Say you want to grow mangoes. Getting as many healthy mangoes as possible is your goal.
First, you get the mango seeds (not all mango seeds have the capacity to grow into trees).
Then you plant them in your garden.
Then you water and nurture them.
After a progressive journey, the mango trees yield mangoes.
Say you want to grow your business. Getting as many potential clients as possible is your goal.
First, you get ‘people’ to see your brand (not everyone who browses your website or social media is qualified to become a customer).
Then you make them into ‘leads’ by communicating with them.
Then you nurture your relationship with the leads to make them into ‘prospects’.
After a continuous journey, they buy your service and become your ‘clients’.
This is a simple introduction to understanding the lead generation funnel.
In this blog, you will understand what traffic/ leads/ prospects/ customers/ clients are, what the lead generation funnel is, and what some real estate lead generation strategies are.
What is a Real Estate Sales Funnel?
There is a person who has never heard about you as a realtor or about your real estate agency.
How do you convert that person into your client?
The breaking down of this process is called the real estate sales funnel.
Why Real Estate Sales Funnel?
They help you understand which part of your marketing is not working.
Say people visit your website and social media pages. But these inbound leads who have shown interest in your service just aren’t converting into clients. You are stuck.
Basically, without a good real estate sales funnel, you won’t be able to convert the traffic on your website into leads for your realtor business.
Understanding the Lead Generation Funnel
Let us learn about lead generation funnels by understanding some important terminology.
Who are called ‘Leads’?
A ‘lead’ is someone who is interested in doing business with you (they want to hear about your real estate business and properties).
‘Lead’ is a label given to a person after he has started communicating with you (real estate company). They could fill out a form, connect through email, call you directly, or meet you in person.
Once they have reached out to you, showing their interest, they are called leads.
What is ‘Lead Generation’?
The first and most basic step in marketing is to develop strategies to collect the personal contact information of people who visit your website/ social media.
This marketing strategy is called lead generation.
What is ‘Lead Nurturing’?
You may develop smart strategies to attract people to your website and online presence. You may collect their contact information.
But what you do with that information may make or break your real estate business!
After generating leads, you must nurture your relationship with the potential client so that he trusts you as an individual. This is called lead nurturing.
What is ‘Lead Conversion’?
A ‘lead’ can be your ‘future client’.
But as mentioned in the beginning, to reach that goal, you need to travel with the lead in his real estate journey. This process is called lead conversion.
When a lead is converted into a client, it is a success story.
Steps in the Lead Generation Funnel for Real Estate Agents
Now that you clearly know about leads and their journey in the real estate business, it is a cakewalk for you to understand the lead generation real estate sales funnel!
01
The top of the funnel is the first step in lead generation.
- Awareness about your real estate business and building your brand is the way to reach out and attract potential customers. People show interest by visiting your property listings.
- ‘Traffic’ are the ‘people’ who visit your website, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube
- Attract as much traffic as you can. Build a quality online presence with a huge following.
02
The middle of the lead generation funnel is the second step.
- You capture the ‘leads’ from traffic. The goal is to get people’s information and find out what they need.
- Sometimes the leads generated are not qualified to become potential customers.
Convert qualified leads into ‘prospects’ to move through the sales process. It is an important journey because this is an opportunity to build trust and connection.
They are included in the sales force / other CRM program when they engage with you.
03
The bottom of the funnel is your success story of closing the deal.
- After building a trusting relationship with a prospect, they become your potential ‘customers’.
You can either sell or upsell to your customers.
This means that you can sell them a real estate property they were initially interested in (say 2 BHK) or persuade them to buy a higher-end property (say east-facing flat with luxurious interiors).
- ‘Clients’ are the customers who made a decision and purchased from you. Clients close the deal with you.
An important fact here is that lead retention is easier than lead generation. This means that ‘reselling’ to a past client is easier than prompting a new lead to become a client.
The lead generation funnel depicts the journey of a potential customer from being aware of your service to purchasing your service.
It is on you, how effectively you use the lead generation funnel to develop strategies and direct traffic from your ads/ website/ social media into becoming your clients!
To wrap it up,
There are thousands of people who view your website and social media (say 2000 people).
They reach out to you and become your leads (maybe 500).
Only some of them become prospects (around 300).
Even fewer among them become your customers who decide to work with you and actively engage with you (say 30).
Finally, you close a deal with them and they become your clients (around 5).
You are not going to secure all those leads.
In real estate especially, the conversion rates from leads to clients aren’t going to be high.
And they need not be! Quality deals will fetch you good money.
Best Lead Generation Strategies for the Real Estate Sales Funnel
You understand that lead generation is basically coming up with strategies that will help you get the contact information of buyers. Lead generation occurs after you attract potential customers and convince them to enter the real estate sales funnel.
A potential lead can come from anywhere.
You must be well equipped to attract traffic and generate leads and here are some real estate lead generation strategies to help you get leads in the real estate business.
20 strategies to generate more real estate leads
01) Establish a good online presence with Social Media.
Being active across all social media platforms is an excellent way to update news and stay connected with buyers.
Collecting as many leads as possible is essential for a real estate agent.
Focus your marketing energy on building a huge online following.
02) Develop your brand.
It is always good to have a website of your own because people want to verify facts and read more about your experience. More people also visit your digital platforms.
03) Run ads on social media (especially Facebook and Google).
They are affordable and the progress of the ads can be easily analysed.
It fetches quick results and you can analyse how your ads are doing!
04) You can work on SEO for your website and social media content but they take longer to show results. They are nevertheless effective. Content marketing increases brand awareness.
05) Do real estate drip campaigns.
They are a series of emails that are appropriate for different situations in various stages of the customer’s journey.
Email newsletters are a good way to send out new information about hot deals and properties.
06) Work for both inbound and outbound leads.
Inbound leads come to your website. You just need to have quality content that they would want to share.
Outbound leads are the customers you reach out to. You need to keep announcing new deals and ensure customised communication in order to convert them into potential buyers.
07) Direct them with free lead magnets on your websites.
Lead magnets are offers that you provide to get customers’ information in exchange for something that you provide them with something they need. It could be property listings or access to exclusive content or offering free consultation.
08) Never forget traditional advertising.
Billboards and newspapers continue to be a good way of advertising what you sell.
09) Develop strategic partnerships with related businesses.
This will increase your reach and credibility.
10) Attend local community events and form local connections.
When you get in contact with them directly, you get to see your competitors and be able to establish meaningful connections with both customers and professionals.
11) Respond quickly or risk losing a buyer.
Once new leads reach out to you, immediately engage with them. Don’t take long to revert back to their needs.
12) Create an urge in people. Here are some ways to push the traffic to give you their information :
- Engage the visitor with Live Chat. You can easily connect with your customers. It increases the conversion of browsing visitors into viewings.
- You can always automate the lead generation process by using Chatbots to do your work. Chatbots need no holiday or rest and are available around the clock.
- Use Pop-ups to remind the visitor to register with you.
13) Use multi-step forms for real estate lead generation.
If you want to filter out serious customers who are qualified, it is better to get their information through a multi-step form because a single lengthy form may scare them away.
14) Avoid unqualified leads by sending out the right message in your advertisements.
Be specific about what you offer so that you can cut down on efforts in filtering out unqualified leads.
15) Import existing reviews and testimonials onto your website.
When people see real-time video clippings of past clients, they trust you.
16) Video marketing – Search engines prefer to show websites that have videos in them.
Read our blog to learn how to harness the power of video marketing in real estate.
17) Call To Action – if you don’t ask people to take action, they won’t.
It should occur to you naturally that you provide a CTA after a blog, video, write-up, etc.
18) Remind your social circle, kith, and kin that you are a real estate agent.
Word of mouth can go a long way in getting you prospects.
19) Stay in touch with prospects, clients, and past clients.
Remind them who you are and keep sending them insightful emails. Build relationships. Ensure you follow up with your clients and prospects.
20) Measure what is working and what is not. And improve and re-strategise.
Measure conversion rates after driving traffic. Utilise CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools to understand the customer response better and to automate connection with them.
You just need to understand your audience and recognise their needs. Equip your digital platforms with easy-to-navigate lead magnets. Once they are in the real estate funnel, nurture your leads.
Lead generation is important.
But it is even more important that you nurture those leads.
This is where the structured lead generation funnel is helpful for real estate agents to grow their business in the competitive real estate sector.
To summarise lead generation sales funnel – attract traffic, nurture leads into prospects, upsell to the customers, and close the deal with clients.
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