Lead generation is the number one activity that all real estate agents depend on for growth. If your blog is seeing traffic, but not leads, this article is for you!
Getting traffic to your real estate blog is always exciting! The fact that prospective homebuyers and sellers discovered you online is promising, considering how fierce the competition for agents can be. But once they visit your blog, how do you keep visitors engaged and generate leads?
Start A Real Estate Blog Already
Don’t have a blog yet? Are you crazy? Starting a blog is one of the best ways to generate organic traffic and leads from prospects who are researching the housing market online. Organic traffic is what we call traffic from visitors who discover you through a search engine using keywords.
Lead Generation: Paid Vs. Organic
Paid advertising campaigns rely on strategic keywords to generate ads that are triggered to display a number of websites. You can boost traffic to your real estate blog with a well-planned PPC (pay-per-click) ad campaign, but that’s not the only way to get leads.
Competition for popular keywords associated with real estate can drive the cost-per-click up beyond your control. Organic traffic, however, is FREE, because it uses a variety of content that you create and own perpetually to attract interest from homebuyers and sellers.
While your blog contains a lot of useful business information about who you are, the local real estate market, and local listings, this information is only of immediate value to someone who is actively searching for an agent.
Source: OnCarrot
Blogs: The Perfect Lead Generation Tool
If you turn your real estate blog into a comprehensive source for relevant, local information, you’ll attract prospects who are not aware of a need yet. They may be local residents or people from outside the region, who will eventually need to buy or sell a home. Their familiarity with your website as a local online resource will put you top-of-mind when they are ready to find an agent.
A keyword research tool is a worthwhile investment if you want to create content that resonates with the local audience. Once the traffic starts to flow, you’ll need a strategic plan for capturing each visitor’s information, so you can follow up with them later and build a relationship over time.
The best way to cultivate relationships with the prospects in your database is to provide them with free items of value, relevant to their interests and needs. Visitors to your site who review single detached homes should only be advised of news relating to the single detached home market, and so on.
Check out these 7 lead generation tips for your blog:
# 1 Link Landing Pages From Your Blog
A landing page is an essential component of any lead generation strategy. The landing page is designed specifically for capturing contact information from prospects who visit your site. It can be positioned on your blog as an overlay, in the sidebar where advertisements are usually displayed, or as a drop down.
Located on the landing page is your compelling offer and the registration fields for your prospective client to fill out. The landing page itself should be visually appealing, direct, and include a clear call-to-action that motivates visitors to register or subscribe.
The landing page is the first page your visitor will see before they receive your FREE item of value. If the landing page sucks, how will you convince visitors that the product you’re offering is of any value? You could offer a free home appraisal using a landing page to register interested prospects. Add the contacts to your database and follow up to book your pre-listing appointment. Just think of the time you’ll save registering people this way instead of cold-calling or door-to-door soliciting!
Check out these awesome software choices for creating a landing page that converts!
#2 Lead Magnet – Use Offer Baits
A lead magnet brings prospects to you…
A lead magnet is an item of value that you create and offer for free, to entice prospects to join your mailing list. The goal of the lead magnet is to obtain personal contact information from the customer, in exchange for information the customer finds useful. So, a person searching for information about the average price of homes in their neighborhood might find a free monthly housing report very useful.
Lead magnets can take several forms: E-Book, Video Tutorial, monthly report, white papers, in-depth case studies, etc. Anything that provides substantial, informative content, can be re-purposed as a lead magnet. You can even collect a number of past blog posts and publish them as an e-book.
You can offer a housing report through your blog as a lead magnet that can be downloaded with the click of a button. To obtain the report, clients simply fill out the required fields (i.e. name, email, address, type of home, etc). They are then added to your CRM, and you can then schedule a strategic follow-up email.
“Capture your visitor’s information while giving them something of value in return”
#3 Pre-Listing Packages
Offer your pre-listing package online…
Every real estate agent has a pre-listing package that attends their pre-listing consultation. You can make your pre-listing package available online through your blog as a PDF download. Prospects would fill out the required form with their contact information, then receive a unique URL by email, where they could obtain the PDF version of your pre-listing package.
#4 Encourage People To Subscribe To Your Newsletter
I know. It sounds a little corny. Why would a prospective homeowner want your real estate newsletter, right? WRONG! Open your eyes to the local businesses owners, entrepreneurs, and freelancers around you.
Offer to publish exclusive deals from local businesses through your newsletter. Prospects who visit your site can fill out a contact form in exchange for a monthly newsletter you create. There are newsletter templates you can use to create the design and content in literally minutes.
Your monthly newsletter could also be filled with local business information that helps businesses in your neighborhood connect and grow. Publish information about new businesses in your area. You’ll be providing a service to local business owners, who can join your mailing list as well. In turn, they will provide you with referrals. Cha-ching!
#5 Listicles – List Based Articles
You’ve probably already run into a listicle already during your time online. Listicles are popular with users because they require little time to read and are usually chock-full of useful information. Top 5 Places to Buy A Home, Top 10 Neighbourhoods, Best Nature Trails In Your City: the possibilities are limited only by your imagination. The more local the topic, the more likely your article will show up in local search results.
Review local restaurants and compile a list ranking the experience. Write an article about the top 10 mistakes first-time buyers make. Make the topics relevant to your target audience. Include a contact form at the bottom of your blog article, offering more free information in the form of an e-book, tutorial, or pre-listing package. BAM!
#6 Implement Email Marketing Automation
Email marketing automation will make cultivating the leads you capture more strategic and effective. A drip campaign uses triggered email responses to generate interest from targeted segments of your database. Behavioral emails can be created to alert visitors of new content relevant to their interests.
A drip campaign delivers a series of scheduled email messages to targeted members of your database based on specific parameters(age, property type, location, etc). So instead of sending generic emails to your entire network or CRM, you can target the message you want to send to a specific group, and schedule its delivery for an optimal time of day.
Summary
Lead generation needs to be happening perpetually if your real estate business is going to grow, but it can get costly and time consuming if you’re just starting out. Investing time and effort into your real estate blog is a simple, cost-effective way to boost organic traffic and generate leads.
Your real estate blog can become a popular online resource for local business news, deals, and housing market information. If you diversify your blog content to include lead magnets and other free items of value, you can expand your online reach without investing more in PPC advertising.
By integrating email marketing automation with an effective landing page, you can generate more leads for your CRM and strategically cultivate those leads with a drip campaign.