Real estate is changing every day.
From new consumer expectations and changes in technology to an ultra-competitive marketplace, it’s hard to keep up and know where to focus your time, money, and energy.
But here’s the thing. You know real estate.
That means you also know that tried-and-true tactics like generating leads, managing
transactions, and nurturing relationships will help you win clients in both the short- and long-term.
So, competing is simpler than you think.
It’s all about bringing these time-honored tactics into the digital age.
This blog post will look at 9 modern techniques and tools you can use today to help you impress more clients and win more listings than ever before. So you can not only compete—but become the master of your market
1. Master Your Market by Building Trust
One the most powerful tools at your disposal is something that consumers don’t have access to—MLS data.
Tapping into this data helps you better understand what’s happened in your market in the past year and puts you in a position to make educated guesses about what’s to come. Whether you choose to monitor a few farming areas or many all at once, it’s imperative that you’re able to answer any and all questions from potential sellers.
Some of the common questions include:
- Is now a good time to sell?
- How long do you think my home will sit on the market?
- What do you think is a good list price?
Answering these questions confidently goes a long way to earning your clients trust and business—whether that’s now or in the future.
2. Generate Quality Leads
Have you ever heard anyone talk about KNOWING YOUR MAGIC NUMBER?
Let’s say you want to make $100,000 in commission this year. To get there, you’ll need to know the number of listings you’ll need to hold, the number of listing appointments you’ll need to go on, and the leads you’ll need to generate.
Your magic number is the number of leads you need to generate in order to reach your goal. That’s why having an arsenal of lead gen tactics at your disposal is so important. While there are many places you can get leads, you want to get the biggest bang for your buck—and that doesn’t include the window of your local bank lobby. Here are four of the most consistent, highest impact channels to a steady stream of leads flowing throughout the year.
SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISING FOR REAL ESTATE
With more than 4 billion people on some sort of social media platform, this channel remains one of your best resources to connect with potential customers in your market—but you may not know where to start. Boost by HomeSpotter (available through LionDesk!) gives you an easy way to create, publish, and manage social media ads across Facebook, Instagram, Google, CNN, and the Weather Channel. Choose to run a promotional ad or even retarget people who have visited your website or clicked one of your ads in the past. Open house ads created with Boost on average receive more than 150 clicks per campaign, and a click-through-rate (CTR) of 12% (on average Facebook ads receive a 0.90% CTR).
GEOGRAPHIC FARMING
One of the most effective lead gen tactics is to focus heavily on a specific geographic farm. When you make yourself well known in a specific city or zip code, leads come to you. Make sure to market yourself with both print and digital marketing. With Adwerx or Boost, you can create digital ads in minutes and target a specific zip code or region where they will display. Your ad will seek out potential buyers or sellers as they search the internet on top sites like Facebook and nytimes.com.
OPEN HOUSES
Open houses are a great lead source—and not just for the property you’re showing. Even if you just get neighborhood lookie-loos at the very top of the funnel, open houses give you an opportunity to get your name out there for the future. Instead of having people sign-in on a sheet of paper (and try to decipher their handwriting later), Spacio uses a digital sign-in process that will help you capture leads, send them a follow-up email, and then push them to your CRM so you can nurture them and convert them into clients.
LANDING PAGES
For the most part, expecting to generate a direct lead from a single ad is not going to work. With so many companies, brands, and competitors also advertising online, consumers are extremely wary of dishing out their email address—unless you give them a good reason to. To generate quality leads, you want to offer prospects something of value—a lead magnet—to earn their email address. Hyper-targeted landing pages give you the chance to offer them something in return for their contact information. With solutions like Cloud Attract and LionDesk Landing Pages, you can create custom landing pages in minutes that place your brand front and center. Cloud Attract landing pages entice consumers with a home value range, CMA, or listing alerts. LionDesk Landing Pages allow you to choose from numerous page types with different campaign goals like a buyer/seller guide or for buyers to book an appointment. Choose to post your landing pages on social media or use them in advertising to target a large net of potential buyers or sellers.
3. Nurture Your Contacts
Just because you’ve got a lead, that doesn’t mean they’ll buy/sell with you when the time comes.
HOW DO YOU CONVERT LEADS INTO CLIENTS?
Enlist a customer relationship management (CRM) tool ASAP. Whether you’re just starting out in real estate or are a seasoned pro, one of the best ways to ensure that you have a constant source of business is by nurturing your leads. Talk to them, engage with them, and answer their questions. Be a constant source of all things real estate for them—on demand.
CRMs Are a Game Changer for Real Estate
Sure, you can keep a spreadsheet of contacts and manually email or call them every so often. But when you’ve got dozens and dozens of names to contact, is this really the most efficient use of your time? Choosing a CRM is a game changer for your business. Leading CRMs like LionDesk make it easy for you to organize all your contacts in one place, create drip email campaigns to nurture your clients, use an auto-dialer to help you book appointments, and even keep track of all your text conversations in one place. Let the CRM keep track of contacts for you, so you can focus on what you’re best at: working with buyers and sellers.
Try LionDesk free for 30 days.
Still not sold? See why every successful Real Estate Agent needs a CRM here.
4. Own the Listing Presentation
Bringing an MLS printout—with its small photos and limited property details—is like bringing a knife to a gunfight.
While these are free to use, they’re also what every other agent in your market is using. So rather than standing out in this pivotal moment, you blend in. Bringing a Comparative Market Analysis (CMA) from Cloud CMA, on the other hand, gives you the best opportunity to impress your clients and win the listing. In less than two minutes, you can create a custom CMA report with the all the information you need to prove you are the only agent for the job, including:
- Comps with large photos and property details
- Interactive graphs that showcase recent market activity
- Content pages that will help you address concerns about the selling process
- AND MORE!
In addition to your printed Cloud CMA report, you can also interactively present with Cloud CMA Live—whether in person or at a distance via Zoom. Easily update comps on the fly, showcase interactive market data, and include rich media content in your reports so you can wow your clients with your digital prowess and mastery of the market—and ultimately win the listing!
5. Stay on top of Market Activity
Whether you‘re working with buyers or want to help your sellers stay on top of market activity, setting your clients up with listing alerts is key.
Your clients have likely already signed up for listing alerts on their own on a site like Zillow or Realtor.com, but there’s one problem with that—they aren’t branded to you! Cloud Streams listing alerts pull information directly from your MLS, are branded to you, and still give your clients the modern experience they would receive with portal listing alerts. If you’re working with motivated buyers, you also have the option to set them up to receive listing alerts via text—ensuring they truly hear about new listings the moment they hit the MLS.
6. Manage Your Transactions in One Place
Whether you’re in a competitive market or not, being able to move through the entire transaction process quickly so you can spend more time with your clients is key.
Rather than working in disconnected systems, solutions like Lone Wolf Transactions help you manage the entire transaction from the moment the listing hits the MLS to close and beyond. Plus, with one system you can eliminate errors when having to enter duplicate data.
Your job is to connect with and work with your clients so you can win more business—not sit in front of the computer all day. Let Lone Wolf Transactions give you some of your quality time back!
Some of the benefits of using Lone Wolf Transactions are:
- Access to the latest and most compliant forms, direct connection to your MLS, built-in eSignature, and cloud storage
- Productivity tools, like auto-filling forms, to help you save time and stay organized
- Connection to your broker’s back office so they can approve transactions
- Order, manage, and process your title orders digitally in one click
- Free access to Marketplace—a library of tools to further enhance your and your client’s experience
7. Sign Deals the Easy Way
Deals require a lot of signing, why not make it easy? We recommend Real Estate’s leading e-signature solution: Authentisign.
It’s safe, simple, and secure. Authentisign helps you sign deals anywhere, anytime. Check it out!
8. Boost your Referral Business
In most cases, you’d probably prefer to get referral business than having to spend time finding leads and nurturing them. But in order to do so, you have to go beyond the dotted line and provide your clients with such an experience, that they jump at the chance to refer you to their friends and family. When you’re busy navigating multiple clients at once, this can sound daunting—but it doesn’t have to be!
3 EASY WAYS TO PROVIDE AN EXPERIENCE THAT LASTS A LIFETIME:
1 ORDER MOVERS AND SET UP INTERNET/TV: With Updater, you can help your clients compare and order movers, internet, TV and more—all in one solution.
2 COMPARE AND ORDER HOME INSURANCE: Young Alfred helps your clients easily compare home insurance options so it’s ready the day they move in.
3 MAKE DISCLOSURES A BREEZE: Sellers Shield helps make sure all disclosures are tracked in one place, limit seller mistakes, reduce agent liability, and save a ton of time.
Updater, Young Alfred, and Sellers Shield are all tools in Marketplace, so it’s easier to provide a stellar experience for your clients (and win referral business in the future).
DID YOU KNOW?
Access to Marketplace is provided for free in Lone Wolf Transactions, the member benefit provided throughout the U.S. With Marketplace, real estate’s most used tools, services, and solutions are at your fingertips—everything from virtual tours to digital earnest deposits.
9. Stay Top of Mind with Past Clients
The deal is done, and you did everything you could. And yet, when it comes time for your client to sell again in a few years, you may no longer be top of mind. In other words, someone else got to them first! Homebeat, an add-on to your digital reports solution, Cloud CMA, helps you automatically send past clients live updates on their home on a frequency of your choosing—monthly all the way up to yearly. By sending live CMAs that place your contact information front and center, you can ensure that when your past clients are ready to sell again, they’ll know who to call.
And of course LionDesk is made for nurture! Send out emails and texts at a frequency of your choosing to stay top of mind. Don’t forget about segmentation! Here are some of our top nurture strategies to help you stay top of mind with past clients.
We’re Here For You!
Whether you’re new to the game or an industry vet, LionDesk and LoneWolf are here to help! With this suite of tools in your toolkit, you can’t go wrong.
Not yet a LionDesk User? Try free for 14 days! No credit cards or obligations required.
