How To Get Real Estate Leads: 14 Great Ideas

Generating quality real estate leads can be challenging. Around 41% of companies struggle with developing a concrete lead-generation strategy and generating quality leads.

However, if you run a real estate brokerage, getting leads needs to be your top priority. This is the main way you’ll grow and sustain your business.

If you’ve just started your own real estate business, generating leads is critical to getting your first sale and earning revenue.

But the real estate industry is highly competitive, and finding a reliable source of leads can be hard.

Some real estate brokerages use lead generation companies to get more leads. However, real estate leads cost a lot if you outsource this function to another business. Luckily, it’s more than possible to generate leads yourself.

In this article, we’ll share some top lead generation strategies to help you build a solid pipeline of real estate leads. We’ll also explain how you can get high lead quality from each method.

14 Real Estate Lead Generation Ideas

Now that you know how crucial real estate leads are to your real estate business, let’s look at some ideas to generate leads so you can make more sales:

1. Get referrals from family and friends

Around 41% of sellers found their realtor based on referrals from friends and family.

We always say family and friends are the best lead generation sources for exclusive leads as a new brokerage or real estate agent.

That’s because people are more likely to consider a recommendation from a friend or family member than from someone they have never met online.

💡 Pro tip for getting referrals from family and friends

You can gradually reduce the proportion of real estate lead generation that you do through personal contacts as your brokerage grows and starts to draw business through marketing and word of mouth.

2. Get involved in the community

Building new personal and professional relationships is a great way to generate real estate leads.

A good way to form these relationships is to get involved in your local community. This could involve helping out at your community center or a local charity.

Below is a good example from a food charity called Parkland CARES on LinkedIn. Journey Home Real Estate helped out with this charity, and they will likely have formed many valuable relationships in doing so:

💡 Pro tips for getting involved in the community

✔️ Be authentic: If you’re working with a charity trying to make a hard sale, you’ll quickly become unpopular and won’t get many new real estate leads. Being authentic is a far better way to build new relationships within your community.

✔️ Choose something close to your heart: Don’t choose an activity or cause because you think it will give you the most real estate leads. Do so to make a difference and meet like-minded people. An opportunity to generate new leads will come naturally over time.

3. Maintain relationships with past clients

Your past clients are your best customers—they’re the people you’ve helped buy or sell a home for successfully. Typically, they will want to work with you again the next time they want to buy or sell a property.

They’re also likely to recommend you to others, making them an invaluable source of real estate leads. Around 76% of homebuyers and 73% of home sellers will recommend their real estate agent to others.

The problem is that many realtors don’t do enough to maintain close, personal relations with former clients.

Upon closing or on the moving-in date, they typically send a thank you note to the client and maybe a housewarming gift.

Then, they simply add the client to their email database and send them the same generic content that everyone else receives. This is not enough for them to remember you.

To maintain a meaningful relationship with your past clients, you need to check in with them regularly—about four times per year. Doing this means you’ll be the first person they think of when it comes to new deals and giving referrals.

One great way to stay in touch with your past clients is to invite them to regular client appreciation events. Here’s a good example from the Matt & Nate Real Estate Team. They made arrangements with a local bar for their clients, put on live music, and gave out prizes—their clients are sure to remember this exciting event:

💡 Pro tips for maintaining client relationships

✔️ Send 3-4 SMSes per year: Short, personalized messages sent at appropriate times of the year—like Easter or the holidays—will keep you top-of-mind. Keep it simple, and don’t ask for a referral just yet.

✔️ Send follow-up emails: If you don’t receive a response to your SMSes, send a follow-up email. This email should be one of care and concern for them. Don’t put pressure on them to respond or send you real estate referrals.

✔️Send personalized, handwritten postcards: When it comes to important milestones like birthdays or moving-in anniversaries, make sure you send the client a personalized, handwritten postcard. This shows them that your gesture is genuine and not part of some mass lead generation campaign.

4. Join professional real estate agent bodies

Meeting other real estate agents and brokers is a great way to generate new leads, as they may get more clients than they can handle.

In this case, they’ll want a reliable person to whom they can pass any additional leads. Similarly, they might get clients who don’t fit their niche or who don’t match their expertise that you can take on.

The best way to network with other real estate agents is to join your local real estate association. They will run a calendar of events covering everything from networking to professional development.

For example, Texas Realtors holds a range of discussions, meet-ups, and conferences for their members:

💡 Pro tip for joining real estate agent bodies

If attending events and networking aren’t generating enough leads, consider increasing your profile at your real estate association. You can do this by offering to host events, run workshops and training seminars, or even serve on the organization’s board.

5. Join local business groups

A good next step is to connect with the wider business community. This isn’t just a worthwhile lead-generation technique for your real estate business—you can also meet other professionals who may be able to provide you with services in the future. Examples include lawyers, accountants, and home maintenance providers.

Examples of local business organizations that you could join include:

Chambers of Commerce.
Small business associations.
Referral networking groups.
Mentorship programs.

💡 Pro tips for joining local business groups

✔️ Get involved: Like in real estate networking, getting more involved with an organization is a good way to boost your profile and attract more leads. For example, you may want to join your chamber of commerce’s housing policy board. This would put you at the forefront of local decision-making and may get you some press coverage, too.

✔️ Meet liquidators and divorce lawyers: Often, the people most desperate to sell are those who are either getting divorced or bankrupt. Building relationships with local liquidators and divorce lawyers can be a good source of leads—assuming you’re comfortable with these kinds of deals.

6. Showcase your expertise on your website

Your website should be one of your main sources of lead generation. Unfortunately, most real estate brokerages fail to understand the type of lead that their website is best suited for.

Most assume that their website’s primary use is to advertise listings. But almost all buyers will go to sites like Zillow for this, and this should generate listing leads.

Instead, most clients visiting your website will be researching your brokerage. They want to know if you are a good company to buy or sell with.

Your website should highlight your experience and expertise and explain how you can help clients buy or sell property successfully.

Here’s a great example from Briggs Freeman. They use their homepage to introduce their magazine, their agents, and their blog—no sales, just expertise:

💡 Pro tips for your website

✔️ Produce useful blog content: Very few website visitors will be familiar with the buying or selling process and will need expert advice. You should provide informative blog content that helps them understand the real estate industry and its processes. Include calls to action (CTAs) that bring them into your marketing funnel—for example, by encouraging them to join a webinar on the same subject as the blog post they’re reading.

✔️ Make contact easy: Ensure potential clients can easily speak to a real estate agent. Include an instant messenger option to encourage them to get in touch immediately. If you use an autoresponder, then give them a time when you will get back to them.

✔️ Highlight team members: Include an ‘About Us’ section on your website. Introduce the agents your clients will work with and highlight their experience, expertise, any big real estate companies they have worked at, achievements, and awards they have won.

7. Optimize content for search engines

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a great way to attract high-quality leads. It involves understanding how search engines decide what they put on the first page of their results and then creating content for your website that meets those criteria.

If you can rank on page one of Google’s search results, then people will be more likely to click on your website when they search online for information.

When starting out in real estate, local SEO is critical, as you’ll want to attract people selling properties in your city or neighborhood.

The great thing about SEO is that if you do it right, you can attract a steady stream of potential leads to your website for free with relatively little ongoing effort.

The downside of SEO is that it is fairly complex and time-consuming to do yourself. It may be more efficient to hire a professional to do it.

Finding keywords

Many factors determine how well Google ranks your website’s pages for each search. One that you can easily control is keywords.

These are words that Google looks for on a page when deciding to rank it for the search terms that users enter.

So, when buyers or sellers are looking for a real estate agent, they might type one of the following search terms into Google:

“Realtor in [your area].”
“How to sell a home in [your area].”
“What is the best realtor in [your area]?”
“Where is the best place for families to live in [your area]?”

You need to identify which search terms your customers are likely to use and choose a few that will draw the most traffic to your website. Then, you need to include words and phrases associated with this search term in the content of your website.

💡 Pro tips for SEO

✔️ Teach yourself SEO: If you want to do SEO yourself, then it’s critical to take time to understand it. This beginner’s tutorial from Ahrefs provides a step-by-step guide.

✔️ Get the right tools: If you’re going to do SEO yourself, you’ll need the right tools. Ahrefs is great for keyword research, while Surfer is good for on-page SEO. Google Search Console is useful for monitoring traffic.

✔️ Use an agency: Using an agency to manage your SEO for you will cost you more than doing it yourself. But it will save you a lot of time and may help you achieve much better results.

8. Get listed in online directories

Directories are a great way to make your business easy to find online. To give your business the best chance of discovery, you should use local, state, and international directories.

As a rule of thumb, the broader the directory’s geographic reach, the more specific its sector focus needs to be.

Locally, you can advertise in any business directory. But on a state level, you may want to target directories focused on general real estate. Nationally, it is a good idea to only get listed in directories for your niche.

USDRE is an example of a general, nationwide directory. It helps buyers, sellers, and renters find a real estate agent. It has a system for matching people to agents based on their needs:

This would be a great way to attract qualified leads, and it’s free to use. The downside is that you will probably face a lot of competition from other realtors.

💡 Pro tip: Use Google My Business

Google My Business is a free online tool and directory that helps you market your business on Google’s search page. It also serves the crucial function of good local SEO. It helps you generate leads by providing critical information like your website, location, and contact details.

Your profile will appear on popular Google products, such as Google Maps and Google Search. It is easy to set up, and the built-in analytics tool lets you see how people engage with your profile.

9. Use pay-per-click (PPC) advertising

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is another way your brokerage can generate leads by appearing at the top of page one of Google’s search results. PPC has an average return on investment (ROI) of 200%, making it a great investment to generate real estate leads.

What are PPC ads? They are the first few links that appear at the top of search results that are labeled ‘Ad’, as you can see below:

With PPC, you pay a small fee whenever someone clicks on your ad. However, depending on the value of each click, this can become quite expensive.

PPC ads will quickly generate leads, but you need to make sure that the website you’re sending leads to is well-optimized otherwise, no one will convert.

💡 Pro tips for PPC advertising

✔️ Use tools to find keywords: Tools like Semrush or WordStream can highlight new ideas for keywords that your potential clients are searching for on Google.

✔️ Convert visitors with landing pages: Once you’ve found your keywords, you need to create an enticing ad and follow it up with an effective lead capture form. A good way to do this is to create separate landing pages for each property or service you promote with a PPC ad.

✔️ Use an agency: Like SEO, PPC can be done yourself. However, you are likely to get much better results if you use an agency.

10. Create useful and original content

When it comes to digital marketing, content is king. One of the best ways to generate leads online is to create original content that your target customers will find valuable.

Campaigns like email, SEO, and publishing articles in industry publications are all more effective if the content that underpins them is top-quality.

Great content is:

Original.
Useful.
Well-researched.
Straight to the point.
Engaging.
Well-written and easy to read.
Written for your target audience.

Here’s a good example of an article on Asheville Real Estate’s blog. It covers a topic that’s of interest to people looking to buy property in the Asheville area—what’s the water quality like and how it could be improved:

The writer has interviewed a local plumber to share their expertise and tips. This makes the article highly authoritative and establishes the company as a market leader—from both a water quality and real estate perspective. It’s also interesting to discover how to improve tap water quality.

Other real estate marketing content ideas include:

Market reports: These include an analysis of what has been selling and where. They attract leads by showcasing your knowledge of the local real estate market.

Buyer and seller guides: Providing concise and easy-to-understand buyer and seller guides will make prospective clients feel more informed, empowered, and confident. If you help them achieve this, then they will be more likely to want to work with you.

Free home evaluations: Sellers always want to know what their house is worth before they put it on the market. A free valuation guide or tool is a great way to generate leads—a good CTA is to encourage them to sign up for a free in-person valuation.

💡 Pro tips for creating content

✔️ Optimize your content: As mentioned in the SEO section above, if you post content on your blog, you should always optimize it to appear in search results. This ensures that people interested in your content will find it on Google.

✔️ Write content based on customer queries: The best way to choose topics to write about is to listen to the common questions and concerns your clients have. By answering these questions in your blog content, you show you understand their needs and build trust with them.

✔️ Use keyword research to choose topics: Another way to choose topics is to look at what articles your competitors are writing that are ranking well on Google. You can then write even better quality, more useful content to rank above them. However, it’s still important to make sure that the content you write is relevant to your clients.

11. Get email marketing right

89% of marketers use email marketing as their main strategy for generating leads. It has also been voted as the most effective marketing channel.

Many brokerages send generic campaigns, providing outdated listings and telling customers that the market is “hot,” but this isn’t helpful for buyers. If they are struggling to buy a home, the last thing they want is to hear how competitive the market is.

Instead, your emails should focus on delivering useful content, as described in the section above.

💡 Pro tips for email marketing in real estate

✔️ Be transparent: Clearly explain how frequently you are going to email subscribers and what information they can expect when they sign up for your newsletter. Don’t try to trick them into signing up, and always give them the option to unsubscribe at any time.

✔️ Send new listings immediately: As mentioned above, sending listings in round-up emails means most recipients will only get notified when it is too late. Avoid this by scanning your multiple listing service (MLS) for new listings every morning and sending an email the moment you spot an exciting opportunity.

✔️ Do it yourself: Email marketing is relatively easy to do yourself if you have the right automated lead nurturing tools. Software like Mailchimp, Flodesk, and ActiveCampaign allows you to manage your own campaigns. Tools like Leadpages and AWeber enable you to collect email addresses and create messaging that specifically targets your ideal customers.

✔️ Segment your email list: You can make your email campaigns more effective by targeting subscribers who will find them most useful. To do this, you need to segment your email list based on factors like whether your subscribers are buying or selling real estate, if this is their first home, and the type of property they are interested in. You can collect some of this information when they sign up for your email list or with surveys.

✔️ Be responsive: It’s important to respond as soon as possible if someone sends you a message based on one of your email campaigns. This will become harder as your brokerage grows, so it may be helpful to invest in an autoresponder. This should assure people that you will get back to them and what timeframe they can expect to hear from you.

12. Join the conversation on social media

Almost all realtors use social media to generate leads. According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), 90% of realtors use Facebook in their business, and around 50% use Instagram and LinkedIn. 52% of realtors generated more leads through social media than any other channel, including their customer relationship management platforms and MLS sites.

Having a strong social media presence and a strategy for managing it is vital for any agent or brokerage.

Below is an example from Stephanie Spann. She’s been using Facebook to generate leads by posting several useful guides that she has written:

💡 Pro tips for using social media

✔️ Post genuinely useful content: If you write posts just for the sake of it, your social media followers will lose trust in you. You don’t have to write detailed guides for your posts, but they do need to be something that your clients and followers would want to read.

✔️ Join conversations: Social media is for engaging, not for selling. You should try to join conversations and comment on other people’s posts wherever you can. You’ll likely gain more new followers by doing this than by creating posts.

13. Create enticing videos

Video walkthroughs and 3D tours are great ways to generate interest in your properties. This is partly due to the technology available today. Agents can shoot high-quality videos using their cell phones and a tripod, while drones allow them to capture amazing aerial footage of homes.

Here’s a good example of a simple but effective video from Suzy Valentin. In it, she shows the entire property and describes its key features. The video was shot using a mobile device—it’s not professional quality, but it works:

💡 Pro tips for creating videos

✔️ Use a tripod: A key differentiator in whether a video shot on a cell phone looks good or not is whether the camera is held steady. It will be obvious to the viewer that wobbly handheld footage has been captured on a cell phone. But if the footage is steady, then they probably won’t notice, and the video will appear more professional.

✔️ Include a link: It’s important to include a CTA during the video to contact you by phone or email. But you should also include a link beneath the video that viewers can click on to find out more.

✔️ Get a drone: Drones are a great way to showcase a property and its surrounding area. Drones specifically recommended for real estate photography include the DJI Mini 2, the EXO Blackhawk, and the DJI Phantom.

14. Try cold calling

Many people dread cold calling, but it’s a crucial way of generating leads—especially for new and growing brokerages that need real estate leads.

To sell your first property, you’ll have to make cold calls daily. However, you’ll still need to make regular sales calls to ensure that your business continues to grow past your first sale.

💡 Pro tips for cold calling

✔️ Used expired listings to find prospects: A good way to find prospects is to go on your MLS and search for expired listings. These may be people who have been unable to sell their homes but would still want to. It’s often possible to go back as far as a year on your MLS. Make sure you take time to understand why the home didn’t sell and check whether you would be able to help.

✔️ Develop a sales pipeline: Don’t go straight for the hard sell, as you’ve just called out of nowhere and the prospect doesn’t know who you are. Instead, you should gradually develop trust with potential clients and get them to buy into your services. Ask them to commit to a short, no-obligation meeting or phone call to discuss how you could help them.

✔️ Stay motivated: If you’re not succeeding after five calls, change your script or try a new tactic. Ask yourself where the person started to lose interest during an unsuccessful call. Keeping up your momentum and not becoming despondent improves outcomes when an unreceptive person answers the phone.

Free Up Your Time to Generate Real Estate Leads Effectively

Now that you have 14 ideas for generating real estate leads, it’s time to start attracting new clients.

However, when you have huge responsibilities to manage, like the real estate transaction management process, it can be challenging to find time to build a solid lead-generation strategy.

Paperless Pipeline is a purpose-built transaction management platform that is designed to automate and streamline the transaction process. This gives you more time to refine your lead generation strategy and attract new clients.

Additionally, if you need to track your lead sources, our software can help. We enable you to identify buyer and seller leads on transactions and track the source of your sales. This allows you to see which of your real estate lead generation tactics are most effective.

Visit our website to find out more and claim your free Paperless Pipeline trial. We’re excited to show you just how many hours you can save each day to focus on lead generation.