Buy real estate leads with caution! Be careful because not all leads are the same. Not only are they not all the same but you must also have a successful process to follow up with them. I’m going to share some things about buying real estate leads in this blog, but first I want to share one of my big pet peeves.
When you buy leads it feeds you for a day and you have to go buy more leads again. When you learn to generate your own leads, it will feed you for a lifetime and you will never be dependent on another company for your livelihood. My suggestion is that you buy real estate leads only to jump-start your business or to push toward a goal until you get your business self-sustaining where you no longer need to buy real estate leads.
What Do You Look for When Buying Real Estate Leads?
The most important thing about buying leads is to buy real leads and not incentivized leads. Some companies will generate leads by incenting the prospect to fill out the form to become a lead. Those are typically worthless because prospects are not filling out the form to learn about a house or to buy a house as much as they are filling out the form to get what they have been offered. So when you are buying real estate leads ask the company questions. How do they generate their leads? Where do they get their traffic? Ask to see a website where those leads are requesting information so you can validate that it is a pure lead and not an incentive lead. The next thing when buying real estate leads is to realize that the vast majority of real estate leads you buy are buyer leads and not seller leads. So if you are buying real estate leads you’ll be focused on buyers rather than sellers. And I don’t know about you, but all of our clients have shared the simple adage that “buyers are liars.” So watch out! You may find yourself spending a lot of time on leads that go nowhere. You may also find yourself becoming a taxi service as you drive these prospects from home to home to home.
Buying Successful Leads
- The best way to buy successful leads is to use only those companies that have organic traffic (buyers and homeowners coming to the website on their own) who request information by requesting a real estate agent to contact them.
- Make sure that you buy leads in a geographic area where you want to sell. This can eliminate a lot of problem leads for you. Imagine there is one zip code with higher priced homes and another zip code that has nothing but slums. Don’t buy leads in the zip code with slums, you won’t make any money. Be smart on how you buy these leads.
Generating Seller Leads
If you want seller leads, good luck! You won’t find many sources to buy seller leads for the simple reason that most sellers don’t go online when they think about selling their home. If you want seller leads, they are typically only generated through direct marketing where homeowners are targeted specifically. If you’ll bear with me, I’d like to shift the topic a bit to discuss how you generate seller leads. If you are buying real estate leads, the best thing I can do is to teach you how not to buy real estate leads ever again. The best way to do that is to go after seller leads and to learn how to generate your own leads. I’ve done previous blogs on this subject. Just search on “how to generate leads” in our blogs and you’ll find topics there. Here is the simple way to do it. Figure out what you can offer a seller in terms of information that would interest someone thinking about selling their home. Let’s call it a home seller’s kit. It will include information on how to sell your home, how to sell it for the most money, how to sell it in the least amount of time and with the least amount of hassle. You might include a list of the top ten things you can fix up that cost the least amount of money that brings in the top sales price. Then you want to promote that home seller’s kit in a postcard mailing to all the homes in the neighborhood. They can either call a call capture number to request the information or email you to request the information or go to a website to download the information. In whatever capacity you identify who are the people requesting the information, by and large these people are going to be sellers. Here is an even easier tip that can pay big dividends. Let’s say you have a buyer who is looking to buy in a certain community. Why not simply create a flyer that says: I have a client looking to buy in this community and hasn’t found the right home yet. As you know, the home inventory is tight right now. If you are interested in selling your home in the next 6 months, please call me. My buyer may want it immediately and he is already pre-qualified for a loan. Then, add your information and drop it off at every home in the community (tape it to the mailbox or to the door) and see what happens. You’ll be surprised how many sellers you might find. The key is to make it personal and make it honest.
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