As you can choose from which products or areas your leads are coming from, you can be assured that your leads are targeted and that all the information you are providing is right for your market and service. These leads usually come with details such as contact information and buying preferences with all the information vet through for accuracy. Your job is made much easier with the email addresses, phone numbers and their budget for their purchase provided by the service provider. As you are buying when you need the leads, most of the information is current and timely.

There are plenty of such service providers to choose from. Compare their service and price first over the internet before making a decision. It will be helpful if some of them can provide you with a free trial to their service before you decided to sign with them. There are a variety of price options, depending on the number of leads you are getting and the frequent of purchase.

The key factor is that time and energy gathering leads is saved and you will only be getting quality leads. All that you need to do is to register online and receive their service right away, hassle free. If time is important for you, then getting a lead generation service is perfect for you. You save time and energy gathering leads and you will be assured that you do not only get multiple leads but quality ones.

On a real estate website people generally opt in to hear from you via one of four methods:

• They say yes to a special report
• They do a search for a home
• They use the automated “what’s my home worth” form
• They send an e-mail through your contact me form

When they do this, they give you important information about themselves, and unless you use this information to be choosy about what you send them, your drip campaign can serve to annoy rather than impress.

As a real estate copywriter I have occasion to visit a large number of real estate websites. As a form of market research, I occasionally I leave my name, just to see what people are sending.

And what I’ve found lately isn’t pretty.

On one site I used the contact form to write the agent with a question. I never got an answer to the question, but I’ve been getting an avalanche of emails that are targeted to – no one. Some are about selling, some are about buying, and none tell me why I might want to choose this agent. In fact, they’re so poorly written that they’d have a negative impact even if they were targeted to me.

Another site sends me short e-mails telling me that if I’m still looking for a house, I should call. On this site I had asked to be included in his newsletter. Some news.

Another one sends a message each week telling me there are no matches for my search. What search? This was another site where I had signed up to get a real estate ezine.

While the purpose of the autoresponder is to make me think I’m getting special attention from the agent, and to reinforce the idea that this agent is THE one to call, these messages convey the opposite feeling.

So what should you do instead?

First, take the time to set up a separate autoresponder campaign for each type of buyer or seller. Let them opt in to get a special report, and when you mail to them, keep to that topic.

If they’ve asked for information about doing a short sale, talk to them about short sales. Don’t send them tips on finding a mortgage broker to handle their new home purchase or talk to them about making a list of “must have” features before they search for that home.

If they’ve asked for information about the First Time Buyer Credit, talk to them about the credit and then talk about how to find that first home. Don’t send them information related to listing and selling.

And for Pete’s sake… send something of value when you write. Those messages that say nothing but “I’m here, use me” are a waste of time for both you and your prospects.

If someone actually has done a search and asked to be sent new listings when they come into MLS, then letting them know when there are no new matches is a good idea. But if they haven’t done a search, or haven’t asked to be sent the new listings, why would you send that? For them, your message is nothing more than spam.

Yes, it does take a little extra effort to set up targeted campaigns. And yes, you do have to write or buy good messages to load into your autoresponders. But the results will be worth the effort.

Finally, if someone sends an inquiry via your contact form, that’s not an invitation for you to send them information they haven’t asked for. That’s a request for you to send a personal response to a specific question. You should answer that mail yourself, and not with an autoresponder.

First of all, you will have to change the way you think about the process of lead generation. Where before it is common for people to think that the best way to generate leads is to purchase them, modern experts have realized that this is not the most effective way to generate leads at all. Buying leads involves cold-calling people who know nothing about you or your business, and who may not even be interested in buying into real estate.

The best approach to lead generation is to make people take notice of your business and actually want to call you. The fact that they are the ones who contacted you means that they are interested in the product or service that you provide and they would be a lot more willing to hear you out. This will give you an easier time of building a business relationship based on mutual trust. So, how do you get people to call you? Here are the three basic steps.

First, you will have to be visible. After all, people can hardly contact you if they do not know that you exist. This is where you can use search engine optimization to your advantage. Most people now turn to the internet for information on any purchases they are planning to make. Thus, the more visible you are online, the more chance you have of people finding and contacting you.

Second, you will have to be valuable to potential clients. The most successful businessmen are those who fully understand the concept of perceived value. This concept indicates that people naturally want something which they perceive as being valuable. You can increase your perceived value by any number of ways. You may offer access to the best real estate listings in your area, or streamline the real estate process by networking with the best mortgage companies, or both.

The third and most important step is for you to be trustworthy. People aren’t likely to do business with you unless they feel that they can trust you. A credible track record, professional certifications and sales awards are the best ways to build immediate trust. Testimonials help as well, especially if you include the client’s full name, photo and location since these pieces of information assures the potential client that the testimonials are real.

Be visible, valuable and trustworthy. As long as you build your strategy around these three components, you can hardly go wrong. Now that you know how to generate real estate buyer leads, you can begin to look forward to a solid and profitable business. By simply changing your mindset, you can actually change the future of your business.

This real estate professional has even gone one extra step and attempted to promote the website online. They run banner ads in prominent places for real estate seekers and are even conducting Google Adwords pay-per-click campaigns to generate web site traffic.

They have done all of the above, and yet, have received no leads. It just doesn’t seem fair.

When a client relays a story similar to that described above, I immediately take a look at their website and review three things:

1. Are they maximizing lead capture methods?
2. Are they properly leveraging a property search on their website?
3. Do they use a variety of lead capture forms throughout the site?

Generating Leads

We know from previous lessons, that the role of a real estate website has changed. The current primary function of a real estate website is to serve as a prospecting tool. Therefore, the primary goal of any realtor web site is to generate leads.

In generating leads, there are a couple things to keep in mind. First, generating leads is more of a process of information gathering than it is of direct selling. This is in contrast to straight selling like you see on e-commerce websites. When pushing traffic to your website, the focus should be on funneling that traffic through lead capture methods to convert the visitors into prospects.

A successful website visit is one in which a visitor provides you with prospect information. In the least, you are shooting for a customer name and email address. You may also get a phone number, or even better, the prospect may call you directly. Point being that you want to use your website as a prospecting tool to begin building a subscriber base of prospects that you can then work into your client pipeline.

Leverage A Property Search

Lesson two discussed in detail the importance of an IDX property search to your real estate website. MLS listings are exclusive and privileged professional information. Access to this information is what truly distinguishes you as a real estate professional. In addition, when prospects surf the web, their primary reason for visiting a real estate website is to search for property.

Knowing these things, it is essential that you leverage the property search on your website to gain as much information as possible from potential prospects. It’s not enough just to offer the listing information. IDX information should be embedded with methods of lead capture that encourage visitors to become leads.

For an example of some lead capture ideas that should be integrated in your IDX, conduct a property search in Scottsdale on the Russ Lyon Sotheby’s International Realty website. Upon the initial page load of listing results, you can see options to “Create a FREE Account” and “Save This Listing.” Both of these are integrated methods of lead capture encouraging visitors to give their information.

The image above is a good example of nesting lead capture within listing information. Visitors to the website want to see listing information above everything else. So by surrounding this information with lead capture methods, opportunities for lead conversion are created. All of the lead capture methods are indicated by yellow checkmarks. This one listing detail features seven methods of lead capture.

Lead Capture Forms

Your property search will carry the load of generating most of your website leads. However, you can use additional content like lead capture forms to prompt visitors to give their lead information. The advantage of lead capture forms is two-fold: a) they are an additional opportunity to meet a prospect need and b) they add more content to your website.

Lead capture forms provide a great way to meet different prospect needs. Most visitors will be visiting the website to use the property search. But there are still a small handful of other visitors that may be looking to list a property or get local information. Lead capture forms are perfect for addressing the needs of these varying prospect opportunities.

I recommend to clients that they add a lead capture form to every page on their website. Regardless of what the page content is about, from a marketing perspective, every type of content is an opportunity to ask for lead information. Lead capture forms are a great way to integrate these methods into the content itself. Even a page of testimonials provides a great opportunity to pitch your services and ask for prospect information.

Here are some ideas for lead capture forms to use on your website:

• Free Home Evaluation
• Property Request
• List Your Home
• Local Market Snapshot
• Hot Foreclosure Deals
• Real Estate Newsletter
• Real Estate Reports
• Buyer Request
• Seller Request
• FSBO Tips

Just thinking about your services and what you can offer to clients can yield additional ideas for lead capture forms on your website.

To sum up, lead capture is pivotal to the success of your real estate website as a prospecting tool. There is no better way to generate website leads and fill your prospect pipeline than through the maximization of lead capture methods, whether integrated throughout your IDX or leveraged through lead capture forms on your website.

The next lesson discusses how to make your website king of the Internet forest so be sure to check it out.