How to Generate Leads for Real Estate: Proven Strategies From Driftrock

A healthy pipeline of leads can keep the lights on in your real estate business, particularly when the market has its fair extensive share of ups and downs (aka market fluctuations).

The unpredictable real estate industry

Globally, the real estate market is being pulled into a $175 billion debt spiral. At the same time, the UK real estate industry recorded a negative return of -9.1% in 2022.

The housing market in the US is crumbling under the weight of rapidly rising mortgage rates and record-high property prices. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate here has nearly doubled from 3.29% in January 2022 to 6.28% in June of the same year.

Arming yourself with real estate lead generation strategies will help you prepare for the highly unpredictable nature of the industry.

Why lead generation is important for real estate agents

Here's why many real estate agents consider lead generation important for business growth:

1. Leads keep the business running

Leads are the soul of any real estate business. That's why 50% of marketers consider it a top priority.

2. More leads, more revenue

Secondly, the more high-quality leads you have, the easier it is to grow your clientele, brand and profits.

Before we dive into the strategies right away, let’s take 3 key factors into consideration. These factors form the base of any lead generation activities for the real estate industry. 

Using the latest lead generation techniques and strategies, you can develop genuine relationships with leads for qualitative business growth.

3 considerations for real estate lead generation

To successfully generate real estate leads, here are 3 considerations you must account for:

1. The client-realtor relationship 

The buyer-seller interaction is more personal in the real estate industry. You must have face-time with prospects to convert them into long-term customers effectively.

2. Lead generation efficiency

As a realtor, there will be multiple activities you could get involved in – giving house tours, arranging a sale, negotiating with the buyer and seller, and more.

It's all about maintaining a balancing act between daily operations and generating enough leads for a healthy pipeline.

3. Digital house-hunting 

Today's buyer is finding new ways to maintain one-on-one contact without personally meeting a real estate agent. They're checking out real estate using digital mediums, from drone videos and social media to online reviews.

Maintaining a relevant and active digital presence is important to bring in more leads.

So, now that you know the considerations to generate real estate leads let's find out how you can withhold them.

That’s where lead generation comes into play. 

Using the latest lead generation techniques and strategies, you can develop genuine relationships with leads for qualitative business growth.

How to generate leads for real estate

We've covered the best real estate lead generation strategies with actionable tips below.

Make the most of LinkedIn

LinkedIn is specifically designed for professional networking, which makes it a great place for a real estate agent to find investors and commercial leads.

While it may not have the same entertaining factor as Facebook or Instagram, you don't have to create content to attract prospects heavily. Instead, you can focus on building personal relationships with them.

Here's what you can do for real estate lead generation on LinkedIn:

1. Profile

Start by building a strong profile to showcase your skills and brand. Here’s an example:

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2. Connections

Next, make relevant connections with people who are part of your target market and could become promising leads. You could also join specific LinkedIn groups of which your audience is a part.

3. Content

Once you've started reaching out to potential leads, engage with your network and post valuable content regularly. Remember, LinkedIn's audience isn't interested in overly promotional posts. So, it's best to avoid these.

Create content on trending topics (relevant to professionals) to reach a wider audience.

4. Consulting

When responding to queries on others' posts or yours, provide meaningful answers showing your real estate market knowledge. Consultative selling earns customer trust more effectively.

5. Paid Advertising

You can make the most of LinkedIn by using 'LinkedIn for Business' and 'LinkedIn Premium' to unlock more features and audience insights.

Finally, you can level up from organic content and use LinkedIn ads to generate leads through lead gen forms. These forms let you gather lead details without directing them to external landing pages.

You can touch upon a broader and more relevant audience with lead gen forms.

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Explore Facebook Ads for real estate professionals

Facebook is a highly relevant platform for a real estate agent even today. After all, it's one of the world's most widely used social media channels, with nearly 3 billion monthly active users in 2022.

Such an extensive user base translates into a large potential audience for Facebook ads and new leads for you.

Another benefit is that Facebook offers a wide range of advertising tools, including those specifically catering to real estate businesses.

There are several ways you can use Facebook Ads for real estate. We've covered 9 excellent examples from the real world to help you out.

Other than these strategies, retargeting is a great way to influence leads who've been previously interested in a particular listing or your brand before.

The key to getting leads from Facebook Ads is using appealing lead magnets that could even make people stop scrolling through cute dog videos and click on your ad.

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Your potential audience can download the lead magnets from lead gen forms.

Lastly, you can integrate your Facebook lead gen ads with your CRM using Driftrock. You can include them in future marketing campaigns after you've integrated them.

This means no prospects leak through the sales funnel. 

Experiment with Instagram stories & reels

Short-form videos are extremely popular, with a recent HubSpot report finding it the highest ROI-generating content format.

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Short-form videos are the trending content format on Instagram, with its algorithm rewarding more engagement to the format. You, too, can use them more engagingly for real estate sales.

1. Quick tours

For real estate brands, short-form videos can serve up a quick tour of your latest listings on a platter. You could also showcase a complete portfolio of listings in specific locations.

This doesn't just create general awareness of your listings but also your personal or business brand.

2. Schedule & Quality

The key to keeping your Instagram account buzzing with short-form videos is to post regularly, using most features—including music and storytelling.

Most importantly, remember to use good-quality pictures and videos.

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3. Engagement

You can informally interact with your followers in the comments section and be more approachable.

4. Promote specific objectives

Short-form videos in the form of Instagram stories and ads work well with CTAs. You can cast a wider audience net beyond your followers and promote specific objectives (like awareness, conversion, and the like).

You could also direct audiences using native ads with lead gen forms to capture leads quickly.

Try TikTok for generating real estate leads 

Another popular social network for short-form videos is TikTok. It's so popular that the network generated an estimated $4.6 billion in revenue in 2021 alone–a 142% increase year-on-year. 

TikTok offers exposure to a younger audience, something which most other social media networks don't do. While that may influence you to assume that TikTok is only for teens, other age groups are also thriving on the network. 

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Here's how you can use TikTok.

1. Video-led

To generate leads on this platform, adopt a video-led strategy.

You don't need professionally shot videos. These days most phones come equipped with high-quality cameras. 

2. Relatable content

Natural, relatable content works best, such as a 30-second video on tips for buying a new home.

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3. Optimisation

You could also integrate TikTok advertising into your marketing arsenal, using lead management platforms to optimise campaigns.

4. Lead gen ads

Use one of TikTok’s most popular offerings for lead generation—lead gen forms. You can run ads that come attached with a form. Prospects can fill the form without leaving TikTok, making it easier to fill. 

Lead gen ads work well on TikTok as they’re optimised for mobile, can be customised and pre-populated with users’ basic information.

Create videos on YouTube to attract buyer leads

YouTube has the second largest potential ad audience after Facebook, with more than 2.5 billion users.

Plus, long-form videos are a favoured content format, too. As much as 91% of consumers want to see more online video content from brands.

So, how to generate leads for real estate agents on YouTube?

1. Optimise the channel

You can start your lead generation journey on YouTube by optimising your channel. Complete all relevant details like profile name, information, about section, website and channel trailer video.

2. Use varied content ideas

With YouTube, you can: 

• Post updates about your most recent listings
• Give virtual tours or walkthroughs, complete with exterior and interior shots
• Share valuable tips for real estate buyers and sellers
• Show drone footage of stunning properties
• Bring neighbourhood hotspots—attractions, restaurants, workshops, weekend activities—into the spotlight. 
  

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These are only a few ideas. You can do much more to grow your brand on YouTube once you've explored the platform some more.

Develop PPC Advertising Campaigns for high quality leads

Several people start their real estate buying journey by searching for online information. Google alone processes more than 8.5 billion searches every day.

This makes search browsers a promising playground for real estate to generate leads.

Pay-per-click (PPC) ads are placed on search engines (Google, Bing, Firefox and others), attracting leads through paid advertising campaigns.

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You can use PPC ads in the following ways.

1. Rank higher on search

Deploy paid advertising campaigns to rank your website on the search results for selected keywords, increasing your visibility.

2. Create keyword-rich content

Develop keyword-rich and qualitative content that's also search engine-friendly. This lets you find out which keywords work for your business. Then, use the keywords that your content ranks for in your PPC campaigns.

3. Reach out to local businesses

PPC ads also let you localise your ads so you won't spend on traffic that isn't a part of your target audience or doesn't do business with you.

4. Ads for interested leads

One of the most popular PPC ad formats—Google lead form extensions–direct leads from their search query to forms without having them leave the platform or website. 

Another type of campaign you can run is remarketing for repeat website visitors. You can also direct leads to lead forms, specific landing pages, or your website. 

Build Credibility via SEO

If you can't invest too much money into running ad campaigns, you can go the organic route with search engine optimisation (SEO).

SEO is a long-term strategy for real estate professionals to generate leads by improving ranking organically.

Like PPC, it's also driven by using the right set of keywords in your online content (including website, blogs, meta titles and meta descriptions).

You can start by providing value in the form of 'how-to' blogs and guides. For example, a blog post on '6 questions to ask your real estate consultant' is a good place to begin.

Also, keep an eye out for each keyword’s influence on purchase. Some searches don't have a high traffic volume but have a higher propensity to buy, like 'best real estate consultant in London'.

Localise your SEO strategy for a relevant audience to generate quality leads. For this, optimise your website's Google My Business page and on-page elements.

Also, remember to keep your website mobile-friendly, so leads have a seamless user experience with your brand. 

Charm clients with a professional website

A website gives you an added competitive edge, showcasing your expertise. Your brand looks more professional, well-established and credible.

Moreover, your website can also be used for SEO, making it easier for leads to find you.

A professional website must have the following elements:

• Current listings
• Satisfied client reviews
• About the brand or about you
• Contact information 
  

Don't hold back on relevant, valuable, keyword-rich content to successfully generate real estate leads via a website. Create guides, how-tos and listicles addressing buyer and seller challenges.

But don't restrict yourself to blogs; you can embed YouTube videos on the website and redirect leads from there.

Let your website serve as a direct lead generation platform by using lead gen forms to collect zero and first-party data. Incorporate this lead information for remarketing campaigns on email and other channels.

Bring targeted landing pages into play

Instead of using a generic page on your website as a landing page, create targeted landing pages and optimise them for each campaign.

Visitors spend as little as 54 seconds on a site page, hardly giving you time to convert leads to clients. 

Optimised landing pages make the experience smoother by quickly capturing leads. And a landing page with exceptional customer experience attracts more leads.

Use targeted landing pages to promote unique services or different offerings. Some examples of targeted landing pages are a buyer guide, an appointment scheduler (with lead gen forms) or a home valuation tool.

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Each landing page you create must have five elements to grab qualitative leads. These are:

• Clear, concise and attention-grabbing headlines
• Clear presentation of offerings or benefits 
• Single CTA
• Attractive and stunning visuals
• Social proof

Start Leveraging Reviews & Referrals

Reviews and referrals act as powerful social proof. They show leads that other clients have used your services previously and are happy.

And they're highly effective—38% of buyers work with agents referred by their friends or family, 12% use their agent again, and 63% of sellers find agents through referrals.

Stay in touch with existing clients to build testimonials and inspire more referrals. Keep your brand on top of their minds by wishing them on birthdays or other special days.

You could also politely ask clients for referrals. If you receive one, send a 'thank you' note to the client who referred you. It keeps your positive relationship going.

You can flaunt client testimonials on your website or encourage customers to drop reviews on industry websites such as Zillow, Realtor.com and FSBO.com.

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Industry websites are also perfect for addressing unhappy reviewers and answering buyer FAQs. Responding to these queries shows that you care for your customers.

However, if this activity is too time-consuming, you can stick to monitoring the websites for reviews about your brand or business and understand what information prospects are looking for.

The above strategies will help you generate real estate leads more successfully. But that doesn't mean you should follow all of them.

Follow a lead generation strategy that works for you

To determine what works best for your real estate business, consider the below 5 factors.

1. Market

Market (or target audience) encompasses all your potential leads in the locations you want to conduct business. Chalk out an ideal customer profile (ICP) to understand your market better.

2. Network

Network includes the community of existing clients and customer relationships upon which you can further grow your business.

3. Budget

Money matters. Choose strategies that are well-suited to your budget. 

For example, if you don't have a big budget for Facebook Ads, you can direct your attention to getting referrals. They're comparatively less expensive and time-consuming.

4. Platform

Be present on platforms where your target market is most active.

Also, use each platform's strengths to your advantage. For instance, if you want to engage with your audience in a fun and friendly way, use Instagram instead of LinkedIn. 

5. Lead management

Finally, map out the next steps after lead generation. It's great to have their buyer journey plotted against the sales funnel. This helps you understand how leads will move towards conversion.

Lead management helps you validate, track, report, and sync leads with the CRM. You can then reach out to leads over multiple touchpoints through remarketing.

For example, a lead through Facebook ads can be remarketed to with emails.

Summing it up

You can approach real estate lead generation through multiple strategies. Choosing the one that will be successful depends on your business requirements.

However, it's best to plan several steps ahead and think about your lead management strategy alongside your lead generation campaigns.

Reach out to Driftrock to learn more about how to generate and manage leads efficiently to increase your ROI.

Get started for free or book a demo.

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