Is your website generating real estate leads?

Feb 26, 2020

With all the changes Facebook has been forced to institute in its ad program, many agents we speak with are dumping their ads on the platform and seeking alternative forms of lead generation.

Some are reconsidering the “old” ways to generate leads, primarily direct mail.

We agree that direct mail is even more effective today than ever, but all marketing plans should be multi-pronged.

One free way to generate leads that is often overlooked is the agent website. Sure, you can hire someone to tweak your SEO, but there are other ways to help generate organic traffic.

Start with your content. As you go through the content on your site, keep this advice from Dan Ritzke, founder of Third Act Marketing, top-of-mind:

No one wants to learn about your brand

No one wants to learn about your product

No one wants to learn about you

Everyone wants to solve problems that are bothering them

Everyone wants to make their life easier

Everyone wants to make their job easier.

luxury marketing brochures — Give consumer s what they are asking for. Create property brochures with multi-photos and detailed descriptions. Available in the Brochure section.

The “everyone” you should concentrate on is real estate consumers. Luckily, NAR offers some tips they gleaned in a survey of these potential clients (2019 Homebuyer and Seller Generational Trends).

The top three website features that consumers find “very helpful” have to do with listings:

Photos
Detailed information about listings
Floor plans

That these consumers chose listing information as the most useful shows exactly why they visited real estate websites. Although neighborhood information is important, that’s not why they visited.

Your bio is also important, but most don’t find it “useful” to them.

The most useless information on agent websites, according to survey respondents, includes:

Videos
Information about open houses
Real estate news

While all ages rank videos as unimportant, 27 percent of baby boomers like them (the highest percentage of all groups).

What stood out the most for us is that floor plans are important to real estate website visitors yet we see few listings that include this feature.

Among the tasks you can accomplish to make your listings more valuable to buyers is to start including floor plans, lots of photos and get more detailed in your descriptions. Get more tips here.

While we can’t personally vouch for the following floor plan providers, several agents we’ve spoken with recommend them:

Then, ditch the videos on your website. Another NAR report proves that homebuyers don’t watch videos and don’t find them useful. They do, however, like virtual tours. Get on the 3-D virtual tour train in 2020 to offer value to website visitors.

The value the real estate agent brings to the process

That NAR survey also asked participants about the “Most Important Factors when Choosing an Agent.”

Let’s start with what they consider least important:

What matters least to real estate consumers?

Which broker you work for
Your level of community involvement
Designations (last on the list)

Note: There have been studies over the past couple of years that claim an agent’s community involvement is very important to the younger real estate consumer.

Your broker’s brand, whether it’s a Keller Williams or RE/Max or a local boutique brokerage, is often shown to be of little importance to consumers.

And, designations? Not only do consumers not know what the letters stand for, but when told, they aren’t impressed.

Create a personal brochure describing important attributes and experience and use it as a leave-behind

Don’t feel as if you need to take up space on your website, especially above the fold, with these items. Save that area for the things potential clients feel are valuable.

The top 3 qualities consumers look for in a real estate agent:

That the agent is honest and trustworthy
Experience
Reputation

Experience matters most to baby boomers and least to members of Gen X.

Think about Ritzke’s advice when tweaking your website’s information about you. Overtly salesy stuff will get you nowhere.

For instance, while they value experience, it will take a lot more than “Three decades as the top-selling agent” to convince them.

Ask yourself how your experience will help them solve common problems in a real estate transaction:

Experienced agents are better negotiators
Experienced agents know what can go wrong and can help buyers/sellers be proactive to avoid these pitfalls

When it comes to proving your honesty and reputation, nothing will do that better than your testimonials.

Tell them until the cows come home that you’re experienced and honest or the king or queen of trustworthiness and they may or — more likely — may not believe you.

When tweaking your website ensure that your best testimonial resides above the fold and that others – especially those in which your clients extoll your honesty and boost your reputation — are sprinkled liberally throughout your site.

Need more tips on how and why to use testimonials? You’ll find them right here.

Send the Multi-Photo Just Listed Postcards out to the area surrounding your listing. Turn one listing into many.

Need help targeting the perfect niche of buyers or sellers? Use our mailing list tool to create the ideal list (it’s easy) or call our support team for assistance at 866.405.3638!

PLUS: When you have time…here are Free killer tools to help your success this year!

1. The 12 Month Done-For-You Strategic Marketing Plan – NEW 2020!

The Real Estate Marketing Planner is a powerful 12-Month-Guide that strategically defines what marketing to do when. Four key market segments are included, Niche Marketing, Get More Listings, Geographic Farming, and Sphere of Influence. –Click Here

2. The Free One-Page Real Estate Business Plan – NEW 2020!

Treat your business like a business it is vital to long-term success in this industry. Some agents may put together elaborate business plans, yet there’s something powerful about keeping it simple. Check out our one page Online Real Estate Business Plan. – Click Here

4. Become a Listing Legend Free eBook

Ready to take a vertical leap in your real estate career? If you’re looking for inspiration…and the tools and methods to dominate a market and go to the top in real estate…you’ll find them in this free book. – Click Here

5. The Free Online ROI Calculator

Consistency and automation are the keys to success. Discover how effective direct mail marketing can dramatically increase your bottom line. Enter your statistics in our Free online ROI Calculator and click the ‘CALCULATE MY ROI’ button to see your results instantly! –Click Here

3. Get the ALL-NEW Real Estate Marketing Guide “CRUSH IT”

The “Crush It” Guide includes easy steps to launching an effective direct mail marketing campaign, how to create a targeted mailing list, the perfect way to layout marketing materials for success, seven opportunities available to target in your area right now. –Click Here

Looking for real estate listing leads? Target landlords

Oct 16, 2019

Reading housing market news is an exercise in frustration.

For every so-and-so “sees stronger housing market this fall” and stories of the various “hot” real estate markets across the country, there’s a “Housing Market will Probably Slow” and “Housing Market may be at Risk in Recession” article.

The fact is, the housing market is sitting pretty right now, according to agents we’ve spoken with. Who knows better than those wearing the boots on the ground?

Remember, many of those who bought homes during the lowest point during the recession were investors – something the folks at CoreLogic refer to as the “investor buying fury of 2012 – 2014.”

Yes, many of these buyers were institutional investors, but the so-called “mom and pop” investors, bought a lot of homes as well.

Core Logic claims that small investor activity in the real estate market increased their share of the investor buying pool from “48% of all investor-purchased homes in 2013 to more than 60% in 2018.”

There’s your target audience: absentee owners who bought the property from 2012 to 2014.

Realtor marketing postcards for neighborhood updates — The Neighborhood Update postcard is available in the postcard section under the Neighborhood Update Series.

While homeowners may be loath to list during fall and winter, landlords are not. Especially after receiving your brilliant and laser-targeted marketing pieces, convincing them to sell.

They have tons-o-equity

Want to hear something surprising?

People “who purchased a home following the Great Recession have seen their home equity climb by 261%,” according to Alcynna Lloyd at HousingWire.com.

She calculates that the average homebuyer in 2012 “is now sitting on $141,000 in equity.”

Let that sink in. That’s a whole lot of equity, especially for a tenant-weary landlord who just wants out from under his or her investment.

The market is perfect for sellers

It’s only natural to assume that when prices skyrocket, owners sell. This market over the past year or so proves what happens when we make assumptions.

Homeowners aren’t selling.

The reasons are plenty: they’re afraid they won’t find a replacement home, they think their value will continue rising, they’re scared a recession is looming and they have no idea how much equity they have in their homes.

Investors, however, are in an entirely different situation and the bottom line for them is money.

“Investors who don’t have the longest investment horizon, who only want to do this for another five or 10 years may not want to wait and see when the next cycle comes,” Doug Imber, president of Essex Realty Group in Chicago tells Debbie Carlson at USNews.com.

Costs of owning are going up

When home values increase, property taxes do too. That’s a hunk of money that can easily turn a cap rate from good to bad.

ATTOM Data Solutions claims that in 2017, property taxes rose by an average of 6 percent in 2017 and an additional 4 percent last year.

With home prices continuing to skyrocket, it’s a safe bet that the new appraised values will bring an additional hike in taxes.

Just Listed postcards are available in the Postcard section under Just Listed Series.

Then, there’s that recession on the horizon

Landlords who needed to sell their properties during the last recession and had to sit on them instead may be nervous about a coming recession.

Never mind that home values have gone up in all but the last recession (which was largely caused by the bursting of the housing bubble). When it comes to our pocketbooks, common sense leaves the building.

Although most economists don’t expect the coming recession to impact the housing market, nothing is guaranteed.

A recession could very well impact their profit margins. If the competition is lowering rents, it puts pressure on all landlords to follow suit.

And, if mortgage rates remain low and rent high, it makes more sense for their tenants to buy a home instead of rent.

Rents won’t rise forever

Our research into how much rents have risen yielded numbers that were all over the map. ApartmentList.com claims that the national average, year-over-year rent growth is only 1.4 percent.

“Our national rent index fell by 0.1 percent month-over-month,” the report claims. “This is the second straight monthly decline in the index following robust rent growth through the summer, indicating that this year’s peak rental season has come to an end.”

Other points to highlight include:

Rents are outpacing income and that’s not sustainable
Building costs will soon outpace rental rates
The market is set to change, and supply could catch up with or outpace demand

The bottom line in all of your marketing pieces is one question: “Does this particular real estate investment still make sense?”

How to lure landlord leads

The first step in drilling down into the landlord niche is to choose a farm area. This might be a condo community or two or it could be a subdivision or even a ZIP Code.

Then, come up with a strategy:

Ensure your online presence shines.
Determine which marketing vehicles you’ll use to reach out to landlords. Think old-school on this one – postcards are ideal (and, no, not just because we sell them!).
Ask your title company rep for a list of absentee owners in your chosen farm area and take a look at our mailing list options.

Your first mailing can be anything from a current neighborhood update report to a just-listed or sold postcard.

The most important aspect of this lead gen method is to come up with a follow-up plan and then keep to it, consistently, at least once every two months.

The Tired of Being a Landlord postcard is available in the Postcard section under the Rental For Sale Series.

Happy prospecting!

Send the Tired of Being a Landlord postcard to a targeted mailing list of landlords.

Need help targeting the perfect niche of buyers or sellers? Use our mailing list too l to create the ideal list (it’s easy) or call our support team for assistance at 866.405.3638!

PLUS: When you have time…here are Free killer tools to help your success this year!

1. Become a Listing Legend Free eBook

2. “Get More Listings” Free Online Webinar

“Get MORE Listings & Begin to Dominate Your Market!” Free online webinar. Learn the 3-7-27 strategy for explosive growth, why 95% of agents have less than 20% market share, and how to become the agent everyone competes against. – Click Here

3. The 12 Month Done-For-You Strategic Marketing Plan

4. The Free One-Page Real Estate Business Plan

5. The Free Online ROI Calculator