Lead nurturing for real estate professionals is an efficient way to turn more of those visitors into clients.Everyone who visits your website is a potential prospect. As you build your database of contacts, you run the risk of losing potential sales opportunities by not engaging strategically with the right prospects at the right time.
A lead nurturing strategy will help you identify promising leads from leads that need to be cultivated. Let’s take a look at what lead nurturing is and some useful lead nurturing ideas for real estate agents.
What is Lead Nurturing?
Capturing customer data through strategic landing pages provides you with leads. Converting those leads into clients (ie a homebuyer or seller) is what lead nurturing is all about. Lead nurturing is strategic and combines analytics and marketing automation tools to turn prospects into clients.
Real estate agents who cultivate relationships with the prospects in their database can uncover opportunities in their existing network. For every new prospect who visits your website or subscribes to your blog, there needs to be a lead nurturing strategy that builds interest in your service and compels clients to choose you as their real estate agent.
Cold, Warm & Hot Buyer & Seller Leads for Nurturing
Cold and warm leads are prospects who have little or no familiarity with your brand. Unlike referral leads, cold and warm prospects know little about you and may be considering other agents as well. They tend to be prospects who are still early in the buying cycle and are not ready to purchase or sell a home immediately.
Cold Leads
Typically, cold and warm prospects discover you through an online search or advertisement. Cold leads are individuals with whom you have initiated contact. They haven’t indicated a need for your service or an interest. You may have reached them by phone or mailed out a pre-listing package. They may have clicked on an online ad or a boosted Facebook page post and discovered your site.
Warm Leads
Warm leads are more familiar with your brand than cold leads. They may have visited your website frequently seeking specific information about the housing market. They may have emailed you an inquiry, seeking advice or information about a mortgage or staging.
Hot Leads
Hot leads are, as the name suggests, prospects with a strong indication of a need. They are ready to list a home, or they may have been approved for a mortgage and are now ready to look for their dream home. They most likely discovered you through an online search or a referral. They contact you directly and ask for a listing consultation. Hot leads require the least amount of nurturing because they have a clear need.
Lead Nurturing Strategies For Realtors
There are a few simple, inexpensive strategies you can use to nurture leads and build your sales funnel. Utilizing your social media channels will also help you generate new leads from prospects who discover you on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
Blog Content
Your real estate blog is a great way to nurture leads into clients. Individuals who subscribe to your blog may be homeowners or local renters someday. These prospects may not be ready to buy or sell right now, but they will be in the future. When that time comes, you want to be top-of-mind.
To stay top-of-mind with cold leads you capture through your blog, expand on the topics you write for your blog. Local neighborhood news, relevant neighborhood statistics, and interviews with local residents are examples of content that is of general interest.
Focus your blog content on the local market which you serve, using keywords that are relevant geographically. People searching local businesses, events, or organizations in your target market will discover your blog article if it has the right keywords.
Diversify the content on your blog to appeal to a wider audience. Besides blog articles, you can create a video, live streaming, and slideshows that will generate awareness about your website.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is a great way to nurture warm leads who have subscribed to your mailing list. They may have found your blog because of an article you posted to your Facebook page about a local charity event. Once they subscribe, you need to keep them engaged with content that is specifically of interest to them.
Drip campaigns are the best way to nurture warm leads. You can create a drip campaign using marketing automation software that integrates with your CRM. Emails are triggered and distributed to your contacts based on their online behavior.
So if a visitor to your site clicks on a number of beachfront listings, you can send an automated email that provides further information about beachfront properties available through you.
By segmenting your database into different groups, you can strategically craft appealing offers and marketing copy that generates higher conversion. You further reduce the risk of alienating or annoying other members of your database for whom the information is not relevant.
Video
Video content is increasingly popular with both desktop and mobile users. A real estate video showcasing a home you’re listing or an interview with a local business owner can generate warm leads from prospects who are seeking information about the housing market but aren’t ready to buy or sell just yet.
Produce a short YouTube video or live stream of your next showing. Include a hyperlink for viewers to register for more videos on similar topics. Add these leads to your database and create a unique segment for these leads. You can then create an automated marketing strategy for cultivating these leads over time with additional videos that may be of interest to them.
Social Media
Leads you capture through Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram or other social media channels should be segmented in your database. Pay attention to the specific posts that generated interest from prospects and track the keywords that perform well. This way, you can boost your social media content through sponsored posts that generate the most interest and conversion.
If you posted an image to your Instagram that generated interest, use analytics tools to build a profile of the audience. You can then produce more content on a similar topic, or repurpose older content (past blog articles) that are relevant.
Summary
Lead nurturing has many nuances that take time to learn. Real estate agents can reduce the cost of advertising significantly by nurturing and converting a higher percentage of cold and warm leads. Most of all, by nurturing leads strategically with content they find appealing and relevant, you can generate more word-of-mouth referrals. And word of mouth referrals offers the highest likelihood of conversion.