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Not All Lead Generation and Referrals are Created Equal

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Services for Real Estate Pros with ActiveRain

If you've been in business for any amount of time, you've probably decided at some point to give online leads a shot. Hopefully it was a thought out process where you investigated the company you were about to give a shot to help turn your hard earned money into more hard earned money.

Converting online real estate leads is hard work. If every lead turned into a closed transaction, I promise you'd pay a heck of a lot more than you do.

For as long as I've been around the real estate business, I've seen people use the exact same leads from the exact same company and come away with vastly different impressions of how 'good' the leads were. I've even written about this

There are no shortage of places from which to get leads in this business. You probably get called a few times a week by someone promising to deliver you the best leads in town. So how do you know if it's worth making the investment? The Real Estate Lead Generation and Referrals area of ActiveRain product reviews could be a starting point.

And if you've ever used a company to help you generate leads for your business, we'd love if you would share a review of how that went for your business.

Head over the real estate lead generation and referrals section of ActiveRain and see if you can find the companies you have purchased leads from in the past. Leave a review of them! If you can't find them, you can always create a profile in the product review section for the company you used. 

Here are a few of the companies that are currently being reviewed. If you've ever used any of these, we'd love for you to share your experience. Your peers will be even more thankful the next time they are researching where to best spend their hard earned money.

(click on the image below to read or leave a review for these companies)


Trulia Local Ads



Listing-to-Leads



Redfin Partner Referral Program



Nudge

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Comments(7)

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Laura Andersen
Keller Williams Realty Partners ~ 678.462.1191 agentandersen@gmail.com - Woodstock, GA
A HomeSOLD Name (678)462-1191 Woodstock, Georgia

It definitely is a challenge to figure it all out!

Mar 15, 2014 12:21 AM
Mike Ortiz
Littleton, CO
I Aim To Please

I pay Trulia for my zip code specific lead generation. I pay Market Leader, Facebook, and Google Adwords for my broad area lead generation. Now I know that Trulia, Market Leader and ActiveRain are all tied together; however, I have gained the greatest value through the Million Dollar Pipeline Program (MDPP) hosted by Market Leader. My hard earned money spent on leads has received a huge benefit from the knowledge I have gained on how to respond to online leads.

There is no denying that it is a challenge to turn an online lead into a customer. I thank Market Leader and the MDPP for helping me overcome this challenge. 

Mar 15, 2014 05:13 AM
Richard D. Rawdin
Coldwell Banker Hamptons / Global Luxury - Southampton, NY
Hamptons Real Estate

Most all of these lead generation companies over promise and under deliver. I have personally had "nightmare" experiences with both Market Leader and House Hunt. 2 companies you need to stay away from. Horrible. Period.

Mar 23, 2014 12:27 AM
James Brockway
Brockway Realty, LLC - League City, TX

 I can definitely attest to different people getting different results.  I've used Trulia for some time with mixed results.  I've had a $600,000 transaction and I've had a lot of people calling about leases and others that aren't interested in getting prequalified.  You can change the filtering on Trulia though to say "no leases, only people looking for homes over $100,000, etc."  I have an agent that loves Market Leader, although he admits you have to work the leads hard and be persistent, which is really the name of the game.  Estately has brought me some high quality leads, but they tend to be selective in only allowing a certain number of agents to be in their group, and the referral fee is 30%.  I've not had good success with Zillow, but have had marginally good success with realtor.com leads and they are much cheaper than the companies above.

Jan 09, 2015 11:16 PM
Luis Longoria
RAVE - Naperville, IL
We provide a video marketing platform for realtors

I will be writing a review on Zillow, Trulia, and Realtor.com about what they are truly about.  I will be sharing here on Active Rain in a couple of weeks. 

Also, I own a company that does video bio, and then market the agent locally to generate business for the realtor.  Check out raveprofile.com.  We do business honestly and will NEVER promise and under deliver. Let me know if you can use some business in 2016. @raveagents

Jan 11, 2016 05:09 AM
Sean Scullion
Bradley Real Estate - Novato, CA
Call me - Excellent Negotiator & Contract Analyzer

Zillow and Trulia are now the same -- so I dislike both equally; they never have quality or truly "ready to go" buyers or sellers and even if they leave you real, accurate contact information (the leads), you usually have to work them so hard that you feel like a used car salesman by the end of the day (often with nothing to show from your hard efforts). 

I also hate MarketLeader -- they were charging me $1000/month extra when I started to generate "leads," a fact they didn't tell me was going to last 6 months (so, after $6,000 of "lead generation," I had plenty of "leads," yet no transactions or even really the possiblity of one).

Now, I'm about to look into another option (homes.com); although I keep reading "don't waste your money" reviews on this company and am a bit scared.  

The last company I may try, since now I just believe the best leads are by working my sphere and pounding my database, is delivering Search Engine Optimization, websites that are very user-friendly, guaranteed seller/buyer leads (although they can't guarantee any #'s!), and multiple landing pages with google ad words campaigns that starts at a total cost of $750/month...we'll see.

Jun 13, 2016 02:36 PM
Peter Mohylsky Gulf Front Homes
Property Management International-Destin - Inlet Beach, FL
Call me at 850-517-7098

Interesting that most of the folks who commented on this post no longer post on AR.  Where o where did they go?

Mar 17, 2025 09:33 AM