As a real estate agent, a major part of the success or failure of your business will rely on your ability to generate leads.
In the business of real estate, a real estate agent’s ability to find and generate leads will determine the scope of his/her business and success.
This is because the business of a real estate agent is a business of providing services to people who seek them. And while there are hundreds of thousands of real estate investors, buyers, and sellers in the US housing market at any time, there’s an equally large number of real estate agents who are competing over these leads.
Related: How Do I Become the Best Real Estate Agent for Investment Properties?
So, how can you as a real estate agent generate leads and grow your business reliably and efficiently?
Real Estate Agent – Advice on How to Generate Leads
When asking any experienced real estate agent about the best practices and advice to help newcomers to the business generate leads and establish a network of connections that can carry them to success, these were the most common pieces of advice that real estate agents had to share:
Email Marketing and Social Media
One of the most common answers that we’ve received when asking real estate agents on how to generate leads was related to using email marketing and having a social media presence.
It is no surprise that social media is becoming one of the best ways for marketing a business and establishing a business relationship with your clients.
Social media marketing, however, can be a challenge, and not all real estate agents have the time or the skillset to handle their own social media accounts and marketing.
When asked about her strategy for online marketing, Cindy Welsh, a residential real estate agent, said:
“Today, you have to have a social media and email presence. Although I know that I need it, I don’t want to be the one doing it. I want to sell real estate and interact with people; I don’t want to handle my email and social media.”
Source: Referrals, Marketing and Seizing the Moment: Real Advice from a Real Estate Agent
In the same interview, Cindy was asked to give a piece of advice to real estate agents who are not using email marketing, and her answer was:
“They’re making a mistake! You can’t be everything to everyone that you’re trying to touch, and you have to have some type of an umbrella that takes that burden off of you because we’re realtors. We’re not email marketers. We’re not social media gurus. We’re realtors, and that’s really what we need to be concentrating on. If you’re trying to do it all, then you’re taking away time and energy from the piece of business that pays your bills.”
According to Cindy, a real estate agent should definitely consider email marketing and social media and use these mediums to market their business. However, Cindy believes that this is something that not all real estate agents are capable of or have the time for. For this reason, Cindy recommends hiring someone to do it for you, or that you use one of the online platforms that can help you manage your leads and communicate with them more efficiently.
To increase your visibility to real estate investors and homebuyers, click here.
Build Relationships and Ask for Referrals
Another piece of advice that was very common among real estate agents was related to building a relationship and asking for referrals.
One of the best and oldest methods that are used to generate leads is through referrals. As a real estate agent, you need to be able to establish a good relationship not only with your clients but with other real estate agents and professionals in the business.
In the world of real estate, everything is interconnected. The professional that you’ve hired to help your buyer client might be able to refer you to another buyer who could become your client. A real estate agent who was working for the seller might refer you to someone. More importantly, your current client might refer you to other clients as well.
Related: How to Build and Maintain a Real Estate Investment Network
Referrals are the driving force of any real estate agent’s business, and they are considered by many to be the main method used to generate leads.
So, when dealing with your clients, your competitors, or other professionals, always aim to build a positive relationship with them and leave a good impression, and never hesitate to ask them for referrals if they have any.
The better the relationship that you’ve built with those people, the better the word of mouth will be, and more dedicated and serious clients will be referred back to you.
Use Technology and the Internet
Since the invention of the internet, more and more aspects of the real estate industry have been getting integrated with new technologies and are becoming available on the internet.
This includes the several mediums and websites that you can use to generate leads for your business.
Nowadays, if you type in the name of any real estate agent on Google, you will find hundreds of results with online profiles on the different platforms and websites for that agent.
This is something that any agent should take full advantage of, especially with the rising number of websites who are listing agents for free, which is a form of free advertising.
Related: 3 Ways This Real Estate Agent Tool Conquers Competition
As a real estate agent, you should seek out these opportunities and find the websites that have the highest domain authority and that appear on the first page of search results, as these websites will make you visible and reachable to a far wider audience, which effectively increases your chances of finding leads without having to work for them.
Additionally, there are several online platforms that you can use to manage and communicate with your leads.
Mashvisor, for example, is developing a tool that can manage your leads, qualify them, and reach out to them with personalized communication. This can save a real estate agent countless hours each week which they would otherwise have to spend on reaching out to each lead, asking them questions, and qualifying them to see if they’re serious or not.
With this new tool, any agent will be able to upload their CRM containing their leads and their info, and the tool will then analyze each lead and determine their likelihood to purchase a property based on their financial, social, and behavioral data and patterns with the use of machine-learning algorithms and the power of AI.
Additionally, Mashvisor offers real estate agents free profiles on their website to increase their chances to generate leads and to give investors a way to reach out to these agents and hire them. With a heavy focus on SEO, Mashvisor’s agent profiles are expected to rapidly rise in rank and reach number one on search results in a short amount of time, which can be career-changing for any real estate agent who’s struggling to increase their visibility on the internet.
Do you want to give your career a boost? Claim your free Agent Profile at Mashvisor here.
Finally, Mashvisor has a lead-generation program that any real estate agent can take part of. This program allows Mashvisor to connect their user-base of real estate investors who are ready to be connected with an agent, which provides value to both the investor as well as the agent.
For more tips on how to succeed in your real estate career, read Helping You to Become a Better Real Estate Agent by Lynn Pineda, a successful agent in Coral Springs.
Bottom Line
While there are hundreds of pieces of advice that experienced real estate agents have provided, these are the ones that I thought were most worth mentioning and focusing on.
If you’re looking to hear more pieces of advice for real estate agents or about the different ways to generate leads, please let us know with a comment and we will gladly take your suggestions into consideration.
Also, make sure to check out Mashvisor’s platform. Whether you’re a real estate agent or an investor, Mashvisor’s platform has tools and features for both sides, and it is guaranteed to make your real estate business much easier and faster to conduct.
