How to turn your Real Estate Website into a Lead Generating Machine

Having a website is one thing, but getting the most out of your website is another. In this post I’ll teach you 5 strategies that can turn your website into a lead generating machine, where you get interested people to the top of your funnel, nurture them, and then when they’re ready to do something, ensure that you’re at the top of their mind.

1. List building

Step 1 is building a list of people who are interested in some aspect of real estate, and having them in your database in the right groups, so you can contact them with the right information.

A great way to do that is to offer a free give away or book on your website as an incentive for people to sign up to your list.

For example, to get vendors to sign up to your list, write an e-book on “7 insider tips on how to get maximum price for your property”

To get buyers to sign up to your list, write an e-book on “Top 5 things to look for when buying a house in [your area]”

To get landlords to sign up to your list, write an e-book on “11 ways that property managers can increase your return on investment”

The prospect then signs up to your list and gets added to the appropriate group in your CRM, and the e-book (which is just a PDF), gets emailed to them automatically.

Here are some examples of list building on websites:

• Offering e-book downloads on the home page – When you click to get the book, you’re taken to a form to enter your details to get access
• Real Estate Magazine – When you click to get the book, you’re taken to the sign up form below
• Sign up – form where people enter their details to get access

You can build multiple lists at once. One for potential vendors, one for landlords, another for buyers.

2. Drip marketing

Now that you’ve got your lists in place and compelling reasons for people to join your lists, what you can setup is a drip marketing campaign to nurture your list. A drip marketing campaign is a series of communications where you automatically provide value to the prospect over time. For example, it could work like this.

• Someone thinking of selling in the next 12-24 months signs up to your list. They’re not at the stage yet where they want an appraisal, but they’re planning ahead and will need to sell in the future. They see your ebook on how to get maximum price for their property, and sign up
• As soon as they sign up, they’re sent the ebook
• The next day, an email gets sent to them trying to qualify them as a vendor. At this stage you don’t know if they want to sell now, in 3 months, or in 24 months. So the first step is to qualify them. You may or may not hear back at this stage. In this email, you also want to let them know that  in the future you’ll be sending them a bit more information about achieving maximum price for their property
• 1 week after, an email gets sent to them which delves into how presentation can lift sales price
• 1 month after, another email gets sent to them about how the right marketing can lift their sales price
• Another month after, another email gets sent to them about how advertising the right price is important on making a sale
• Another month after, you explain the benefits of your particular sales method (e.g. auctions are better because x, y and z. Or private sales are better because x, y and z)
• Another month after, another email gets sent about another benefit of your method
• You can make the drip marketing campaign as long as you want, and you could make it repeat.
• You can also have it run at different speeds depending on the hotness of the vendor. For example, if the vendor wants to sell in 6 months, you want to have the drip campaign spread over a faster period than if the vendor is thinking in the 24 month time range, where you are doing it more as a branding exercise.

Drip marketing is all about widening the top of your funnel, and staying in communication with more people.

3. Retargeting

With list building and drip marketing, you’ve got a bit of an automated marketing machine setup. Now, you need to pump fuel into the machine.

It’s possible to insert a tracking code in your website, so that after people have visited your website, they are added to a list. Then, when they are browsing other websites, your ads can show up to them.

This is called web retargeting.

You can also advertise to them when they are on Facebook.

You can also advertise to people that are listed in your CRM. This is called CRM retargeting.

There is a company that takes care of all of this remarketing called Adroll. Here is the relevant pages on their website:

• Web retargeting
• Facebook retargeting
• CRM retargeting

Another product that allows you to do retargeting is Google AdWords: http://www.google.com.au/adwords/

This article on geek estate blog also has a great amount of information for remarketing for real estate agents.

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4. Promote your lists

You can setup an auto-responder so that when you receive an enquiry on a property, it automatically sends an email to the enquirer thanking them for enquiring, and with a link promoting your lists. Also promote your content when you are speaking to people.

Lets say you are giving an appraisal, you can mention to the client that they can go to your website and get a list of things they can do to increase the value of their home. Now, if the appraisal goes cold, you still have that automated follow up in place so that come 6 months down the track when the prospect is ready, you’ve still been communicating, and you’re still top of mind.

5. Search Engine Optimisation

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the process of optimising your web presence so you can rank higher when people search for real estate agents in Google. I’ve written hereabout the best thing agents can do for SEO.

Engaging an SEO company can be useful, but beware of foreign SEO companies and cheap SEO companies. Bad SEO can actually be harmful to your website. When looking for an SEO company, check that they are based in Australia, and that they don’t outsource work to other companies. Running an SEO company with cheap-moderate pricing that a small business can afford is actually VERY capital intensive, so a lot of small companies have cropped up that are basically sales people and account managers, with the work being outsourced to a bigger company. Avoid these types of companies, and go straight for the source of where the work gets done.

6. Social Media

Social media is another great source of getting people to your website. You can run competitions, ads, or both to get people to your list building pages to your website.

This article has some great ideas on generating leads through social media.

7. Paid advertising

Google AdWords has an amazing reach, but can be very expensive due to the high competition on real estate related keywords. More info on AdWords can be found here: http://www.google.com.au/adwords/

Summary

Having a website is just a starting point for creating your own lead generating machine. By combining list building, drip marketing, and smart promotion, you can create an automatic lead generation machine for your business.

If you are looking to implement strategies like this for your business, and need help with implementation, contact us and we can help.

 

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