really laws. More like guidelines. But if you understand the five concepts contained in the article below, and you apply them to your Internet marketing program, you'll enjoy more lead generation as a result.

And let's face it, a real estate marketing website that doesn't produce leads is an exercise in frustration. So learn the art and science of lead generation, starting with the concepts discussed in the article below -- opportunity, value, attrition, success and psychology.

5 Laws of Lead Generation

While on this topic, you may also want to read my blog post about search engine optimization not being a lead-generation tool. This is a common misconception, and you can read about it over here.

It's Wednesday, May 23. Do you know where your lead generation program is?

Look for tip #62 soon!

~Brandon

Real Estate Lead Generation - Collection of Tips

© 2010, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Each week, I review the data from the search tool on the main website. I like to see what topics people are looking for when they reach the site, because then I know what kinds of topics I need to cover.

Real estate lead generation consistently ranks among the most frequently searched phrases. This tells me that lead generation is on the minds of a lot of real estate agents. And it should be, because a real estate marketing program without lead generation is a failed marketing program.

Without leads, you cannot start a business relationship with people. And without business relationships, you have no business.

So I thought it would be helpful if I rounded up some lead generation articles and advice from all over the website.

Read Estate Lead Generation - An Agent's Guide
This is a fairly recent article I wrote about lead generation. It talks about three specific things you need to do in order to generate real estate leads -- be visible, be valuable, and be trustworthy.

Generate Leads With a School "Report Card"
There are dozens of ways to generate real estate leads, both online and off. Here's a specific lead generation technique that takes a valuable information approach. To succeed with this strategy, you need to do a good job conveying the value of the "report card." This is an area where I see a lot of agents stumble, so I've outlined the process for you.

Focus On Lead Capture
This blog post is part of my ongoing 100-part series on real estate Internet marketing. In this post, we will look at the reasons for having a lead-capture system on your website. A real estate website is a great tool for lead generation, but you need (A) a way to capture leads and (B) a way to motivate people toward the desired action.

How to Generate Website Leads
This 14-page guide can be downloaded as part of a bonus pack with the Real Estate SEO guide. This training guide takes a lead generation strategy commonly used by Fortune 500 companies and modifies it for real estate marketing purposes.

More Tips on Website Leads
This is another blog post in the real estate Internet marketing series. This ones offers a handful of lead generation ideas, some of which are described in greater detail through the other links above.

The 5 Laws of Lead Generation
I wrote this in-depth article back in January but just got around to putting it onto the website. It offers five "laws" of Internet marketing that you should understand when marketing your services online.

I hope you enjoyed this roundup of advice on real estate lead generation. Surely within all that material there's something that will help you in your quest to generate quality real estate leads.

~Brandon

Real Estate Lead Generation: Tip #57 of 100

© 2010, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip 57 of 100 - Understand Lead Generation

Lead generation is one of the most important pieces of the real estate marketing "puzzle." Without lead generation, you have no leads. Without leads, you have no business. Blunt but factual.

About once a week I get a call from a real estate agent who wants help with SEO [definition: search engine optimization] because they want to generate more leads from their real estate site. When ask what kind of lead-generation techniques they currently have in place on their website, I often hear silence on the other end of the line.

"But isn't that what good search engine ranking will do ... generate leads?" No, not necessarily.

If you increase traffic to a website with no lead-generation techniques in place, you will have plenty of traffic ... but no way to capitalize on it.

I won't lie to you. Real estate lead generation is hard work. It takes focus, imagination, and good old-fashioned hard work. You have to create something of value that people want badly enough they're willing to "raise their hands" in order to get it. If you'd like to learn more on this subject, refer to the article below.

Related article:
Real Estate Lead Generation - How Do I Generate Leads?

Look for tip #58 soon!

~Brandon