According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), 40% of all homes sold in a year typically close between March and July, and the busiest home-selling months are May, June, July, and August. That means most brokerages’ busiest months are about to start! April is an excellent time to make sure all your lead touchpoints are optimized so you can tap into your brokerage’s entire sphere of influence and keep the leads flowing!
How to optimize real estate lead touchpoints
There are so many different ways to make contact with potential homebuyers and sellers. Making sure each of these methods is working optimally together (and apart) is crucial if you want to make sure your brokerage is maximizing lead capture.
The most common sources of real estate leads
With Millennials comprising the biggest homebuying group today, digital touchpoints are more important than ever. However, the typical agent is between 55 and 60 and not exactly a digital native. The average home seller skews older, too, and seller leads are extremely valuable!
For brokers and agents, this means that digital touchpoints are just as important as traditional analog ones to capture a maximum number of leads and keep their funnels full.
Let’s look at some of the most common lead sources brokerages typically rely on and how to make them work better together.
Word of mouth
Word of mouth is still one of the most important sources of leads. Are you likelier to try a new restaurant in your neighborhood because you saw it on social media or because your best friend told you they loved it? Nine time out of ten, you’re trusting the recommendation. The same is true for real estate brokerages!
The best way to optimize word-of-mouth leads and get people to sing your praises is to make sure everyone your team interacts with has an amazing customer experience. So many factors go into a top-notch customer experience: responsiveness, accurate advice, service, and ultimately a successful close. Technology is an amazing asset to improve every aspect of the customer experience, and the right combination of front office tools can help. More on that below.
Pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns
Maybe one of the easiest ways to get leads is to buy them. Companies like Market Leader and Offrs let teams fill their funnels by purchasing monthly subscriptions to lead feeds. PPC campaigns are a very common method many brokerages use to supplement their organic lead efforts. Overreliance on PPC could handicap your brokerage in the long run, but adding it to the mix can help keep your streams diversified and flowing.
Yard signs and flyers
It may sound counterintuitive, but maybe the most traditional lead-gen method in real estate, the yard sign, is still a great way to drum up leads, especially those valuable seller leads!
Brokers can optimize their yard signs by integrating recent technological innovations, like scannable QR codes, and other curbside marketing techniques, like text and voice codes for automating listing information sharing over the phone, to make it easier for leads to respond and for agents to capture leads’ contact information (and interest).
Takeaway listing flyers are another analog and low-budget way to get your name out to both buyers and sellers. Agents can distribute them via flyer holders on yard signs or at open houses. The biggest drawback is that branding, formatting, and printing flyers takes time, so brokers can optimize this touchpoint by automating the first two tasks and giving leads multiple ways to get in touch, including the same QR codes and phone numbers as yard signs.
Does your digital marketing suite come with a
full promotional toolkit—complete with flyers,
QR codes, listing hotlines, live chat, and more?
Constellation1 Digital Marketing Suite does!
Digital touchpoints:
Now let’s look at your brokerage’s digital touchpoints. If your lead initially found you using one of the analog touchpoints above, you can be sure that the next thing they’ll do is Google you. The rest of your leads will find you online from the start, probably by typing, “Homes for sale in…” into their favorite search engine. This means your online presence and digital touchpoints need to be spot on to make sure leads not just find you, but fall in love with you!
Brokerage and agent websites
Your website is your digital storefront. You want to make sure it lets you put your best foot forward and showcases your team, your listings, and your expertise in your market.
The first key to any website is making sure people can find it. You could have the best, most stunning website in the world, but if it never shows up in search results, you won’t see the leads you’re expecting.
This is where real estate search engine optimization (SEO) comes in. There’s a lot you can do yourself to boost your site’s SEO, but the best thing is work with a website partner who really knows how to help your website rank higher, so you can focus on why you have a website in the first place: attracting and converting leads.
Looking for help getting your website to rank higher?
Once you’ve gotten traffic to your website, you’ll also want to make sure it has plenty of ways to actually capture leads: savable property searches, free home valuations, recommended properties, a real estate blog, buyer and seller guides or other downloadable assets, contact forms, and more. Each of these resources speaks to a different kind of lead, so the more you have, the likelier it is that this particular touchpoint will result in more leads.
Social media
Social media is an incredible source of organic leads, and a great way to showcase your brokerage with minimal investment (after all, social media accounts are free!).
But consistent posting is essential for success, and social media is time-consuming for already busy agents. Plus, the typical agent might not feel comfortable putting themselves out there on social media or reposting content from other sources.
Social media publishing is an easy way to boost the effectiveness of your social media strategy without spending a fortune. Giving your team access to a digital marketing suite can also help them automate their posting on all their favorite platforms, including posts for their active listings, scroll-stopping homebuying tips, industry news, and more. That means every agent can have a consistent social media presence that serves as a foundation for their own unique content. Plus, with the right tool, each post can also be branded to your brokerage, letting your brand and expertise shine even more.
Learn how top performers at Carpenter Realtors
close up to 2 deals per week with help from the
Constellation1 Digital Marketing Suite
Getting all your lead touchpoints to work together
A well-balanced mix of lead sources means the top of your funnel will always be full. But no matter how your leads come in, it’s important to action them quickly and efficiently and make sure none of them fall through the cracks. For that, you need an effective CRM that allows you to:
Respond to leads quickly
Most leads will go with the first agent who responds, so ensuring your team can follow up fast is crucial for making sure you get the lead instead of someone else. Responding within the first minute increases conversion exponentially!
Route leads to the right agents
Responding quickly is important, but so is pairing each lead with an agent who has complementary skills and expertise. This is where lead routing can be very beneficial, because if the lead doesn’t feel like their agent is the right fit, they’ll take their business elsewhere.
Customize your nurtures
So, you’ve captured the lead and paired them with the best agent. Great! But online real estate leads can incubate for anywhere from 6 months to 2 years! You also need robust nurture features to keep your leads warm and your brokerage top of mind.
Is your front office up to the task?
Leads are the lifeblood of every brokerage, but too many brokerages haven’t optimized their touchpoints or built a front office that actually helps them attract, capture, nurture, and delight their leads.
Constellation1’s suite of front office solutions will help you boost your organic lead generation, capture more leads, keep you top of mind, and help create customers for life. Request a callback from our front office experts to learn more.
