Real estate online lead generation is both challenging and exciting. For one thing, you can start with a small budget and still gain significant traction. For another, though, it’s not easy to break through the noise and put your message in front of your audience.
If you’ve been struggling to generate more online leads, review your marketing strategy and see if you’ve taken the essential steps to make it work.
3 Fundamental Steps to Successful Real Estate Online Lead Generation
1. Target your audience with specific local keywords
The only way to outrank large property portals is to optimize your website for the relevant local keywords. Every page, property and blog post must be optimized for these queries, otherwise it won’t work.
You can mix and match both high-volume short keywords and long-tail (4+ words) ones. For example, “house for sale in Calgary” is an example of a short keyword whereas “3-bedroom apartment for rent in Calgary” is a long-tail one.
Likewise, particular keywords that describe your area are also important, for example names of schools, communities, neighborhoods, local landmarks, etc.
Incorporating local keywords in every piece of your digital content helps you rank higher and generate more organic leads.
[Related post: How to Find Hyperlocal Real Estate Keywords for Your Website]
2. Make sure your website has all features your audience is looking for
It’s no longer enough to publish a bunch of real estate listings and hope that will work. A modern real estate website has to be much more sophisticated than that in order for real estate online lead generation to work.
Here are a few key things people expect from a real estate website:
- HD property photos and videos;
- comprehensive and accurate property listing descriptions;
- neighborhood landing pages;
- local real estate blog;
- interactive maps;
- easy and smart property search;
- answers to frequently asked questions.
All of this is not only useful but gets potential leads to spend more time on your site. Of course, listings are the cornerstone of your digital content but listings alone are not enough either to get your site ranked high or to generate lots of leads.
3. Incorporate email & marketing automation
According to McKinsey, email is 40 times more effective in generating new leads than social media. This is not to say that you should abandon social media, portal advertising or online ads but in the real estate industry, email is often sidelined whereas it should be the centerpiece of a marketing strategy.
Email automation and drip campaigns help you stay in touch with your database without spending too much time on the outreach. Just set up a campaign, segment your list and start sending your targeted content.
In addition, email campaigns combined with direct mailers can produce outstanding results as the research from Royal Mail has shown.
Final thoughts
If you want to get the most out of your real estate online lead generation efforts, start with the basics and build your way from the ground up. These steps will help you transform your website into a lead generating asset over time.
