Today's post will cover the most effective ways to get clients in real estate.
If you're a real estate agent who's struggling to get clients on either the buyer or the seller side, the strategies and methods discussed in this article will help you tremendously.
Alright, let's get to it.
Before you do anything else, you need to create a website that looks professional and is built to rank well in search engine results.
Most of the client acquisition strategies we'll discuss later on in this post will rely on you having a website to send potential clients to.
And if you're going to make a site to help with these strategies, you might as well make it as good as you possibly can.
The website creation process has many steps; most are beyond the scope of this article, so we're not going to cover them here.
I do want to cover one aspect highly relevant to real estate client acquisition, though: the design of your website.
Having a fast website is incredibly important.
Not only does it improve your ranking in the search results, but it also decreases the number of people who exit your site because it's loading too slowly.
Here are a few ways to make your real estate website load faster.
No matter which client acquisition strategies you use, getting a high rank in the organic search results can only be beneficial.
There are two primary levels on which you can improve your SEO: on the site level, and on the page level.
If you've got a marketing budget to work with, Google's advertising service is one of the best ways to bring in real estate clients.
To sign up for Google Ads, head on over to ads.google.com and sign in with your Google account.
Once that's done, you'll be faced with a rather complicated interface. If you want to learn how to bring in clients and money using this interface, I recommend reading Hubspot's Ultimate Guide to Google Ads. It'll give you an in-depth look into how to set up ad campaigns that generate clicks and turn prospects into clients.
Real estate is a location-centric industry. Most of your potential clients will already be living in a particular area. Use the Google Ads geo-targeting capabilities to zero in on your most likely clients.
When potential clients view your landing page, they want to see stunning visuals of the property or home you're promoting. Indulge them by adding high-quality images and videos to your page.
A lead magnet is an offer that potential clients might find interesting or valuable. You give this offer to anyone who visits your website in exchange for their contact information, which typically comes in the form of an email address or phone number.
In real estate, a great lead magnet would be an informational piece explaining the benefits of a particular listing or home. Not only can this type of lead magnet get you the contact info of interested people, but it will also convey the value of the home or property you're trying to sell.
Social media is an excellent place to find clients in any industry, and real estate is no exception.
While there are client acquisition opportunities on all the social platforms, I'm going to focus on the two most significant options: Facebook and YouTube.
With more than 2.4 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the largest social platform in the world. No matter where you're located or what types of clients you're looking to target, there are plenty of opportunities on Facebook.
Here are a few of the most effective ways to get real estate clients through Facebook.
If you want free access to people who live in your area of operation, joining a local Facebook group and interacting with the members is a great way to get it.
If you want to build a following and gain access to the Facebook Ads service, you need to create a Facebook business page.
It's pretty easy to do. Just go to Facebook.com/business and select "Create a page" in the upper right-hand corner. Once that's done, fill in the account information fields with the relevant info. Add a profile picture, a cover photo, a bio, and contact information.
Now that you have a Facebook page to work with, you can start running Facebook ads.
The best Facebook ad campaigns are pretty sophisticated. They involve high-level marketing tactics like remarketing, different ads based on the buyer's position in the sales funnel, and split testing different headlines and descriptions.
However, you don't need to be perfect to bring in clients. It's pretty easy to set up a landing page and show it to people who match your preferred demographic and location data.
With more than two billion monthly active users, YouTube is close behind Facebook in the user base competition. If you have some video creation chops or the funds to hire a professional videographer, you can use YouTube to bring in potential clients and convince them to hire you.
Here are a few YouTube tips specific to real estate client acquisition.
Posting high-quality videos of your listings will help you attract clients on both the seller and buyer side.
If you make a good video, sellers will see how impressive you made other homes look, and they may ask you to help them sell their homes.
Buyers will also see the videos, and they may end up renting or buying one of the homes you're showing.
You should know that you can't just post these videos on YouTube and expect them to get views. Unless you already have an established channel with a good number of followers, you'll have to drive traffic to the video from other platforms.
One way around this traffic problem is to merely use YouTube as a host and embed the videos on your website. This way, potential clients will still see your videos even though you're only focusing on growing your site.
Flashy video tours aren't the only kind of content that can bring in clients. Leverage the knowledge you've gained in the real estate business to create helpful and shareable content.
Driving organic traffic to your videos is great, as it's free. However, you can skip the slow buildup that comes with an organic approach by paying to place your videos in front of people.
YouTube is arguably the best platform for video ads. If you have an idea for a video ad that you think will attract clients, upload it to YouTube, target your ideal client, and give it a small ad budget to see how effective it is.
The amount of high-quality content you've produced will define how successful your client acquisition efforts are.
Many people approach content from a quantity over quality perspective.
Don't do this. Writing a single high-quality blog post will bring in more clients than ten sub-par posts.
Anyway, here are a few tips to get you started in real estate content creation.
Many real estate agents find clients by writing posts about questions people who are buying or selling homes are typing into Google. Get your business in front of these people by writing informative blog posts that answer their questions.
The easiest way to figure out which questions people are asking is by using Google's Autocomplete function.
Go to Google's home page and type in the start of a search query. A list of suggested search terms should appear in the dropdown menu.
These search terms are what other people are typing into Google. If you write a blog post targeting one of them, you're guaranteed to be writing a post about something that people are actively looking to read about.
You aren't guaranteed to get views on one of these posts, though. Google Autocomplete is only the first step in the topic selection process.
Once you have a list of terms people are searching for, you need to check the search results that are currently showing up for those terms and check if you have any hope of ranking.
If the results for a search term are populated by helpful posts from authoritative websites, you're going to have a hard time breaking into the results.
But if the results contain unhelpful posts or results from forum websites ‒ Quora and Reddit are two common examples ‒ then the search term is ripe for the picking.
Any realtor can make a blog post about buying or selling homes.
What differentiates you from the rest of the pack?
If you've been in business for a significant length of time, you'll probably have a story or example to back up whatever topic you're discussing.
Maybe you had to sell a home with excessive water damage. Or perhaps you got a buyer to drop their bid by 35%. If you've had any noteworthy sales or failures in the past, use them to educate people who read your posts.
While both blog posts and videos are examples of content, they require very different skill sets and pieces of equipment.
To write a good blog post, you need to be a decent writer and have access to a computer.
To shoot a good video, you need to have a firm grasp of film technique, persuasive speaking (if you're featured in the video), and proper lighting knowledge. You also need a camera, a microphone, lighting equipment, a computer, and some decent video editing software.
Shooting a proper video is beyond the scope of this post, so I won't get into the nitty-gritty here. To compensate for that, here are a few great resources for shooting your own real estate videos:
Referrals are an excellent source of clients. Not only are referred clients free to obtain, but they are often much more motivated to hire you than the average person who finds you through the internet.
You can't get referrals unless you have someone referring people to you, though. The next few tips will help you find places to connect with other professionals. I'll also provide a few guidelines on how to interact at networking events to maximize your chances of forming terrific relationships.
Here are some of the best places a real estate professional can network. Note that this is not a complete list but comprises the most effective locations.
Real estate conferences are an excellent place to connect with other professionals. To find real estate conferences in your area, search for "Real estate conference [current year] into Google. A smorgasbord of options should appear.
Local networking events work better for real estate agents than they do for many other professionals, mainly because most of your potential clients will be local to your area.
You don't have to go to strictly labeled networking events to find clients or referrals in your area. Any community engagement can go a long way toward building a stable base of local clients.
