Imagine you’re a young professional who just landed a new job and are searching for an apartment in the DC area. What’s your first step? If you guessed searching for “DC apartments” on Google…you were right! Now you, as the real estate professional, are picturing your webpage at the top of both the organic and paid search results. Voilà, instant prospects! Well, not so fast. While visibility is one step closer to your desired sales conversions, there are many more pieces to the puzzle than simply good search results. Below, I will debunk some popular myths about real estate lead generation.
1. It’s nearly impossible to get to the top of the search engine results.
As previously mentioned, it certainly is not easy, but it definitely is not impossible. If you take the time to care for your website and provide your visitors with exactly what they are seeking, you will get good results. Detailed client personas are a great way to do this. Depending on the size of your business, identify several target clients who would be using your services. Don’t be afraid to have fun with this. Find a picture to represent them and give them a name. Where are they from? Do they have pets? Are they tech savvy? How did they hear about your company? Provide as much information as you can about your target clients, then build your website to cater to their needs.
Remember, it takes time and effort to get to the top of search results, so don’t get discouraged!
2. Visitors are most interested in who you are.
Wrong. Well, yes, they do care, but not right away. Real estate prospects who come to your website from a search engine generally want to see what they searched for. If they like what they see, then they will check out your profile. Include your personal information and qualifications in the about me section of your page, but don’t clog up your homepage with it. Including a picture of yourself is important and will help your visitors feel more welcome and connected to you and your webpage.
3. Lead generation trumps lead management.
I find that this is a very common misbelief among not just real estate agents, but many business owners who lack experience with online marketing. You might have 5000 leads, but if only 100 convert, that’s only a 0.02% conversion rate, and this is not enough to support your business. The amount of traffic is not nearly as important as the quality of traffic. One thousand highly targeted leads are way more beneficial than 10,000 low quality leads that will never convert. You need to provide the right product to the right person, at the right time.
More importantly, real estate agents need to figure out an effective lead management system. Remember, buying a house is not an easy process. It takes a lot of time and research to make a final decision. If you have a customer who is interested but in no hurry to buy, don’t throw them on the backburner. Make sure to follow up. Your potential customers will be more than happy to hear from you several months down the road.
There you have it, all the secrets to success! (If only) Remember, there are many pieces to the puzzle of mastering your leads. If there are two things I want you take away from this, they are:
1) Why would anyone want to visit, and more importantly, remain on my website? Create personas and develop your website to cater to them. This will guarantee your visitors will like what they see and increase the chance of conversion.
2) Manage your leads well and you will see results.
Don’t use automatic response emails to follow up with leads. Your customers will really appreciate a personal email from you and this will develop stronger relationships. Demonstrate patience and interest and follow up with the needs of each customer.
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