I've been on AR for a little more than 2 years and during that time, I've found some pretty great ways to generate online leads. I've also seen many agents on this network who don't have the necessary tools to generate a sufficient amount of leads to make a dent in the online lead generation world. This guide is for those agents.
First off, let's define lead generation. I see a lead as a potential buyer or seller who needs some sort of follow-up or convincing that you are the right agent for them. In order to get the chance to talk to that lead, you must first generate them. There are many ways to generate a lead, but for this guide, I want to talk about generating a lead through the use of an IDX property website.
What's an IDX property website?
IDX stands for Internet Data Exchange. It means you have data that you receive through a shared feed. An IDX property website is a website that allows you to display other properties listed on your MLS that are not your own. Want to see an awesome IDX property website? View mine here. This website has 1000's of properties listed by every single agent in my MLS. Pretty cool right? I think so. Don't have a lot of money to spend on an IDX website? Get a Wordpress IDX site from my son for cheap. You can see some possible templates from his Utah Web Design page. You can see an example from Bill & Liz spear, he setup their site just the other day.
Why Do I Need IDX To Generate Leads?
An IDX website is a valuable resource for one reason. Buyer's looking to view properties online can view every property they will ever need on your IDX site. Instead of just showing you're own listings, you have more to offer. This extra incentive to stick around on your website is a value proposition. And, if you know anything about generating leads, you know that you have to offer something of value to interest the potential prospect to use your services.
How Does IDX Generate Leads?
If you go back to my website and click on two separate properties, after you click the first one, the second time it will require you to create an account in order to view more. Now, there's been a large debate on whether to force registration or not, but I fully believe that forced registration is the key to successful online lead generation. Some agents are adamantly against forced registration, but instead of a back and forth argument of why u should or shouldn't force registration, I want you to make up your own mind by viewing actual data.
Forced Vs. Non-Forced Registration
There's a great study that was done by real estate agents at BarkerHdeges.com on using forced registration vs. not. Here are the last three posts on actual data of leads generated, conversion rates, and some nice commentary by other real estate agents who switched to forced registration after non-forced wasn't giving them the results they wanted. Week 6 Week 5 Week 4 - This study shows the amount of leads gained with a forced registration vs. non-forced is quite dramatic.
Driving Targeted Traffic To Your Website
In order to generate leads online you have to have targeted traffic. Targeted traffic is key to generating the right leads who could potentially turn into a valuable client. Any other traffic is, basically, worthless. I have many funnels to generate traffic to my website and I wanted to share with you my full strategy of traffic generation.
Blog For Real Estate - Are you using your AR blog to generate real buyer's traffic? There are a lot of real estate agents here on AR who are not. People may disagree with me on this front, but I truly believe that real estate agents should blog about real estate. Leave the local journalism, restaurant reviews, and such to the experts who dabble in that sort of stuff.
- If you're serious about generating leads with your real estate blog, blog about real estate related topics only. Search engines rank sites with laser like focus at the top of their results pages. A blog that tries to be both real estate related and the local town hall is confusing to search engine robots. With the recent Panda update, it's more important than ever to stay focused. So how should you write blogs to generate targeted REAL ESTATE traffic?
Formula For A Successful Lead Generating Blog Post
- Keyword Rich Titles - Using keywords in your blog post title is critical to success. But don't go overboard. Each blog post should have one main keyword set to focus on. And don't use clever titles, just be direct. Search engine users want to scan a title and know exactly what the article is about, so be stick to your stated subject.
- Keyword Rich First Sentence - Reinforce your posts title in your first sentence. Your first sentence should make people want to read your next sentence. Add your keywords into the sentence and let them know the benefit you will offer them if they continue to read on.
- Give Them What They Came For - Stay on topic and don't ramble. People want information and they want it now. Keep your post precise and make it easy to digest. Separate long paragraphs with bullet points, break up big ideas into small paragraphs, and don't forget to add pictures and graphs to make your content more appealing.
- Finish Strong - Finish your post with a call to action. If your post is about a new condo development, point the reader to your IDX page with those condo listings. This tactic is precision business blogging with a purpose. You give a potential lead expert information, (Hook) - Send them to your IDX page with listings (Line) - And follow up to gain trust. (Sinker) Want an example? Here's a post I wrote on The Most Expensive Houses In Utah that has been rather successful in generating luxury home buyers.
Website Promotion - Promoting a website has two channels: Online and Offline. Online promotion can be done through blogging, social networking, pay per click ads, article marketing, blog commenting, press releases, and syndication.
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