Top Ways to Find Clients in Real Estate

When we ask our real estate clients about their goals for 2020, most agree that they reflect the same concerns:

• greater brand awareness,
• improve online positioning,
• increase the deposits of owners,
• increase the acquisition of buyers,
• define the online marketing strategy…

However, there is a common goal for all: ‘get more contacts for my real estate’.

Real estate companies know the importance of attracting leads; they are aware of the direct relationship between contact acquisition and conversion to end customers.

But where do we get those contacts that we will later convert into customers?

The current paradigm, with the large real estate portals as leaders in the sector, makes real estate agencies believe that the only way to get contacts is through these online monsters.

However, many real estate recruitment techniques can provide us with a valuable number of contacts, contacts that will become clients if we carry out appropriate maturation strategies.

Gaining clients in the real estate market is often called real estate prospecting. It is often the first step in developing the all too important client list that real estate agents depend on for sales. There are several ways that you can find potential clients.

Employ Mass Mailers

Mass mailers are flyers, ads, and postcards that show people who you are and what you do. When you send a physical copy to your target market, there is a good chance you will find someone interested in your services.

Visit Neighborhoods

If you plan on representing buyers and sellers in an area, you should be very familiar with the neighborhoods. You can attend block parties, public gatherings, and other events in the area. Introduce yourself and then gradually slip in the fact that you are a real estate agent or broker. You can also do the footwork and go door to door if need be.

Contact Sellers

Another way to gain clients is to contact those trying to sell their homes by themselves or are close to foreclosure. People in these situations often welcome an agent’s help and enjoy the broader advertising that you can offer them.

Sponsor a Charity or Event

If you have the means to do so, sponsor a charity or an event in return for advertising. Banners with children or wildlife charities are seen by large groups of people. Some of these people may be interested in selling or buying their home. You can also get free web advertising this way. Many charity groups will also put your banner on their website under their sponsor’s page.

Have a Website

These days people shop for real estate on the web far more often than they used to. A good website can draw business to you.

There are many other ways to gain clients as a real estate agent or broker. Although sometimes you might have to get creative, the clients are out there.

SEO Content

Think about your different customer profiles (Buyer Personas), reflect on their problems, needs, goals, objectives … and create content on your website or on your real estate blog in which you answer these questions.

Focus on your Buyer Persona, the different stages that make up your Buyer Journey  (recognition of need, consideration of solutions, decision), and the most appropriate Keywords for each person.

In this way, you will create content capable of attracting those contacts who can later become customers using conversion campaigns with CTAs, Landing Pages, Thank you Pages, Forms, etc.

The Inbound Marketing is appropriate for the real estate sector and to segment and automates each of our conversion campaigns to attract, convert, and close our clients.

Videos

But not all the content you generate has to be written. There are several formats for creating and disseminating content, such as articles, infographics, ebooks, or videos. More and more people prefer video content to solve their doubts on the Internet. Video is a very visual medium, so explaining certain processes can be easier.

Also, the great virtualization capacity of the video increases its chances of attracting customers.

Testimonials

Imagine that you have already managed to attract those people who are considering buying a home to your real estate website.

They have been learning about:

The documentation that you have to present to buy a property in your area.

The price for which the apartments in the neighborhood are interested.

Public services are available in your area.

However, they are still not entirely convinced that your real estate is the best choice.

A page of testimonials from other clients that explains their shopping experience, maybe that little push they lack to verify that your real estate is the best option for them.

External Links

Relationships are one of the keys to getting contacts in any business, and current new technologies allow us to move these relationships online.

In this way, create relationships with other blogs and social profiles related to your sector. This technique is called “link building”.

Follow them, subscribe to their channels to receive the latest updates, and build relationships with them by sharing their content, writing comments …

When they think that you are also an interesting profile or blog, they will do the same with you: they will share your content, link their blogs with yours to add value, they will quote you …

All these external links will provide your website with a good source of qualified contacts.

Real Estate Portals

We have not said that real estate portals are a bad option for real estate acquisition, simply that it is not the only one. Real estate portals can provide you with a large number of contacts that in the short term, can be very interesting.

However, reflect on a couple of facts:

• The acquisition of contacts will end once you stop paying for the contracted services, so you will also have to think about a profitable long-term strategy.
• The contacts made will not be exclusive. Contacts through this medium will be almost the same as those of your competition.

Databases

There is the possibility of buying databases with contacts of people interested in buying or selling their home in a certain area that you can add to a ‘small price’.

Another strategy to get a large number of short-term contacts, but which leaves both the origin and the quality of them unspecified. Establish the appropriate marketing metrics to determine if the databases you are acquiring are of sufficient quality to be profitable for you.

In any case, we recommend using your contact database and maturing it, through marketing automation and lead nurturing.

Advertising

And we cannot talk about short-term real estate acquisition techniques without talking about paid advertising in search engines and social networks: Google Adwords, Facebook Ads …

One of the advantages of this type of advertising is its great segmentation capacity, and you can make your real estate advertisement appear only to people of a certain age, who live in a specific area, with specific interests and a particular type of desired home.

The strong segmentation capacity provided by this technique helps to make every penny invested profitably, however, this capture strategy ends once you stop paying for your ads, so in the long term, it may not be the best investment either.

Social Networks

Facebook seems to have become the ID of people, and it is rare to meet a person who today does not have their profile on this social network.

Furthermore, according to a study conducted by the  Bureau of Labor Statistics, people spend an average of 50 minutes a day on this social network.

The time that far exceeds the time invested in reading (19 mins) and that almost reaches the daily time we spend eating (1h and 7 mins).

Social networks are a great source of contact acquisition since quite simply, a large part of the people we try to reach use social networks daily as an information method.

Means of Contact

The telephone is no longer the only way in which potential home buyers and sellers can contact us. Now they also contact us through email, online chats …

Place your points of contact visible on your website: phone, WhatsApp, email …

The chatbots like Facebook or Whatsapp chat allow users to contact you in real-time without picking up the phone.

It is also a good option to introduce contact forms on some of your pages most likely to generate doubts, such as your services page.

Your Clients

No matter how much the real estate industry has been digitized, word of mouth will always be one of the most effective ways to attract buyers and owners.

If your clients have a good experience with your services, it is more than likely that they will recommend you when a relative or friend of theirs is interested in buying or selling a property.

Word of mouth can also move online.

Ask your clients to write your recommendations on social networks, to comment on your post, or to allow you to write an article on your testimonial page explaining how your agency has helped them carry out their transactions.

The recommendations of satisfied customers will be a good motivation for your potential customers to be interested and end up providing you with their contact information.
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