As a real estate agent, there are always new tech products that promise to be the next best thing, the thing that will transform your business. I have news for you, nothing that technology has done will ever replace your number one source of income to be your SOI and past clients. Technology can supplement your business and help you win new business. The biggest conversation that always seems to be about lead generation. Lead generation has been a hot topic since I started as an agent almost a decade and a half ago. Most of the focus for agents seemed to have is on buying leads, But as an agent that relies on constant online leads, there is a big difference between buying leads through platforms like Google and Facebook versus creating a consistent digital strategy to develop a consistent flow of organic leads. So you have to choose between spending money or investing time.

Buying Real Estate Leads

 

There are benefits and drawbacks to using lead gen companies or creating paid ads yourself. The first thing is that paid leads are working. They aren't that nice referral from a friend ready to use you and buy a home tomorrow, Most leads are work and take time to work their way down the funnel to be ready to buy. Another hard truth is you can be the best closer of online leads and the percentage is still going to be low, maybe 5% - 7% meaning you have to generate a lot of leads. Buying leads can be costly. Google PPC leads can cost $20, $30, or $40 per lead and not all all these leads are going to give you their proper or real information. With the proper platform, you could get those leads potentially down to $5 or $10. Now there are benefits to spending money on lead generation. It is instant gratification, you get leads faster and constantly rather than working on a longer-term SEO strategy. Generating leads through paid ads will allow you to close potential deals faster.

 

In today's real estate industry, it seems there are as many lead-gen companies as there are real estate companies. With Google Ads Express and facebook ads, and manager accounts any agent can generate leads themselves given they have the budget. So the focus should not be on generating the lead, when deciding to go down this path the first focus must be on understanding your market and creating a follow-up plan for future leads. A plan doesn't not end after the first phone call or text, You must look at long-term nurturing, 1 year or 2 years down the road. If you do not have a sold email drip campaign sending out content consistently, willing to call and text leads multiple times DO NOT DO PAID LEAD GENERATION! If you are willing to put in the time and effort to develop a long-term system then you can and will be successful. 

Organic Leads

 

In this context of organic leads, I'm going to focus on leads that reach out to you from your website. To rank on search engines like Google it takes consistent work over time and adding relevant content. You as an agent are the subject matter expert in your market, Not lead gen companies or the large 3rd party companies such as Zillow. The toughest thing about SEO work is it takes time to research content, develop content, and publish content. The definition of content would be SEO-rich home buyer search pages, blog content, and seller content. Organic leads are exponentially better than paid leads, But unlike paid leads it takes time to climb the search engine rankings and you do not get the instant gratification of leads from the start. By far the most powerful benefit of growing a strong organic digital website presence is without having to spend money you can create a consistent funnel of leads every month that are better quality and more often than not further down the buying funnel than purchased leads are. Even doing this type of lead generation you NEED to have a strong follow-up system to maximize the investment of your time. 

Hybrid plan for both

 

I do both buying leads and the SEO work for organic leads as they complement each other. I have invested a lot of time into website content and now constantly generate 50 - 100 leads per month organically. But since I have developed systems for lead follow-up and the paid platform I use is now generating paid leads for $2 - $3 per lead it makes it affordable and convenient to continue the consistent flow of paid leads into my funnel as well. This has allowed me more freedom in my business. Freeing up time not having to do other traditional prospecting such as cold calling, working FSBOs, doing open houses, etc. 

Conclusion

 

There is no wrong answer when it comes to online lead generation. The right answer is what is right for you. Do you have more capital than time, there is nothing wrong with buying leads. If you have more time than you have a marketing budget, spending the time to build a strong website digital presence is probably for you. Or if you like me and want consistency in lead generation implement both into your business. Lastly, if you are great at traditional marketing and your business and time are at capacity there is also nothing wrong with not making online lead generation a pillar of your business.

 


Posted by Kent Braaten on
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