A real estate lead is an individual or an organization who is looking to buy, sell, or rent a property. The more leads you have the better chances that you will be able to close a deal. As a real estate agent, your business depends on how many leads you get, because every sale starts with a lead. This is why some real estate professionals choose to buy real estate leads. But the question is should you buy real estate leads or not. So, let’s talk about the reasons why you should and should not buy them.
Buy Real Estate Leads vs Finding Them Yourself
It can be a smart investment to buy real estate leads if it’s done correctly. It not only allows for potentially immediate revenue generation but it can help the agent with word of mouth advertising by way of referrals to build their business. According to a study by the National Association of Realtors, 90% of Buyers would use their agent again or recommend their agent to others. Which shows how beneficial this can be both in the short and the long run. This also helps the agent establish a footprint in the market if they are new as a real estate agent.
One obvious reason that can make it unattractive to buy real estate leads is the financial strain it can put on your business. It can be a costly and risky investment, because not all leads turn into buyers or sellers for that matter. Therefore, it is important to find a quality lead source. There are many available but the tricky task is to find which source is worth the price.
So, what to do if you want to get a greater number of leads but can’t afford a financial strain of buying them. Here are some ways to generate leads without having to buy real estate leads.
How To Use Digital Marketing Software
So where do these online real estate companies get their leads? Many companies run ads on social media platforms like Facebook and on search engines like Google. They use sales funnels to collect names, telephone numbers and email addresses from interested buyers, sellers or renters. Squeeze pages, landing pages, quiz/survey funnels are all other terms you will hear about with lead generation software. These pages all can collect information in their different ways. Lead generation companies figure out how much it costs them to get a lead through their advertising efforts then charge the buyer a premium.
How can you cut out the middle man so you don’t have buy real estate leads and put a sales funnel to work for you? Well there are many softwares out there that offer sales funnels. Which one do you choose and why? There’s a long list of companies out there to choose from and we will get into a few later on in this article.
Let’s talk about how to use sales funnels to generate the leads. Here are some steps:
Step 1: Set up a funnel to collect names and emails
Let’s say we are looking for sellers, we would create a funnel or use a pre-made funnel that will have a lead magnet built into it. Let’s talk about lead magnets, what is a lead magnet? It’s something given away free that has value in exchange for someone’s contact information. Like a free ebook that will help a potential seller stage their home better for when they put their property up for sale. For example an ebook packed with information with a title like 5 Simple Decorating Tricks That Will Sell Your Home Faster.
The way a funnel works is that when the interested person wants to collect the free ebook they have to give their email address to get it. Then either you send the ebook through email to the potential client or allow them to download the book after you acquire the contact information.
Why is a funnel different than a website? In this case a sales funnels only job is to collect a potential clients contact information. It’s only focus is to trade something of value for an email There are no other links, articles, listings that will distract a visitor from this objective on a funnel. Websites are built differently and are meant to provide many different things. Listings, articles, work hours, telephone numbers, work experience are all other things that can distract visitors from giving you their contact information. A website is a great tool to inform and provide value to a visitor, but not necessarily collect a lead.
The above video will explain the differences between a sales funnel and a traditional website and how a funnel can help you capture leads more effectively than with a website.
So once your funnel is complete what do you do with it? Well most Realtors are active on social media. Think about posting this offer on your Facebook page, or how about promoting this free ebook on Instagram or Twitter. Utilize all your free traffic sources to promote your offer.
Paid ads are an option as well. This is a form of buying real estate leads. Facebook ads can be a valuable tool to generate leads. Running Facebook ads to a very targeted audience of buyers or sellers can be a valuable skill to develop as a real estate professional. You can also learn the skill of keyword research and advertise your free ebook on google to a similar targeted audience. Both of these types of paid advertising techniques can be started out on a low ad cost per day basis and scaled up to whatever level you decide to go.
Step 2: Follow up with potential clients
Once your funnel starts to collect emails from the leads you generated where do these emails get saved? Well sales funnels work hand and hand with email marketing software called autoresponders. This tool will automatically collect, store and sort into campaigns the emails as well as reply to the lead with a prearranged email.
For example, if you are running multiple funnels at once say one for buyers, one for sellers and another for renters you can assign tags to each funnel and the software will automatically sort all these leads into different campaigns. This allows you to set up a different email sequence to each potential type of client. These email sequences are all designed by you. Email templates are available and you are able to customize these emails to maximize effectiveness.
Building an email list is very important. Being able to generate your own leads is a valuable skill so you don’t have to buy real estate leads. This knowledge will benefit your business and can make it more profitable in the long run.
Step 3: Re-marketing
When a lead doesn’t convert into a client, it is disappointing but not the end of the world. Building your email list and providing value to your list is an important step. You can have your autoresponder email your list at any interval you choose. Like once a month or once a day. You can keep in touch with all your former clients and current ones as well. Also, you can include other agents into a campaign where you send out all your latest listings.
Its important to maintain these relationships. Like we mentioned above former clients will recommend your services to friends and family and that will create leads for you in the future. This form of advertising or marketing cost less money than if you buy real estate leads.
There are plenty of ways to keep in touch with your former clients. A friendly email once a month isn’t too much to do. With change of seasons and holidays these emails can just be a simple correspondence. If you are concerned or overwhelmed about what should go into your emails, don’t worry. Email scripts don’t cost much money and in some cases script generating software is included in sales funnel software. Sending emails is a much cheaper way to stay in contact than postcards or brochures through the mail.
Also, there are simple info products that can be sent to your list to provide value like ebooks, thoughtful articles and digital magazines.
Other Types Of Sales Funnels
Quiz/Survey Funnel
Above we detailed how a funnel that offered a lead magnet can help you generate leads. There are many types of online sales funnels that can help your business. For example, a quiz or survey funnel is something that may help you find real estate leads. Most people have experienced these funnels online or on social media. These funnels ask a few questions before they collect your email.
This type of funnel can be useful to determine the strength of a lead. Say we have a funnel that is targeting buyers. It would be useful information to ask if they are first time home buyers, if they owned a property in the last 7 years, or if they have had any foreclosures or bankruptcy issues in the past.
This information can be pivotal because these leads can be sorted by your autoresponder into different campaigns. If a lead has had financial issues you can help them raise their credit score with valuable information so they can fulfill their dream of buying a home.
A first time home buyer may appreciate a home buyers guide filled with information on the process of buying a home because this is a new experience.
Obviously you wouldn’t want to send information on first time home buying to someone who has had a foreclosure in the past two years. That’s why this technology is so important and it can save you time and money.
Landing/ Squeeze Page
These type of pages are more of the simple collection of information style pages. They could include a pop-up on your website to join your email list. These style pages could be used to join a group or join a membership side of your website. These pages do serve a purpose in the digital marketing space.
What is great about this technology is that it is working for you 24 hours a day 7 days a week. These funnels are out on your social media sites or possibly on some one you have asked to promote your offer on their website or social media platform. This is a way to buy real estate leads in a less traditional way than you would through a lead generation company.
Buy Real Estate Leads or Sales Funnel Software
What is the best way to spend your advertising budget? Postcards, refrigerator magnets, newspaper ads? Those questions have been asked for many years. Today’s home buyer has become more technologically oriented than ever. Real estate buyers spend more time on their mobile devices looking for homes than searching newspapers for listings and open houses. It’s one way the industry has changed over the years.
Do you buy real estate leads or look into digital marketing? Do you want to spend $30 a month to create leads or spend $300 or more to buy them? These are all questions you need to answer. Because if you buy real estate leads can can be expensive.
ClickFunnels
What are the costs of sale funnel software? That depends on which company you look at. The big name in sales funnels today is ClickFunnels. ClickFunnels was founded by a world class marketing genius Russel Brunson. That’s one reason why ClickFunnels is so popular. They do a wonderful job at selling and marketing their sales funnel software.
ClickFunnels provides a website in their plan with hosting included in their monthly fee.
ClickFunnels specialize in sales funnels. If your looking to sell a product online this maybe the software you want to use. They have a ton of templates to build your perfect sales funnel,lead generation funnel, or any type of funnel you can think of. They offer plans starting at $97.00 a month and a platinum plan at $297.00 a month. The platinum plan includes a autoresponder in that plan but the $97.00 plan does not have one included.
ClickFunnels has off the charts training and their customer service department is A+. ClickFunnels offers a 14-day free trial so that you can test out their product before you commit to a purchase.
Builderall
Builderall is an all-in-one digital marketing platform that offers a ton of tools that help you build your online business. They offer a huge selection of funnels, a website builder, website hosting and an autoresponder called Mailing Boss in every paid plan. They do offer multiple plans and as the plans price increases so does the features.
Builderall provides a website in their plan with hosting included in their monthly fee.
Builderall plans start at free, then go up to $19.90 per month, $29.90, $49.90 and the top out at $69.90 per month for their complete package. They offer a email script generating software, you can create a mobile app, make a webinar, create a digital magazine, or use this software to live stream on Facebook or YouTube. Builderall has many features that help you build a business and a brand at the same time. What’s special about Builderall is as your business grows you can move from one plan to another. It allows you to grow at a your own pace and your not stuck paying a high monthly subscription price from the start.
Builderall has a bunch of training videos for all their tools. They have 24 hour support and gives you the opportunity to use their software without any commitment to purchase.
Fast Funnels Free Trial Offer
Fast Funnels
Fast Funnels is another sales funnel provider that also lets you make websites and includes hosting in their plans. Just like ClickFunnels and Builderall they have attractive website and funnel templates that all you need to do is edit them to your liking.
What’s great about their website is they show off many of their templates for you to check out before you sign up. They are on the site right now to check out! You can see first hand the templates and see how easy it is just to edit them. They offer a bunch of training videos to educate you on their software as well.
Fast Funnels provides a website in their plan with hosting included in their monthly fee.
They offer three plans along with a free trial offer. The three paid plans offer a hefty discount if you purchase the product on a yearly basis rather than month to month. The month to month pricing is as follows, $39.00, $79.00 and $249.00 per month. Neither of these three plans offer an autoresponder in their plans so that would be needed to set up your email marketing. All three plans offer a website and the $39 plans offers 5 funnels the $249 plan offers 10 websites and unlimited funnels.
A cool feature with Fast Funnels is they have a way to build funnels for others and add more than one admin to the funnel. Watch this short video to see the demonstration. This feature is great because if your good at making funnels you can make them for others and they can pay you for your services.
Leadsleap.com
Leadsleap offers a free package of marketing tools. They include landing pages, pop-up builder, link tracker and autoresponder all in the free plan. This particular plan is free, not just a free trial. They offer a paid plan that costs $ 27 per month. They do offer anyone who signs up to the paid plan within 24 hours of signing up a discount. You can join for $19.90 per month.
The offer these free tools to encourage marketers to sign on with them. Their platform is known for traffic generation. You can advertise on their platform of over 100,000 members and get traffic going to your products or services.
Conclusion
Long gone are the days that people search for homes for sale in the newspapers. We are living in the digital marketing age for real estate. Real estate professionals will still buy real estate leads but savvy agents will learn to create their own leads on the internet. These skills will catapult their sales and their brand faster than the agent that markets their business with the old techniques of the past.
People are on the internet more these days, it’s important to be where the people are. Digital marketing will likely be the future of real estate. It’s important to continue to learn skills to stay ahead of your competitors. Using an all-in-one software like Builderall or one of the others can help your business grow faster.
Using both tactics of advertising online with the help of a marketing software and using lead generation companies at times to buy real estate leads can help you succeed. Both of these techniques have potential financial risks. Spending time learning how to use both of these opportunities correctly will help maximize the benefits of these services.
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