Types of Real Estate Leads

What is a Lead in Real Estate?

A lead is information on a possible buyer or seller within the real estate. It will always be more effective to neutralize individuals already involved in purchasing or listing property rather than to engage the general public. Leads are also considered a vast contact directory utilized by sales and marketing teams. The teams will use these leads to send out cold emails and make cold calls to sell products or services.

Why is Lead Generation Important in Real Estate?

Any qualified lead is a good lead in real estate. Sometimes, a client wants to focus on buyer leads only or seller leads. One can improve real estate skills significantly when working with buyer leads which will subsequently help build a client base. 

Real estate is considered to be a revolving door for clients. To keep business flowing in real estate, a realtor always intends that new clients should come in this door. As soon as we get a new client in the door, the previous client settles into a forever home, and this is how a targeted lead generation strategy works. A few of the reasons which define the importance of lead generation in real estate are:-

• Building Relationships. One should be proactive in searching for new leads. This will help build relationships with new clients and audiences and assist in growing the brand and building trust.
• Increasing Profits. Lead generation will inculcate more business awareness in Realtors. A realtor can improve his sales to a great extent when his lead becomes a client.
• Growing Business. Lead generation will attract more prospects to a Realtor’s company. It will also help a realtor grow his business immensely, and a leader can create a snowball effect through referrals, word of mouth, and brand awareness. 

Types of Real Estate Leads

Leads are considered to be the lifeblood of real estate. Leads are essential whether you are a real estate investor, business owner, agent, or mortgage broker. Leads drive the business, and an agent can’t survive without them. The more an agent has, and the better they are, the more deals an agent can do, and the better will be income. Six types of real estate leads, which an agent may use will be wiser to add to his business, are appended below:-

1. Referral Leads

Referrals are fantastic for real estate leads. They are more accessible deals to close and profitable than other types of real estate leads. They also say a lot about an agent and make him feel like a trusted and appreciated professional. Referral leads can be generated by building strategic partnerships, asking current and past clients for them, getting out to network, and even tapping into professional referral networks. Referral Exchange, Opcity, Agent Hero and network are examples of Referral Leads.

The best thing to do to get referrals is to do a good job. Nobody will refer an agent with whom they had an unpleasant experience. Go above and beyond with client appreciation gifts, excellent communication, and plenty of follow-ups even after your commission check is cashed. Stay top-of-mind for your customers, both past and present. Agent and business referrals can also be a great source. 

Consumers trust the advice of their friends and family over just about everything i-e Google reviews, better business ratings, internet searches, in short, everything. Most home buyers and sellers do ask their friends and neighbors for recommendations. There is no more powerful endorsement than the social proof of a client referring you to a friend.

In a nutshell, referral leads are the highest quality leads and a sign of a mature, quality real estate business. Many top agents work exclusively from referral leads. They’re often meager in cost as compared to the other marketing methods.

2. Organic Leads

Organic referrals are usually associated with SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and ranking on Google. But the audience is also a form of organic lead. Anyone who sees content without paying to get in their face is an organic lead, e.g., Twitter followers, Facebook likes, and Instagram friends. Mixing organic traffic with promoted traffic is often necessary, significantly when scaling. But organic leads are the ultimate goal for Realtors.

If we intend to find organic leads, rest assured they will tend to see you. Content marketers target organic leads. Content marketers create contents (blogs, guides, websites) that earn organic placement on Google. High-quality content makes higher and higher positions on sites like Google, and people intend to approach these sites or content. These contents can also be used as “Lead Magnets” to induce folks to give an email address. Not just Google but social media as well. 

Content marketers, YouTubers, bloggers, website geeks, and social butterflies target organic leads. Most agents will likely want to target some form of organic leads. Once the foundation is built, they are free leads. Then there is no monthly fee and no competition with other agents. They are your audience and your lead system. Often, organic lead generation can take years to get established. It’s a good idea to begin building your organic lead generation early, but be prepared to supplement it with some paid leads while you get it going. SEO with website, social media audience, and email marketing leads are examples of email marketing leads.

3. Portal Leads

The portals are big home search websites from which agents can buy leads. They rank for most of the most competitive keywords on Google because of their vast resources and digital insight. Advertising with one, or several, of the portals, is a legitimate way of keeping one’s pipeline full of business.

Unlike referral or organic leads, they do not have a connection or relationship with any particular agent. They’re just like a jump ball!  Folks looking on at homes on portals often are already in the process somehow and are used to the instant gratification of online shopping. That means they want to hear quickly from an agent when they ask for more information. That’s also why many portals hand out leads to multiple agents, letting the quickest and best win out.

If you know you can respond quickly, have a sound follow-up system, and even an internal sales agent (ISA) or virtual assistant (VA) like Regentology, portal leads are worth considering. Regentology, Zillow, and Realtor.com are examples of portal leads.

4. Pay-Per-Click(PPC) Leads

Campaigns can be run by oneself in Google AdWords. But they are optimizing ads, A/B testing, conversion rate optimization, and all that is complex and competitive enough that an agent is best off outsourcing it. Many real estate platforms offer PPC marketing at an additional cost. Just about every digital marketing company is eager to run Google AdWords campaigns. 

Agents with big budgets and outstanding follow-up should target PPC leads, as PPC is expensive. The average cost per conversion can be $1000+. Money must be paid upfront, even though they might not close for 6-12 months. It is also very competitive, so a fantastic follow-up and nurturing system for these leads would be required. At least a third of America’s top agents and teams lean heavily on PPC leads. Google Adwords and Boomtown are examples of PPC.

5. Paid Social Media Leads

Own Facebook Ads can be run quickly. Similar to PPC, there are some best practices when optimizing a campaign, and it can get quite expensive. It is also one to consider outsourcing. There are companies like BoldLeads that will track down leads.

If you are in the right place at the right time, then the agent would always like to contact you. Social media ads have targeting mechanisms in which you can focus on particular demographics. But unlike PPC ads, where you know the user is specifically searching for what you’re offering, social media ads are interruptive. When your ad pops up in their timeline, your average person is probably looking at cat videos, not homes for sale.

You tend to have to get your ad out to many people. And the message is often watered down to try to induce clicks. Because of the lead quality, you need to be prepared to sift through the junk and figure out who is an actual opportunity, a future opportunity, and a drain on your time and resources. You need to have a great CRM and follow-up system in place. BoldLeads and Curaytor are examples of this type of lead.

6. List Leads

A list can be as simple as USPS’s “EDDM” (Ever Door Direct Mail) system, in which you blanket entire mail routes with your postcards. Other lists are phone number lists by services like Vulcan 7, FSBOs, and other likely home sellers. Lastly, the new AI “smart lists” like SmartZip promise to use AI to estimate which home sellers are the potential to move and allow you to focus your advertising on them.

These are usually weak leads because most people have cell phones which, unlike old landlines, are notoriously difficult to pin to a residence. It’s also tough to narrow down which homeowners are most likely to be selling. Sure, the programs like SmartZip promise to use AI to make excellent guesses, but even then, it is a total guess.

Folks working expired and FSBOs should be targeting these lists. Also, investors or investor-friendly agents should consider direct mail and similar prospecting methods for these kinds of leads. This type of lead includes RedX, LandVoice, SetSchedule, and SmartZip.

7. Motivated Seller Leads

Realtors and investors must be associated with motivated sellers daily. These are the ripe home seller leads who are ready to take action. There are a wide variety of reasons these sellers can be motivated. It could be relocating for work, a relationship breakup, unexpected bills, the changing real estate market, foreclosure, or something else. An agent may spot these leads by driving local neighborhoods, putting out signs for them to call on, running ad campaigns, or by acquiring hot lists of motivated sellers.

8. Cash Buyers

In addition to sellers, real estate agents and investors also need buyers. Cash buyers are ideal in real estate. A realtor need not worry about them qualifying for a loan or many of the other glitches that can come up when financing real estate.

9. Probate Leads

Probate leads are one of the most underrated and misunderstood types of real estate leads. Eventually, most properties will end up as inherited property or in probate. Often, they’ll wind up in that situation multiple times. Probate leads are one of the largest and fastest-growing property types in America. It is also often one of the toughest to crack for Realtors and investors, as they don’t know how to consistently source them in volume or stand out as the right buyers for them.

Conclusion         

A successful real estate agent would be adept at generating leads and understanding where leads are coming from before assessing the quality of these leads. Within the real estate industry, a lead will always be helpful regarding the information on a possible buyer or seller. Thus, targeting individuals already considering purchasing or listing a property would be more efficient than the general public. If the lead comes from someone, the potential client knows and trusts, then the real estate agent would always have an advantage over other agents when contacting the lead. Real estate lead generation may only sometimes have an immediate impact, but you can be confident that your efforts build your business over time. Whether you buy leads, build one-on-one relationships, or focus on organic methods, learning how to generate leads in real estate is crucial to building a successful real estate business.