Free Real Estate Leads Every Day

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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