How to capture real estate leads from your website

Have you devised ways to capture real estate leads from your website?  If not, try these steps.

They take some time and effort, but once you have all the parts in place, it will be far more profitable than buying leads from someone else.

Before you can capture real estate leads from your website, you have to pull in visitors.

The first steps, therefore, are:

• Add plenty of useful content
• Optimize that content for the search engines

If you want to capture real estate leads from your website, you must first make it worth visiting. Fill your pages with interesting information for your target clients. Whether you’re farming a geographic area for listings, focusing on buyers in and around your territory, or focusing on a niche market, offer information that your future clients want.

Don’t be stingy – offer links to government offices and other places in the community where people can get useful information. But since you don’t want to lose those visitors, be SURE that those links open in a new page!  

Go for quality information…

If you offer buyer and seller advice, make it better than the canned copy found on dozens of other sites. You probably don’t visit competitors’ sites very often, but try it. You’ll get ideas on what sounds good – and what sounds like the same tired old say-nothing page-filler. Put yourself in the place of a buyer or seller and see what you’d think.

If you talk about buyer and seller services, say something specific that shows your true expertise. Stay away from “You need a guide who knows the territory, and I know these 5 counties inside out.” (Yes, I’ve seen that on more than one agent site.) It’s simply not a believable claim.

And please, don’t say: “I can take care of all your real estate needs.” You can’t. At least not competently. No one is an expert in every community or with every kind of real estate transaction.

Make good use of your personal blog.

When you add optimized area-specific and niche-specific content to your blog, you multiply your chances of being found. Remember that Zillow, Realtor.com, and the other big sites don’t/can’t offer the local insight that you can provide.

People looking for real information about your city or county will click when they see headlines such as “4^th of July parades in Mycounty, Mystate” or “Annual holiday celebrations in Mytown, Mystate.” How about “6 fun day-trips to take from Mycity, MyState?”

Blog about your listings

Interesting blog posts about your listings will also help bring visitors in. Do some research and see if there’s any interesting history to share. If it’s new, maybe it was the first house on the block to integrate smart home technology. Maybe it was the first house built in a new subdivision. Maybe it was the last one!

Maybe it has a feature worth writing about. For instance, a massive fireplace built from river rock gathered from someplace special. How about a patio made from used brick from an “important” old building? You never know, so find out. Then write about it.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“Not only do you have to have content in your digital and inbound real estate marketing strategies, but content that gets an LOL, gets read, noticed, shared, clicked, and commented on is how you make a human connection in today’s noisy, multi-device world.”
-Laura Monroe

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Once you have visitors, it’s time to capture real estate leads.

How? With bait pieces and capture boxes.

First, create bait pieces.

Some of my prospecting letter sets include special reports you can use, but you can also write your own, based on information you know your prospects want. Do offer different reports on different pages.

On a seller information page, offer something for sellers. Offer something different on a buyer information page. If you have a niche, offer something of specific interest to that niche.

Try writing a “5 questions” report.

This idea comes from New Zealand Marketing guru Graham McGregor. He states that no matter what you’re selling, you can come up with a “5-question” report in which you give the answers to 5 questions that your prospective clients should be asking. For real estate he suggested “5 questions to ask before hiring a real estate agent.”

You could also try “5 questions to ask yourself before buying (or selling) a house.” How about “5 questions to ask before choosing a condominium – or a subdivision.” And there’s “5 questions to ask before buying a home subject to a Homeowner Association.”

Think about the questions many buyers or sellers ask you, then use your imagination to create your own “5 questions” report.

What else can you offer?

If you publish a weekly/monthly/quarterly newsletter or market report, offer them.

Remember that you can offer your reports on your blog.

You don’t have to stick to static web pages. Use a sidebar on your blog to offer your reports.

You’ll need an autoresponder to deliver your report(s) and capture those prospects.

If you don’t already have one, choose one that allows you to add names yourself and one that monitors your list to remove addresses when they are no longer valid. This is important. One time many years ago I lost 90% of my list because I didn’t know I needed to check for hard bounces after every mailing.

Be sure to set it up so you keep different kinds of prospects in different lists. You don’t want to begin sending buyer letters to sellers or divorce letters to newlyweds.

Next, write a good headline/invitation for each capture box.

Yes, you’re giving something away, but you still need to “sell” it. Make it sound interesting or important enough for those web visitors to trade their name and email address for it.

Be careful with the words you choose. You may want your readers to learn something, but the word “learn” could convey the idea that they’ll need to study. Some people shy away from that.  So try something else. For instance:

• Discover the answers to 5 questions…
• See why…
• Get your free …
• Find out…

Don’t be afraid to add more words than just the headline. For instance, if you’re offering your newsletter, give them a hint about the interesting contents. If it’s your market report, you might say it will give them the opportunity to watch market trends as they’re happening.

How much information should you ask for with a capture box?

Don’t go overboard. Instead, think about your own reactions and how much information you’re willing to give to strangers. If you ask for more than a name and email address, many will not respond at all.

It’s good to know if they’re thinking of buying or of selling, so if your report is equally interesting to both, ask that question. You can also ask for a phone number, but don’t make it mandatory.

Once you capture the real estate leads, begin marketing to them regularly.

Fill your autoresponder with timely information and make every message an invitation to call you. Then schedule your messages to be sent weekly.

These prospects might not have the urgency of someone whose name you captured via a home search or a “What’s my home worth” function, but you never know.

The best thing, aside from the cost, is that when you capture real estate leads from your own website, they’re all yours.

They aren’t leads that have been sent to a dozen other agents. When you write them, you can say “You’re getting this message because you opted in to receive… ”

If you’ve been buying leads, make it your 2021 goal to stop needing them…

Focus on building up your website to collect your own leads. In the meantime, keep nurturing your past clients and your sphere of influence.

And remember, every time you mail a prospecting letter, use the P.S. to include an invitation to visit your website. You can also include an invitation to get your free report.

With that in mind, when you need prospecting letters, please visit me at Copy by Marte. And, if I don’t have what you need, write me. I’ll put your request on my own to-do list.

magnet Image courtesy of Sira Anamwong at FreeDigitalPhotos.net