The real estate business is more competitive today than it has ever been. Real estate agents and businesses that are not dynamic enough to adapt to consumer trends and the unpredictable property market are increasingly struggling to create new business. The unforgiving real estate market is also affecting realtors at a personal level. It has been reported that an estimated 31% of real estate agents in the US were struggling to pay their rent in December 2022.
Outdated and ineffective lead generation techniques such as cold calling/pitching waste valuable time and financial resources. They are also professionally demoralizing and are becoming the leading cause of failure for real estate agents. Despite the cutthroat competition and the unpredictable property market, it always seems like there are a few agents who are consistently thriving. How do they do it? What is the difference between successful agents and those who can barely afford rent?
The purchase of property is usually a long-term investment. This means that the average client is likely to buy a house once in their lifetime. So, agents have to always be focused on attracting new clients. In 2023, a successful real estate agent generates leads online..
Generating real estate leads is not simply about increasing the quantity of prospects, but also about targeting the right audience. The right audience, in this case, are people who are actively seeking to buy, sell, or rent properties. Targeting the right clients is the difference between a typical lead and a quality lead. In fact, the success of any real estate business today is hinged on the ability to consistently target the right clients.
How to Generate Real Estate Leads in 2023
The age of the internet is upon us, and literally, everybody is on the internet. Statistics show that about 92% of Americans are actively online every month. 81% of them search for products on the internet before making a purchase. Technically, the internet is an open field of potential real estate clients. So, the success of a real estate agent depends on how they position themselves online so that they can attract these potential clients.
Understand Real Estate Leads
How to get leads in real estate is important, but understanding the concept of quality leads is paramount to the success of any agent or agency. Knowing the types of leads and employing the best way to get them can make a significant difference in a real estate agent's career.
Real estate leads generally describe potential clients who have shown an interest in buying, selling, or renting properties. These individuals typically willingly provide or intend to provide their contact information. They also express their intent to engage in real estate transactions by engaging in related content.
Learn About Different Types of Real Estate Leads
Throughout your career, you’ll be working with many different people from all walks of life. However, your ideal leads will share one of three common goals. By understanding and directly appealing to these goals, you can increase your success in lead generation.
- Buyer Leads: These leads are individuals actively searching for properties to purchase. They may have specific criteria, such as location, size, or budget, and are seeking the assistance of a real estate agent to find their ideal property.
- Seller Leads: Seller leads consist of property owners looking to sell their homes or other real estate assets. These leads often require an agent's expertise to help them navigate the selling process and maximize their property's value.
- Renter Leads: Renter leads are potential tenants in search of rental properties. Real estate agents can assist them in finding suitable accommodations based on their preferences and budget.
Effectively Target Your Ideal Leads
Whether you're a seasoned real estate professional looking to revitalize your lead generation strategy or a newly licensed agent seeking a solid foundation, you have to equip yourself with the knowledge and tools to enhance your ability to generate quality leads.
While it may be tempting to cast a wide net and gather as many leads as possible, the quality of leads is more important than the quantity. A targeted approach ensures that a realtor invests their time and resources in potential clients who are genuinely interested in making a transaction.
Focusing on how to generate quality leads that align with their specialties exponentially increases your chances of converting leads into closed deals. A targeted lead will also allow your business to provide personalized services to your clients. This increases customer satisfaction and consequently increases referrals.
How to Find Real Estate Leads: Search Engine Optimization for Real Estate Agents
Understanding Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search Engine Optimization refers to the practice of optimizing a website or web content to increase its visibility and ranking in search engine results pages. Understanding SEO can greatly benefit your online presence as a real estate agent and help you attract and target potential clients.
Search engines like Google use complex algorithms to determine which websites to display when users search for specific keywords or phrases. SEO involves optimizing your website and its content to align with these algorithms, making it more likely for search engines to rank your site higher in relevant search results.
Key Aspects of SEO Real Estate Agents Should Be Aware of
Keyword Research
Conducting keyword research is an essential step in SEO. It involves identifying the specific words and phrases that potential clients are likely to use when searching for real estate services. For example, keywords like "buy a home in [location]," "real estate agent in [location]," or "sell my house fast" could be relevant to your business. By incorporating these keywords strategically into your website content, you increase the chances of appearing in search results when someone searches for those terms.
On-Page Optimization
On-page optimization involves optimizing the elements within your website to improve its visibility to search engines. This includes optimizing page titles, meta descriptions, headings, and URLs with relevant keywords. Creating high-quality, informative, and engaging content that incorporates targeted keywords is crucial for both search engine ranking and user experience.
Local SEO
As a real estate agent, targeting local searches is essential. Local SEO focuses on optimizing your website to appear in location-specific search results. This includes adding your business information (name, address, and phone number) to online directories, optimizing Google My Business listing, and creating localized content that reflects your expertise in the local real estate market.
Link Building
Building high-quality backlinks to your website is an important aspect of SEO. Backlinks are links from other websites that point to your site, signaling its credibility and authority to search engines. Engaging in networking, guest blogging, and content promotion can help you acquire relevant and authoritative backlinks from other reputable websites.
User Experience and Website Performance
Search engines consider user experience and website performance as ranking factors. Ensure your website is mobile-friendly, loads quickly, and provides a seamless browsing experience. Easy navigation, clear calls-to-action, and informative content will keep visitors engaged and encourage them to explore further.
Analytics and Monitoring
Regularly monitor your website's performance using tools like Google Analytics. Analyze metrics such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, and user behavior to understand what's working and identify areas for improvement. This data-driven approach allows you to refine your SEO strategies over time.
While SEO can be a complex and ongoing process, investing time and effort into optimizing your website can significantly increase your visibility, attract more organic traffic, and ultimately generate more leads for your real estate business. A partnership with a digital marketing agency specializing in SEO to maximize your efforts and stay ahead of the competition in the online landscape.
Introducing Real Estate SEO By Ardor!
Now that we have established the basics of SEO, let's narrow it down to how this technique plays a role in the real estate industry. Real estate SEO simply means optimizing your real estate business, and properly positioning it online to target and attract potential property buyers and sellers. This is done through a website, website content, and social media platforms.
Ardor SEO is a full-suite digital marketing firm with a focus on real estate marketing. Our goal is quite simple - we'd like to help you take your real estate business to the next level! An omniscient understanding of the real estate market coupled with the best digital marketers in the business has consistently given Ardor a near-perfect score in converting quality leads into closed deals. Our team is thoroughly "optimized" to ensure that we help you target, attract, and convert quality real estate leads. Below are a few ways SEO can help you achieve success in lead generation and conversion.
How Real Estate SEO is Helping Agents Generate Quality Leads
Increased Online Visibility
By implementing effective SEO strategies, real estate agents can improve their website's visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs). When potential clients search for relevant keywords, having a higher ranking increases the chances of your website being seen, leading to increased organic traffic and exposure to a larger audience.
Targeted Traffic
SEO helps attract targeted traffic to your website. By optimizing your website with relevant keywords related to your real estate services and local market, you can attract potential clients who are actively searching for properties or real estate agents in your area. This targeted traffic is more likely to convert into quality leads as they have expressed specific interest in the services you offer.
Local SEO
Real estate is a local business, and local SEO techniques are particularly important for agents. Optimizing your website for local searches ensures that your business appears in local map listings and local search results. This helps you reach potential clients who are specifically looking for real estate services in your target location, increasing the chances of generating leads from your local area.
Authority and Credibility
Effective SEO practices can enhance your online authority and credibility as a real estate agent. By consistently producing high-quality, informative, and valuable content optimized for SEO, you establish yourself as an authority in your field. This builds trust with potential clients, increasing the likelihood of them choosing you as their real estate agent.
Mobile Optimization
Mobile optimization is crucial in today's digital landscape, as more and more people are using mobile devices to search for real estate services. SEO helps ensure that your website is mobile-friendly and provides a seamless browsing experience on smartphones and tablets. A mobile-optimized website improves user engagement and allows potential clients to easily access your contact information or request more details about properties.
Long-term Investment
SEO is a long-term investment that can deliver sustainable results for real estate agents. Unlike paid advertising, which stops generating leads when the campaign ends, the efforts put into SEO can continue to bring in organic traffic and leads over an extended period. By consistently optimizing your website and staying up-to-date with SEO best practices, you can enjoy ongoing lead-generation benefits.
Customer Relationship Management Systems (CRM)
CRM refers to a set of strategies, processes, and technologies that businesses use to manage and analyze their interactions and relationships with their customers. The main goal of CRM is to improve customer satisfaction, enhance customer loyalty, and drive sales growth.
CRM systems typically involve the use of software applications that centralize and organize customer-related data. These systems enable businesses to collect, store, and manage information about their customers, such as contact details, purchase history, preferences, and communication history. By consolidating customer data in one place, CRM systems provide a holistic view of each customer, allowing businesses to understand their needs, preferences, and behavior.
Why CRMs are Great for Real Estate Leads
Customer Data Centralization
CRM systems act as a centralized repository for all customer-related data. This includes contact details, purchase history, communication history, preferences, and other relevant information. By having a comprehensive view of each customer, businesses can gain insights into their needs, preferences, and behavior. This knowledge enables businesses to personalize their interactions, offers, and marketing campaigns, leading to increased customer engagement and loyalty.
Enhanced Customer Segmentation and Targeting
CRM systems allow businesses to segment their customer base based on various criteria, such as demographics, buying patterns, preferences, and interests. These segments can be used to create targeted marketing campaigns and offers. By delivering personalized and relevant messages to specific customer segments, businesses can increase the effectiveness of their marketing efforts, leading to higher conversion rates and revenue growth.
Improved Sales and Pipeline Management
CRM systems offer features for managing sales processes and tracking opportunities. Sales teams can easily track leads, prioritize sales activities, and monitor the progress of deals through the sales pipeline. CRM systems provide visibility into sales activities, allowing businesses to identify bottlenecks, optimize sales strategies, and forecast revenue more accurately.
Upselling and Cross-selling Opportunities
With CRM systems, businesses can analyze customer data to identify upselling and cross-selling opportunities. By understanding customers' previous purchases and preferences, businesses can suggest relevant additional products or services. This can increase the average transaction value and boost revenue by encouraging customers to buy more or upgrade to higher-value offerings.
Improved Customer Service and Retention
CRM systems help businesses provide better customer service and support. With access to customer interaction history and preferences, businesses can respond more effectively to inquiries and provide personalized assistance. Satisfied customers are more likely to remain loyal, make repeat purchases, and refer others, leading to increased revenue through customer retention and positive word-of-mouth.
Pay-Per-Click Advertising
Closely related to SEO or organic search is pay-per-click advertising. The concept is also called paid search or simply abbreviated as PPC. The main difference between PPC and SEO is that with PPC, a fee has to be paid for your content to be seen online. PPC can be done on search engines like Google and on social media platforms like Facebook and Pinterest.
Ardor SEO Helps Real Estate Agents With Client Engagement Pipeline
Ardor not only helps in lead generation - our partnership with realtors extends beyond optimization and client targeting. We help clients walk in through the doors of your business. Ardor creates personalized engagement opportunities between prospective clients and your real estate business. This could involve complex processes such as creating personalized emails and generating optimized web content to simply using new technologies like chatbots to ensure prompt responses.
Expand Your Real Estate Network
Networking in the context of the real estate business refers to the process of building and maintaining relationships with individuals and professionals within the real estate industry and related fields. It involves connecting with people who can potentially provide referrals, collaborate on deals, share insights and knowledge, or offer support in various aspects of the real estate business.
Networking is a proactive approach to expanding your professional circle, establishing connections, and nurturing relationships for mutual benefit. It goes beyond simply exchanging business cards or attending events. It involves engaging in meaningful interactions, building trust, and creating a network of contacts that can contribute to your success in the real estate industry.
Networking plays a significant role in lead generation and business growth, and professional development. Ardor SEO has built a formidable network of realtors, property influencers, marketers, real estate event organizers, investors, and returning clients. We gladly open this network to our partner agents. Be a part of one of the most successful real estate networks today.
Tips for Securing High Quality Leads
Regardless of where you’re starting out from, there are always things an agent can do to sharpen and enhance their lead generation techniques. Let’s explore them below:
Encourage Referrals from Past Clients
Provide exceptional service to your current and past clients to encourage word-of-mouth referrals. Stay in touch with your clients and ask them to refer you to their friends, family, and colleagues who may be in need of real estate services.
Hosting Open Houses and Events
Open houses and events present excellent opportunities to connect with potential clients face-to-face and gather their contact information.
Creating an Inviting Atmosphere
Stage your open houses and events to create an inviting ambiance that showcases the property's best features. Pay attention to details like lighting, cleanliness, and appealing decor.
Collecting Contact Information
Provide sign-up sheets or digital forms at open houses and events where visitors can leave their contact information to receive updates and additional property information.
Incentives and Promotions
Incentives and promotions can motivate leads to take action and move closer to making a transaction. Incentives encourage leads to refer you to their friends, family, or colleagues. They can include discounts, gift cards, or special rewards for successful referrals.
Exclusive Listings or Pre-Sale Opportunities
Provide leads with access to exclusive property listings or pre-sale opportunities, giving them a sense of exclusivity and urgency.
Follow-Up After Closing
Maintain communication with clients even after the deal is closed. Continue to provide value, support, and assistance to nurture long-term relationships and encourage referrals. Actively seeking client feedback provides valuable insights into the effectiveness of your lead-generation efforts and helps identify areas for improvement.
Ardor also plays a role in advising partner agents in creating post-transaction surveys to gauge client satisfaction and gather feedback on their experience with your lead generation and conversion processes. Our partners are also encouraged to incentivize satisfied clients to provide testimonials and reviews that highlight the positive aspects of your lead-generation strategies and services.
Why SEO is The Best Way to Get Real Estate Leads
To doubt the effectiveness of search engine optimization in 2023 is equal to accepting a slow death to your real estate business. We've already seen how the internet has provided an almost infinite potential for client targeting. SEO offers convenience and effectiveness as it provides long-term visibility and cost-effectiveness. Prospective clients who approach your business using the power of organic search also tend to engage more with your business. Take a look at why the best real estate agents can't do without Real Estate SEO.
Cost-Effectiveness
SEO can be more cost-effective than traditional paid marketing methods. While there may be costs associated with implementing SEO strategies, such as hiring SEO experts or investing in tools, the ongoing expenses are generally lower compared to continually paying for advertising space or clicks. With SEO, you are primarily investing in optimizing your website and content to rank organically in search engine results, which can result in long-term visibility and traffic without the need for ongoing advertising expenditure.
Long-Term Return On Investment
While SEO may take time and effort to yield results, it can provide a higher return on investment (ROI) in the long run. Once you establish strong organic rankings, the traffic generated from SEO efforts does not require ongoing payments. Unlike paid advertising campaigns that require continuous investment to maintain visibility, the initial investment in SEO can continue to generate traffic and conversions without incurring additional costs, leading to a more sustainable ROI over time.
Long-Term Visibility
SEO efforts have the potential to provide long-term visibility for your website. Unlike paid advertising campaigns that have a limited duration, the optimized content and website structure in SEO can continue to rank well in search engine results even after the initial optimization work is done. This sustained visibility can result in a steady stream of organic traffic over an extended period, providing ongoing benefits without the need for continuous advertising spend.
Higher Click-Through Rates
Organic search results often receive higher click-through rates (CTR) compared to paid ads. Users tend to trust organic search results more, as they perceive them as being more relevant and credible. According to various studies, organic search results receive about 70-90% of clicks, while paid ads receive the remaining percentage. This higher CTR can lead to more targeted and qualified traffic to your website, increasing the chances of conversions and customer engagement.
Organic Search Dominance
Organic search results generally receive significantly more clicks than paid ads. Many users have developed "ad blindness" and tend to skip or ignore paid ads altogether. By focusing on SEO, you can capture a larger share of organic search traffic, which is often the primary source of website visits. This dominance in organic search can result in a consistent and sustainable flow of traffic, reducing the reliance on paid advertising channels.
Trust and Credibility
SEO helps build trust and credibility with your target audience. When your website consistently ranks high in organic search results, users perceive your brand as more trustworthy and authoritative. By optimizing your content to provide valuable information, addressing user queries, and establishing thought leadership, you can position your brand as an industry expert. This trust and credibility can positively impact customer perception and lead to higher conversion rates.
Targeted Traffic & Better Client Metrics
SEO allows you to target specific keywords, phrases, and topics that are relevant to your business. By optimizing your website and content for these specific keywords, you can attract users who are actively searching for information or products related to your industry. This targeted traffic is more likely to convert into leads or customers since they have already expressed an interest in the specific offerings you provide.
Enhanced User Experience
SEO focuses on optimizing your website for better user experience. Search engines prioritize websites that provide a seamless and user-friendly experience. By implementing SEO best practices such as improving site speed, mobile responsiveness, navigation, and content structure, you enhance the overall user experience. This, in turn, leads to lower bounce rates, increased time on site, and improved engagement metrics, all of which are positive signals to search engines and can contribute to higher rankings.
5 Frequently Asked Questions About Real Estate Leads
Final Thoughts on Quality Lead Generation
Imagine positioning your website and online content to attract specific clients who are already looking to purchase or lease properties on your portfolio. Imagine you can increase lead generation by about 200 to 300% in a matter of months. Yes, we've done it for our partner agents and we'll do it for you! Now imagine how much more revenue you'll generate from a Real Estate SEO campaign by Ardor.
Be part of an exclusive network of successful clients and real estate businesses at Ardor and let some of that "success magic" rub off on your business. The real estate market in 2023 is made up of an unforgiving terrain on the pathway to success. Real estate agents looking to succeed and have long-term success need professional lead-generation partners. It's time you forget about cold calling and wasting time and resources following uncertain leads that might not generate sales. Let Ardor position your business brand effectively and watch clients come to you.
Ardor SEO will help your prospective clients cut through online noise allowing them to pay attention to your business and what it has to offer. We'd love to hear from you. Get in touch for a free consultation today. We promise to make it worth your while.
