This series has so far given you an overview of different ways to generate real estate leads, helped you understand why paid online leads are loved by so many real estate agents and what to expect from them.
The final part of this series lists the stuff you’ll need to have in place to start generating and working paid online leads successfully.
What Do I Need to Start With Online Lead Generation?
If you have carefully balanced the pros and cons of online lead generation and decided you’d like to try it out, here’s what you’ll need to get started and do it efficiently.
#1 A website or Facebook page
Running Google Ads requires you to have a website. At AgentLocator, we use the following strategy:
Our LeadGen websites are unbranded and don’t mention the agent’s name or brokerage. Our A/B tests have shown that such unbranded websites generate more leads than branded ones. The listings on the website are pulled from the real estate board of which you’re a member. We use forced registration to generate leads. Once a lead clicks on a listing to look at more pictures, we ask them to register with their email and phone number to continue browsing.
To run a Facebook Ad, you need to create a Facebook Page. While your personal Facebook account is used to manage the page and order the ads, the ads will show under your Facebook page’s name.
#2 A Google Ads Account or Facebook (Meta) Ad Manager
Your next step will be to create an ad account on the platform you wish to advertise on and enter your credit card details. Each ad platform will either bill you on a specific date each month or once you’ve reached a certain ad spend.
Housing ads fall into a specific ad category on both ad platforms and adhere to particular ad guidelines. If you don’t follow these guidelines, your ads will be suspended. In case of a more severe violation, your ad account could be blocked indefinitely. Please make sure you check these guidelines before you run your ads.
#3 A solid CRM system
Once you’ve collected the leads, you’d want to have a CRM system in place that allows you to nurture those leads easily.
Of course, you can export your Facebook or Google leads to a spreadsheet. Then you can build a master Excel or Google spreadsheet with all your leads that can serve as your CRM database. While this solution is free, we don’t recommend it.
There are many inexpensive CRM systems on the market that make things more simple and offer additional features for nurturing your leads, including automation.
The AgentLocator CRM system is our proprietary system built specifically for online lead generation for real estate agents. The CRM system tracks your leads’ website activity. You’ll know which and how many properties they’ve looked at, how many times, which properties they’ve liked, etc. Additionally, our CRM allows you to call, text and email leads directly from it.
We’d love to list all the cool features our CRM has to offer. However, we’d need another blog post for that. If you’re interested in exploring more features, you can do so here.
#4 Call scripts
Once you’ve generated your leads, it’s time to work on nurturing and converting them into paying customers. Otherwise, the money you spend on the ads won’t pay off.
The best way to nurture your leads is by calling them and asking questions that’ll help you understand where the prospect is in their purchase journey. To be prepared for such calls, it’s helpful to have scripts to lead you through the conversation.
After a certain amount of practice, you can ditch the scripts and focus on having more relaxed conversations with your prospects. However, having scripts and slowly developing them as you learn what kind of approach feels best for you is crucial to success with online leads.
Cold calling is a skill everyone can master. At AgentLocator, a personal trainer and cold calling experts stay at your disposal, either directly or through webinars, to help you build your scripts and become successful with working online leads.
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Beginnings are always hard. For new real estate agents, the most challenging task before them is building their contacts database. Online lead generation and paid online leads help to bridge that gap efficiently. This series explored the good, the bad, and the ugly side of paid online leads. It’s now up to you to decide whether or not paid online leads are worth the investment.
If you’d like to learn more about the AgentLocator Online Lead Generation Program for New Agents, all the information is available here.
