Often real estate business owners ask me how they can generate more leads. The other question they ask is closely related: What is the hottest new way to generate leads? While I do stay current with marketing trends and current market opportunities, most of the tried-and-true older methods are just as effective as the newer ones.
To generate large quantities of leads in my preferred markets today, I would separate my efforts into inbound marketing and outbound marketing. Inbound marketing involves placing information out there for your customer to find you. That information might include content on blogs, posts on Facebook, press releases, article submissions, etc. Outbound marketing is more traditional, a style described as “interruption-based” because it involves interrupting someone’s activity with your message. Outbound marketing includes direct mail, radio, bandit signs, etc.
Bandit Sign: Small advertising signs that can be placed on a street-facing lawn or elsewhere on a property to generate leads for buyers or sellers. Also known as yard signs, road signs, and placards.
PRO TIP: Never let your marketing get stale. Never repeat the same method if it does not yield the exact result that you want. Marketing is more of an art than a science. As much as we believe we know how to generate leads, a good marketer is constantly tweaking and adjusting the plan.
Both inbound and outbound marketing can yield good results for real estate investors if they are deployed correctly. Evaluate your budget and strategy to determine which one is best for you or if you would be better served with a combination.
Once you decide how you will generate leads and identify a strategy that brings leads in consistently, it is time to start qualifying them. I see more investors making mistakes in this stage of the process than during lead-generation. Fortunately, you don’t have to do it all alone. Consider working with a good virtual assistant (VA) company to build processes designed to make sure good leads end up in front of you and poor leads are pushed to a deeper cultivation funnel such as your website or a series of blogs.
Secondly, sketch out the path you want your lead to take once they have entered your funnel. Answer these questions:
• How much information should they have before they speak with you?
• How committed do you want them to be before they take your time?
There are a million ways to process leads, but it begins with you taking the time to lay things out. If you can visualize your process, anyone can build it for you.
In summary, don’t worry so much about the hottest new way to generate leads. Stick with consistent methods and tweak them for performance. Focus on what to do when you generate the lead. Generating 10 good leads and processing them correctly will serve you far better than generating 100 leads that take up all of your time and never lead to a sale.
Resident Expert Program: Learn more about Eddie’s best marketing practices in his Think Realty courses here.
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