Lead Generation has become the staple of Digital marketing for almost every type of product and service. The dynamic nature of marketing has led to the advent of a multi-pronged approach, one of that approach being lead generation. As the economy opens up in the post COVID era to witness a new normal, Digital Marketing will play an important role to foster its revival. The pandemic has reiterated the need to invest in real estate assets and using the right digital marketing channels can lead to an effective real estate lead generation for agents. In this article, we’ll discuss the importance of Digital Marketing for real estate lead generation and various channels through which you can generate leads.
Digital Marketing in Real Estate
Digital Marketing is the future of the real estate sector. Although the conventional modes of property buying still remain dominant. There is a need for real estate agents and brokers to have a strong online presence. The facilities of search engines such as Google and various real estate websites and apps are a click away. It’s likely that a customer would search for different channels for looking at various properties. As an agent or broker, you can a virtual tour of your property thus generating more leads and Maximize Conversions. The Real Estate sector is a highly competitive one especially when there’s a real estate agent in every nook and corner. It is important that as an agent you make most of the digital marketing tools available to dominate this sector.
How to Generate Lead for Real Estate?
Real estate and digital marketing work in synergy to provide you with the best real estate seller leads to work with. There are numerous ways to get real estate leads online. In this post we’ll try to cover the best ways to generate real estate leads especially keeping in the spectrum of the Indian real estate sector.
Real Estate Websites
There are various real estate listing websites available in the market on which buyers can browse through various properties free of cost. These real estate websites earn revenue by selling advertising packages to brokers, agents, realtors, etc. You can refer to Alexa ranking although it’s better if you evaluate yourself which website suites your needs, geographical location, price, etc. rather than relying solely on the rankings.
Some of popular real estate listing websites operating in india are 99Acres, Sulekha, Quickr, MagicBricks etc.
Why prefer Marketing Agency over listing website ?
While it may sound like a feasible option to invest in a listing website, relying solely on the real estate websites for quality lead is not a good practice. It makes sense to reinvest your commission into digital marketing and the reasons for that are multifold.
- A marketing agency’s sole focus is on a particular client. It will ensure efficacious lead generation strategies that particularly fits your need. It will work towards creating awareness about your brand’s USP (Unique Selling Point).
- One of the biggest disadvantages of a listing website is that it works on the principle of profit maximization. Hence it will share leads with different clients, possibly your competitor. In that case, even lead generation is not cutting your competition rather increasing it.
- A professional digital marketer will ensure higher project visibility and therefore a higher conversion rate. On the other hand, a real estate listing website has thousands of listing pertaining to a particular geographical area. Therefore you have to pay a high amount or opt for an expensive listing plan otherwise you will have a lower conversion rate.
- Digital Marketing Agency will also promote your social media handles on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to create brand awareness.
Create your own website.
There is always an option to create your own real estate website rather than looking at third party brokers for lead generation. If you create your own website then the two most important things to keep in mind i.e
- Website design and layout.
- Search engine optimization.
Find our article about how to create an effective Landing page?
Find our article about Real Estate Lead Generation by Creating an attractive Website
Website Design and Layout
The website acts as your business card and how the saying goes “the first impression is the best impression” is the main motto of website design and layout. A real estate website should be first and foremost “professional” and with minimal easy to comprehend design so that users can easily navigate through your site. It should clearly advertise the properties that are up for sale/rent, it’s value proposition, a virtual tour or photos and video of the properties listed, area in sq. feet. and all other important information. Make sure to add lead capture forms in some of the pages. But not all because the user might irk and refer to other websites.
Your website should be optimized for mobile design and that’s a must-have. According to NAR’s 2016 home buyers and sellers report, 72% of buyers use mobile phones to browse through properties. Add an “About Us” column to introduce your firm. Tell the buyer about your incredible experience in the real estate sector.
Another thing to consider is to have an IDX provider for your website. IDX(Internet Data Exchange)is software that pertains to listing on websites. If your site has listing chances are you are already using and IDX system. IDX is what enables members of multiple listing service (MLS) to integrate real estate listings from the MLS database into their own websites. It is widely used amongst real estate brokers.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
SEO is a very broad topic encompassing various methods and tools. We’ll focus on how to use SEO for real estate lead generation. In order to appear higher in SERP, it’s important to use relevant keywords related to real estate. These keywords should appear in your title, headlines, alt tag, and content of your website. We have discussed in detail what are keywords and how to use it, you refer to this article. For realtors what’s important is the local traffic rather focusing on increasing search traffic volume. It is more likely that potential leads would emerge from the local traffic.
A high click-through rate (CTR) is a testimonial that users are visiting your website and it’s engaging. Besides this engage with your potential clients in the form of comments to build more credibility and trust.
Social Media
Social media marketing is a must for marketers trying to sell a service or a product and even in the real estate diaspora, social media marketing plays a crucial role to generate leads in a cost-effective manner.
It is a platform where realtors or agents communicate with their prospective clients. This type of communication is extremely effective in creating awareness about your real estate services. Through tools of social media marketing, we can target potential customers’ different geography and demography.
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn are an effective platform for real estate lead generation. Another benefit of using social media for your lead generation could its cost-effectiveness. Prospective buyers often post their requirements on FaceBook or Twitter, marketers target those post to generate lead-free of cost. Therefore it is a high target-oriented and inexpensive solution to lead generation. Twitter has been undermined by marketers for its ability to generate leads but its advanced searched tab could produce salutary effects.
Real Estate Lead Generation through Facebook & Instagram Ads.
Facebook is one of the biggest social media giants. It is the most used platform for ads with 70% marketers using it, followed by Instagram which is used by 41% marketers, according to the Social Media Marketing Industry Report 2020 by Social Media Examiner.
Facebook can be very fruitful for generating leads for real estate. Various social media strategies on such platforms are designed for maximum engagement with potential investors and to encourage users to fill out simple forms to provide his/her contact information thus turning into a lead. Also, its fairly simple criteria to be qualified as a listing in such social networking sites. All we have to do is copy the URL of the property listing that you want to sell and post in various Facebook pages, now all the users who liked that page will see your property listing in their feed, sharing that post will increase the reach even further.
Facebook Lead Ads have proven effective to generate more leads and that too free of cost. It is a very popular social media marketing tool that is capable of getting high conversions and is auto-populated so that when you click on a sponsored post on a Facebook lead ad it opens up a signed form that auto-populates all the information from your account. Sign form can be customized and additional fields could be added. Another aspect of online real estate marketing is Customer Relationship Management. Real Estate CRM and lead generation work hand in hand, with more leads coming it’s essential to connect your leads ad Data in your CRM. There are various CRM tools available online.
Check out our article on How to generate Facebook leads.
Paid Search Engine Advertising
There are various search engines on the internet such as Yahoo, Bing but the most visited and widely used is Google. Google Adwords works on the PPC advertising model so they charge only when an ad is clicked upon or viewed. Real Estate agents have an opportunity to display their ads on SERP by searching the relevant keyword and give their properties much needed exposure. Google Adwords comes equipped with tools such as keyword planning to help you find the relevant keywords to have a highly targeted impact of your ad. Google has various Display Options
Display Network i.e Ads displayed on relevant website/apps that are in partnership with Google’s Network
Search Engine Network i.e Ads displayed to on top or side of Google SERP
Search with Display Select i.e Ads displayed both in the search results as well as in its display network.
Video Ads i.e video Ads that appear before or in the middle of a YouTube video and also display network videos, games, and apps.
With the membership gatekeeping model being applied at almost every other real estate website, Display network ads might weaken its desired exposure. It’s better to focus on gaining exposure through other means of ads such as social media ads.
To generate real estate leads through this marketing method, it’s important to have a digital marketing strategy planned out. You cannot solely rely on Paid advertising for leads.
Check Our Article on How to Generate Leads Using Google Adwords?
Content Marketing
Content Marketing is of utmost importance nowadays. Almost all the buyers are looking for websites that can give answers to question such as: How to buy a property? Where to Buy? Who is the best agent/realtor in your locality? and for that, you need the best content with valuable information to make you stand out. The type of content will depend on who is viewing your content i.e to know about your target audience. Below mentioned are some methods to reach out to your audiences
Blogs
Blogs help to increase traffic and more users are likely to visit your website with an effective keyword strategy. It has become an important aspect of online content marketing for generating real estate leads. At least one blog per month should be posted which contains information related to property and real estate. It should contain valuable information that prospective buyers are looking to build trust, credibility, and amongst existing clients and prospective clients. You can use a blog to capture leads through pop-ups, widgets, etc. This is a long term strategy to capture a regular readership and therefore increasing loyal customers through lead generation.
Podcasts and Videos
Audio-Visual communication is likely to be more effective if it accompanies blogs and articles and other textual descriptions. Videos advertised on Facebook, Youtube, and Google Display Network to have a higher reach than videos not advertised. Some of the video ideas include client testimonials, achievements, tips related to real estate buying, reports related to the real estate sector, virtual tours of the property, etc.
Podcasts are another type of content marketing that can be used to engage with prospective buyers. All of the above-mentioned video ideas could be incorporated in podcasts.
Emails
If you have good enough customer database you can create persuasive and compelling email campaigns to generate quality leads. Writing an effective real estate email templates will help you close more deals. The only problem is that, for many agents, writing effective emails can be challenging. There are lot of email templates available online.
Listing on Google My Business
Google my business is killing billion dollar yellow pages industries because google my business listings always appear on top and fun fact about this is that google doesn’t charge for that, its absolutely free!.
So, rather than registering on yellow pages websites, it is strongly recommended to register your business on Google my business listing first and you should earn the rating and reviews from your customers/clients because that is going to play a very important role and SERPs ranking.
To Know more about this, you can read our detailed article Real Estate Lead Generation By Listing on Google My Business
Chatbots
These are coming to spotlights in recent years which is used by website developers and marketers to create a highly responsive and interactive way to deal with potential customers. Many businesses are using chatbots as a part of their customer support system.
Contact AAJneeti Advertising for your Real estate lead generation
Real estate lead generation can be complex tasks especially for new real estate agents and considering the competitive nature of the sector, it smart to invest and outsource these activities to professionals.
Aajneeti is one of the Top 10 Digital Marketing Agencies in Delhi/NCR. Aajneeti is also a Google Partner. It means that we are fully qualified to create, manage, measure, and optimize advanced online advertising campaigns.
We work with your sales team to understand what kind of customers they are targeting and use our online experience to find them sales-ready hot leads. Our experts have a deep understanding of customers’ buying behavior and generate customized ways to find that are already looking to buy products and services similar to you.
Lead Generation specialists at Aajneeti are experts at email and social media prospecting. They qualify and process marketing leads for the sales team, and generate summarized reports of their key findings.
Our innate flexibility, sector knowledge and professional expertise will give you an edge over your competitors. We create tailored and successful campaigns for the businesses of all sizes.
We understand the difficulty SMEs face in generating leads. Our technical and skilled lead generation application uses intelligent processes to increase the number of leads by 30% on average. What makes us better than other digital marketers in the Delhi/NCR region is the high quality of our leads. The leads we provide you have a high rate of conversion.
Contact Ajneeti for real estate lead generation, call +91 945-181-6478 or email [email protected]
Conclusion
Generating leads for real estate can be a tough task as digital marketing demands constant engagement and monitoring of your online marketing campaign. But as they say, time is an expensive commodity so if you are planning to create a digital marketing campaign it makes economic sense to delegate these tasks to a marketing agency. It’s important to have a competitive edge and explore the full potential of generating leads for real estate online.
