Calling All Estate Agents! The Best Real Estate Lead Generation Tactics for Your Year Ahead
If you’ve ever wondered - “what do I need to do to generate leads?” - don’t worry.
You’re not alone.
The answer is straightforward, but not easy. To get new leads without compromising your reputation, you have to build relationships, stick to a few proven strategies, a couple of lead generation tools, and trust the process.
Looking back at 2023, a tumultuous year, it's easy to understand why so many people are thinking about potential lead capture and nurture, their digital marketing approaches, and other ways to generate new business.
As you know, estate agents and brokers rely on a steady stream of new leads to sustain any real estate business. But in such a competitive industry, lead generation can be tricky! That’s why we’ve pulled together some of our favourite tried-and-tested ways to generate leads that actually work.
In today's world, to stay current, it really is more important than ever for real estate professionals to nurture the relationship between buyer and seller, implement strategic, multifaceted lead generation, and focused campaigns that drive referrals and repeat business.
This comprehensive guide explores proven approaches to find potential buyers (and delight them!) in a myriad of ways.
From considering the buyer’s (sometimes literal!) journey, to leveraging your sphere of influence, optimising digital assets, executing targeted campaigns, investing in done-for-you services, and more, these actionable tactics will help your real estate business generate buyers, sellers, and more this year.
We'll cover:
- Real Estate Lead Generation: The Best Way to Get Started
- Potential Customer Mapping Made Simple
- Leverage Your Sphere of Influence and Build a Personal Brand
- Generate Leads for your Estate Agency Through Content
- The Human-to-Human Approach: Attract New Leads Through Events
- Typical Real Estate Lead Benchmarks for your Sales Funnel
Real Estate Lead Generation: The Best Way to Get Started
Potential clients all go through a similar process when considering buying a house, looking at home valuation, becoming a landlord, or selling a home.
To make sense of all the jargon-y terms associated with leads, let's talk about that journey for a moment.
In a nutshell, "the buyer's journey" is the process salespeople refer to when a prospective customer discovers your service, evaluates if it's good for them, and then chooses to purchase it (or not!).
The reason is this: those who map the buyer's journey and are attentive to their prospect's needs as they go through the buying process are likely to be more empathetic and sensitive to that person, and will have better ideas for content marketing strategies that engage and interest them.
Mapping the buyer's journey means more opportunities to engage, greater confidence in you as an estate agent, faster conversion, better customer experience, likelihood of them becoming return clients, and more.
So how the heck do you actually map out that journey in the first place? Well, there are multiple ways to do this, from the simple and straightforward to a complex, non-linear approach.
How to Manage Leads in HubSpot ⬇️
Potential Customer Mapping Made Simple
If you're just getting started, we'd recommend using the basic but effective approach of thinking about your customers using the five "W"s:
• Who
• What
• Where
• When
• Why
When you capture a lead - whether through an online form, cold call or open house - ask targeted questions upfront to identify motivations. This helps segment them by lead quality and prioritise follow ups. Key qualifying questions include:
What is your timeframe for buying/selling?
• This helps you determine your client’s readiness to buy (or sell!)
What locations are you considering?
• Gently gauge their budget, their desires, their interests - and always check as to why these things are important (more on that below)
Are you considering another estate agent?
• Identify competition.
What features are important in your next home?
• Understanding your prospective buyer’s hopes and dreams – and the practicalities of their everyday life – helps you pre-filter potential properties on their behalf
Having this information on hand can help you determine if a lead should be an immediate focus (because you have properties that fit their needs and desires) or nurtured for later conversion.
Maybe you have clients who’ve just moved into new home with their teens – keep in touch and maybe you could help them close on a flat for those teens when they head to University.
Map out your typical buyer's journey by content stages. This will vary depending on the type of lead or the client’s need, but could look like:
- Awareness:
- From open houses to adverts online, to banners, car wraps, flyering, and ‘For Sale’ signs - there’s so much that can be done to maximise the awareness stage - but creative marketing campaigns are more likely to be rewarded (more on that later!)
- Consideration:
- Think home listings, direct outreach, info about the local area, mortgage lending support and so on - and gives you the chance to figure out if these parties are qualified leads
- Decision:
- This is where your home reports, glossy photos, home viewings, and mortgage calculators come in
- Purchase:
- Now you're in the realm of proposals, contracts, legal paperwork, and follow-up check-ins (yes, even after you think you've closed the sale).
A word of warning: don't be tempted to go heavy on one stage and neglect the others! No matter how great your email marketing for real estate is for an awareness stage, if you skimp on thinking about how you convert leads during the purchasing phase, all those lead generation efforts could go to waste.
Take the time to really plot how leads should move through each stage, and gather ideas together for the actions you can take to nurture quality leads. Think back to sources of leads in 2023 - where did they come from? What did you do to convert them?
Testing and optimising this map will give your sales process a serious competitive edge, helping you generate real estate leads as you’re out and meeting new people.
Leverage Your Sphere of Influence and Build a Personal Brand
Speaking of meeting people - your sphere of influence is one of the most valuable lead-generation sources that real estate agents can tap into. Thinking about this can really help real estate agents get to grips with fresh lead generation ideas.
Not sure if you have one? Think again. Your sphere of influence includes:
Past Clients
Maintaining relationships once you’ve sold a property is a seriously underrated way to do lead gen. Keep people engaged, after their transaction with market updates, exclusive client events, and referral requests. In your database, customer relationship management tool (CRM), HubSpot, or shared spreadsheet to track past sales, make notes of your clients’ interests and preferences, and set yourself tasks for follow-up.
Referral Partners
This is where that creativity will be rewarded. Can you link up with interior designers, high-end homeware stores, local legal firms who handle marriages (and dissolutions) - even recruiters who work with companies in your area! - can be essential partners. If you can set up a mutually beneficial referral system, everybody gets the best of all worlds. You can boost each other’s businesses by sharing content, hosting events, and taking the time to really figure out what works - then repeat, repeat, repeat.
Neighbourhood Contacts
Agents looking for more leads can also monitor neighbourhood-focused social media groups and forums! Things like a community group, a neighbourhood watch, or residents' committee can all be great sources of connection - make sure you're not just taking without giving, though, and share your local real estate expertise with them.
Making the Most of Your Sphere
Now let’s get organised! Input your sphere of influence leads into your database, with all the essential details that will take your business relationship from good to great.
Then, segment leads by type (past client, referral partner, etc.), the associated property details, and by priority level based on how best you can serve them at the moment.
Set reminders in your systems to follow up with each lead tier - high priority monthly, mid-priority quarterly, and low priority biannually. The key is consistent, strategic follow-up, to convert contacts into happy repeat or referral clients.
Generate Leads for your Estate Agency Through Content
Content marketing is one of the most effective digital lead generation tactics for the real estate industry. Provide value by creating relevant, consistent content tailored to different buyer and seller personas.
Web Content
Think about your website from your potential buyer or seller’s perspective. Is it easy to use? Does it make sense? Can they find the info they need – and most importantly, have you anticipated those needs? A great way to get more leads is to make sure your content is fit for purpose after you drive traffic to your website.
Most companies in the UK focus on showing new homes (or a mess of expired listings) available to buy or rent – but don’t let that be it. If your approach to lead generation is going to be all-encompassing, you need to think about other things that might add value to your prospective customers.
Even if you don’t have a huge catalogue of content assets right now, you can get started with a few straightforward ideas. The content on your website could include a mix of any of the following:
• Informational Guides - Local market overviews, explainers on buying/selling processes
• Listings - Spotlight new properties for sale in targeted locations
• Tools - Mortgage calculators, moving cost estimators, free downloads or online valuation tools
• Lead Magnets - Free downloadable neighbourhood guides, property type comparison charts
The trick is to think deeply about where a lead might be on their journey, and match content to that stage. For example, what about parents thinking about upsizing for a growing family? Go to your referral partners (remember them?!) and collaborate with an interior designer on a guide that shows them how to make the most of storage space and create a layout that suits children’s needs and feels grown-up. You could then transform this into an online advertising campaign aimed at home buyers! Win-win.
Power-Up Your Social Media Presence
All that fantastic web content? Repurpose it! Post it to your social channels – sounds super obvious, but you’d be surprised how many folks miss this step. Create shareable social posts - like video home tours, market trend snapshots, real estate myth debunkers, and more.
And when the age-old question of “which social channels should I be on?” rears its head – go to where your customer demographic spends their time, every time. There are so many new social media platforms out there, we know it gets overwhelming - but be encouraged that this isn't something to get hung up on. What's important is that you're active on social media, and you're there for the right people at the right time.
Send Targeted Email Drip Campaigns
Set up email marketing automation for estate agents through a platform like HubSpot to nurture leads based on their personas, interests, and buying stages. It’s basic, but if you can hyper-personalised emails sending property recommendations to potential buyers or home value updates to potential sellers, these people will feel nurtured and ‘seen’ – you recognised their potential need and acted on it.
And even if they don’t make a move – they’ll remember how you made them feel. Often, that memory can make all the difference when they do come to consider you, and your competitors.
The Human-to-Human Approach: Attract New Leads Through Events
In-person events allow prospective clients to meet you in an environment where you can demonstrate your expertise.
Think about hosting free “First-Time Homebuyer” workshops, webinars on “Stamp Duty Made Simple”, "10 New Ways to Climb the Property Ladder", "Property Valuation 101" – or even just a meet-the-agent happy hour where people who’d like to get to know you can pop into the office and talk things through.
Make sure you capture attendees’ contact information through sign-in sheets or lead capture landing page, and then, in a system like HubSpot, set up post-event email sequences to stay top of mind while providing further value through related content.
One of the best ways to measure sales leads? Track Source Channels!
If you're not tagging leads by source channel, you're missing out. Do you know where seller and buyer leads come from - e.g. a website form, referral partner, or another local estate agent? Monitoring channel conversion performance and identifying your highest converting sources is a no-brainer! Any estate or letting agency worth its salt will know that these are the strategies to double down on.
When it comes to generating leads, this "boring" admin stuff, like lead scoring, segmentation, routing, and follow-ups - they are central components of your sales process. The good news is that you can take the ick out of all this paperwork with a smart database like HubSpot! Not only does it do all the heavy lifting for you, but it also increases efficiency when you already have heaps to do.
This visibility also positions them to experiment with and optimise conversion tactics over time.
Typical Real Estate Lead Benchmarks for your Sales Funnel
With strategic initiatives in place to maximise inbound lead generation, what volume of buyer/seller leads should your real estate firm aim to capture? Its a bit of a complex question, as your measurements really need to be specific to your agency. If you're using metrics that apply to another agent, you could be doing yourself a disservice.
When you want to figure out your target lead benchmarks, start by assessing your current pipeline:
- How many of my converted leads came from my sphere of influence, our website, our social channels, or referrals?
- For active leads, what conversion rates do I typically see based on channel or lead type? Where do I see the highest conversions?
- Based on my average home sale value, how many closed deals minimum do I need to meet my sales target for the year?
Then, work backwards to set a target number of leads to generate and follow up on in each channel - your sphere of influence, digital avenues, referrals and so on - needed to fuel your required close rates. Make sure you monitor your actual lead volumes and sales conversions monthly, to assess if you are on track to hit targets - and if not, change it up!
Lead Generation Techniques - Let's Wrap Up!
Implementing an orchestrated real estate lead generation strategy is mission-critical to sustaining a healthy sales pipeline in today's dynamic property market.
From maximising your sphere of influence to optimising digital channels and executing targeted campaigns - you have so many ways to help generate leads, find new clients, and continually fuel their business with quality buyer and seller leads primed for conversion.
The key is tracking lead volume, conversion rates, quality of prospects, and end-to-end lead-to-customer rates to monitor your performance. Analyse these metrics to double down on what’s working and course correct where needed. Making it measurable is one of the most important factors that many real estate professionals miss out on, but it really does make all the difference.
At Automate now, we've seen first-hand just how much a tool like HubSpot can help estate agents, bringing all your lead data under one roof, and supercharging your growth.
With consistent testing, optimisation and follow-up, you can develop a thriving pool of high-quality leads, happy buyers, streamlined sales, and recurring customers – and the healthy revenue that accompanies it. We'd love to help you get started!
