Consistently generating leads is one of the most important parts of building a successful real estate business.
Because if you don’t generate leads every single month, then you can’t grow a sustainable business.
You can’t create predictable income without predictable lead-flow.
And while direct mail, business cards, and referrals all hold a critical place among your lead-gen marketing strategy, you shouldn’t neglect your website.
Especially if your website is set up to convert traffic into leads with a simple opt-in form like the one from Ryan Dossey’s company website.
The question is, how do you drive high-quality traffic consistently to your website, the kind of traffic that will turn into leads and deals?
Here are three proven strategies.
1. Paid Advertisements
Paid advertisements — particularly Google Ads and Facebook Ads — are a great way to generate leads for your business.
The best part about these platforms is the specificity with which they allow you to target people.
If, for example, you want to target out-of-state homeowners who are stressed about their situation, then your detailed targeting might look something like this.
Whoever it is that you want to target — people going through divorce, probate, foreclosure, etc — you can find them on Google and Facebook.
But remember, when you turn the ads off, the leads will stop flowing.
We recommend creating several different audiences to see what performs the best.
As for creating the actual ad, you might consider peaking at what your competitors are doing. Click “Page Transparency” on their Facebook page and you can see any ads that your competitors are running.
Then create your own version and drive traffic to your website!
2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
What we love about SEO is the consistency with which it can generate leads for your business, day-in and day-out.
Paid advertisements, direct mail, driving for dollars... it’s all great, but the moment that you stop doing it is the same moment that you stop generating leads.
But with SEO, once your website is on page one for a high-value keyword phrase (like “sell my house fast for cash in [MARKET CITY,”), you’ll be ranking for that phrase for quite some time, generating traffic, leads, and even deals.
It can take 60-90 days to start seeing results from the content you create (depending on how competitive your market is), but you’ll be glad you put in the work once you jump to page one.
Start by creating a single page to try and rank for your #1 keyword phrase (this could be your homepage) and then branch out from there with different keyword-page combos.
For each, put your target keyword phrase in the title, meta description, and URL of the page you’re trying to rank.
3. Social Media Marketing
Social media is another great place to build your brand and direct traffic to your website.
The more people in your market see you posting about all-things real estate, the more that they’re going to look to you as an expert… and the more likely it is that they’ll come to you if they ever want to sell their home.
Here’s an example.
And another…
Simply sharing recent deals you’ve done with a quick phone-call CTA is a great way to generate traffic and leads from your social media page.
Unfortunately, it can be hard to get much organic attention with a business page unless you’re willing to pay for it. Social media platforms like Facebook are making it increasingly difficult for entrepreneurs to reach their audience without pulling out their wallet.
So when you want to drive traffic to your website and build your following on social media, you have a few options.
One thing that many people are doing is creating a “personal profile” and a “professional profile.” The first is for interacting with friends and family while the second is for promoting your brand and business.
This will significantly increase your organic reach.
But if you’d rather just use your bus. iness page, then we recommend pressing that “Boost” button every now and again so that people actually see what you’re posting… even $5 can make a difference.