Best Practices in Finding New Real Estate Leads

One of the essential things that you must do as a real estate agent in order to find new leads is to keep in constant communication with everyone in your network. Leads very rarely just fall into our lap–very few people do a Google search for “real estate agent” and pick a name. No, they ask their friends about real estate agents they’ve had good experiences with. They talk to each other about the good and the bad. They share horror stories. They share great deals. You want to be a part of these conversations. At the very least, you want to be the person that they’re talking about when they’re sharing their victories.

But we fall out of contact with our clients. It’s natural. We help them close a house and they don’t look for a new house, so they don’t need us anymore. Sure, they’ll talk to their friends about you, but that’s only if you’re on the tip of their tongue. So how do we stay that way?

The answer is regular communication through newsletters.

“But, wait,” you say. “Won’t they just unsubscribe from my newsletter once they’ve found a house?”

The answer is two fold: first, you want to grow your newsletter subscription list to include people who are still looking–and we’ll talk about how to do that. But second, we want you to have enough quality information that even customers who are just settling into their dream home are still enticed to read what you’re sending–and STAY IN CONTACT!

Leverage Positive Customer Feedback

Everyone wants to hear about big wins and hear happy stories of people who have found the home they’ve always wished for. When you close a deal, don’t leave it just with handing off the keys and signing the final paperwork and walking away. Come back to visit your happy family after they’ve moved in. Hear what they have to say about the great place they’re settling into and take notes! Ask them if you can use their story. Take pictures of them smiling out on the front porch, and take pictures of all their furniture moved into the house that has been sitting empty for so long.

In marketing, we call these case studies, but in real estate newsletters you can just call them wins! Capture the win, while the glow of a new home hasn’t worn off and while they’re still absolutely in love with their new life in their new place.

And then send that out to your newsletter list–both homeowners and home seekers. They’ll get two messages: they’ll get the message that great people are having great things happen to them (which cheers up anyone) but more importantly it shows them that you’re an agent who makes people happy. And everyone wants to read about people who are happy.

Develop a Video that Shows You Making People Happy

When people think about newsletters, they often think of photocopied sheets of paper that are a little crooked and not very professional. Get out of that mindset! Newsletters are every bit as high tech as anything on the internet, and they’re delivered right to your email.

Including a video in a newsletter is easy and can set you apart as an agent who knows how to sell homes and make people happy. These videos can be about a lot of things, and no, you don’t need to shell out a few thousand dollars for a video company to make it for you. Create a vlog that records you on a typical day as you drive from appointment to appointment. Show your personality–people are going to be working closely with you, so they want to know what you’re like. Show your wins and successes, and don’t be afraid to show the struggles.

Think about it: how many TV shows are there about people trying to buy their dream home? And take a lesson from those shows–they make everyone (agent, buyer, seller, banker) into real people–and they also show the hard road that it is to get to the point of sale. 

Of course, you don’t have to produce your own reality show, but five or ten minute videos linked in your newsletter that show a family searching through listings, expressing their likes and dislikes, is really something that will set your newsletter apart from the rest.

Get Engaged in the Community

Getting involved in your local community is something that will never fail to pay off. Maybe your involvement is at the local food bank. When you’re there, take notes: find out how many people are getting food and how many you can help in a given day. Or become a sponsor of a fundraising race, like the American Cancer Society’s Walk for Life. That’s a relay event with teams, and why not invite your buyers and potential buyers to walk with you in the relay? If they don’t, you’re still getting your name in the community–and it gives you one more thing to include in your newsletter.

Other things you can do which will be ideal for your newsletter include starting a podcast: they’re relatively low-cost to entry and can be accessed by anyone anywhere–and you can put a link to it in the newsletter. You could also give presentations at local groups, like community colleges, professional organizations, or schools. It’s all fodder for the newsletter. 

Invite them to Get Involved

One easy way to get your newsletter recipients engaged in your newsletter is through polls. Remember that old website “Hot or Not”? Why not do the same thing, but with houses that are on the market? A picture of two front views, two backyards, two kitchens, two bathrooms–and then let them vote on which one is the house that they’d like to spend their best years in. Not only will they have fun looking at the pictures, they’ll be waiting eagerly for the next newsletter to see the results of the survey.

And you can grow your newsletter into a community. Ask questions and have them respond on your official agent’s Facebook page. Include pictures from your Instagram in the newsletter and make sure they know where to go to find more just like it. Doing little things like this will turn customers into fans and fans into buyers. 

Make Sure Your Website is Top-Notch

When you’re a real estate agent, buyers are basing everything they know about you on their first impressions. If your newsletter points them to your website, you need that website to be as clean and pristine as the new house they’re looking to buy. It needs to operate flawlessly. It needs pictures–LOTS of pictures–and make them the highest quality you can get them. Your website is your public face, and just like you wouldn’t leave the house without your makeup, or your hair combed, you want your website to be perfectly arranged.

It can duplicate a lot of the content we’ve talked about in the newsletter above, but it needs to have more, and it needs to be different. If a potential buyer signs up for your newsletter, gets interested enough to click through to your website, they’re going to want MORE, not more of the same. Make sure that you have more client success stories, more videos, more pictures, more polls, more of anything that makes you stand out to your audience. 

Ultimately, you are moving your customer down a funnel. It starts with getting their contact information, whether that be through a friend of a friend or a contact link on your website. Then you want to move them to your mailing list, and you want that to draw them in to contacting you in person–to that golden phone call where they say they’re interested in a new house and they want you to be the person who helps them get there.

From there, it’s up to you and your expertise to make the sale.

Boost your real estate business today with newsletters!