Real Estate Seller Leads
As we journey together through this article you will discover more ways to generate home seller leads. Some of the seller leads will take lots of time to build a platform that generates leads, while others will mainly take a consistent flow of money being spent to generate real estate leads. At the end of the journey, no matter if it was a lot of time or a consistent spend, you will want to discover a healthy return on investments for each of them to make sure they are worth your time and money.
Real Estate Leads
Before we dive into the different sources of leads and how to attack them, we will want to discover your internal and most honest reality on what you need to fulfill your financial happiness. Why do we use the term honest reality? Because most real estate agents have a work ethic equation. Some think if I say a million dollars it will just appear, and that is farther from the truth in real estate.
Being a real estate agent is just the starting point for an opportunity to make a small business. Just because you are not the owner of a real estate brokerage does not mean you are not a small business. You are simply an intrapreneur vs an entrepreneur. This means you are a small business within a small business. Therefore your revenue and profits will not come from rubbing a genie bottle and wishing for revenue and profits.
Therefore, once you know the honest numbers you desire and that you are willing to work towards, then we will go back into the real estate leads required to get to that journey point. The beauty of this story is that it is a journey and it should be treated as such a such-a magical journey to your desires.
Sphere of Influence Leads
What is the sphere of influence lead? Your sphere is the people who you know and they, too, know you. They are the people in your life that you mutually know each other, like each other, and if you knew either of you were in business you would do what you could do to help each other grow. We also lump in the past clients that we call our forever clients into our sphere, so when we say sphere we have them included. Now how do we prime this pump to generate the real estate seller leads?
Before we dive into what to do with your sphere to generate real estate seller leads, we want you to remember and also remind you that your sphere should be treated like your closest relationships, and if you are not a super social person, you will be like a fish swimming upstream. They say you cannot change the behavior of a human long enough to make a model out of it. I personally believe behavior is a muscle and you can improve and strengthen it. You just need to know prior to spinning your wheels, your results will come from your relationships and not what we are about to dive into. These are just excellent things to supercharge your relationships. You will want to touch your sphere at least once a week with high value and not spam. Never ever spam a relationship.
Calling your sphere
You should call your sphere a minimum of twelve times per year. You can call them just as a relationship to check in on them. Then other times you can call them for holidays to offer them a pie, and then after the holidays, you can call to see how their holidays went. You can call them to invite them to your BBQ, bowling, a charity running event, movie night, a sporting event, etc. Whatever, the event is you can then call them to thank them for attending it.
Texting your sphere
Texting is very popular today, and we use it to remind them of the event, and on holidays to wish them a joyful day. We also use it for simple text messages like, I am just checking in. Holidays and just checking in text messaging can be set up to be done automatically.
Emailing your sphere
We are very careful about what we email out. We want 100% opt-in for our value-adding emails. Our main things email on property searches that they want, and this could include homes selling in their community, and we also use email to send out home value reports for seller leads. We use our own IDX website for property listings, and we use a home value service for sending out home value reports. For both of them, we want to know the extreme details about the owner’s house. We send out property listings once a week for nonactive buyers, and we send out the home value reports once a month.
Sending postcards to your sphere
We send out monthly postcards with things pointing to our home seller website with a strong call to action to one of our seller’s home seller services. On these postcards, we are not shy about why we are sending them. The reason we are not shy is that we know real estate agents who have lost business to iBuyers for not saying we have cash buyers, and the next thing they know is that they are moving into their new build and sold to an iBuyer all without the agent. Then we send out holiday postcards and we do not focus too much on our strong value proposition. We also send out home and wedding anniversary cards, and birthday cards for all family members, and we stalk their social media looking for exciting things to snag a photo and topic and send out for those like high school graduation, etc.
Retargeting your sphere on social media
We take our spheres’ email addresses and cell phone numbers and upload them to social media platforms like Facebook. Then we take our monthly and holiday postcards and create 30 days prescheduled campaigns for each of them so they are seeing us not only in the mailbox but also online. When possible, we do our social media ads with a fun video on the topic. These social media ads are only being sent to the people on your list unless you are also adding them to your Facebook business page as a free post.
Having events for your sphere
When possible we recommend buying a one to five-acre lot to host your events, so you can have fun making them a wonderland. This may be one of your best investments ever. For all of our events, they are welcome to bring their friends, but their friends must complete our questionnaire about each member attending to help us make something special for them. The questionnaire requires all of their contact info (mailing address, cell number, email, and social media links). For all events, we take photos and videos and post them on our social media platforms.
For New Year, we send everybody a lottery ticket wishing them great luck for the new year.
For Easter, at least one of us dresses in a bunny outfit for photos and to hop around the event. We provide beverages, food, and desserts. We also always offer tickets to whoever comes to win fun prizes. Then everybody leaves with a gift basket with goodies.
For the 4th of July, we do a movie night with a rented food truck. We provide the basic fun kid-level fireworks like sparklers.
For Back to school events, we ask for our sphere to donate backpacks full of what students need, and to add anybody they know that needs one to our list. Then we schedule a pickup or easy drop off location for them to drop them off with one of our agents. Then we take the backpacks and give them to anybody on our list, and then to charities that are asking for backpacks and back-to-school supplies.
For Halloween, we create a fun kid-friendly haunted house and corn maze. Along with that we give away tricks and treats for all ages. Plus, we have a food truck for all who attend. We do this on the Saturday prior to Halloween.
For Thanksgiving, we do a pie day giveaway. We call all of our spheres to offer them a free pie that we get from Costco. We only do apple pie, because they are the most friendly for handling and delivering. We then deliver each pie to our sphere. Other teams we know have pickup locations, but we have chosen to go the extra mile and hand-deliver them to their house.
For Christmas, we have a movie night with a Christmas movie and one of us from our team dresses up like Santa Clause and another, Mrs. Clause, while the others dress up as elves. We make it a magical place for kids of all ages, and we have a photo opt area with Santa Clause. Then to top it off we have a food truck and give away fun gifts to all who attend.
We have discovered our sphere is the best source for the highest quality real estate seller leads. Therefore, if you are looking for real estate leads, make sure you build out one of the best experiences for your sphere.
Continue reading if you do not have a large enough sphere to build a large enough business out of it for more proven ways to generate seller leads.
Geographical Farming Real Estate Seller Leads
Real estate agents looking for the next bestseller leads typically choose geographical farming. This source will include postcards, local publications, billboards when possible, social media, pay per click on Google, Facebook ads, open houses, door knocking, circle prospecting, and Youtube. With this group, you must choose to control your image on social media and in the communities. You should no longer have public opinions on divided public things.
Real estate postcards
When you are using postcards to generate real estate seller leads on a farm, you will use every door direct mail. You can use the same message for your monthly postcards mentioned in the sphere section, but the size will change to meet the EDDM requirements.
As a real estate agent, you will want to be on every single postcard and real estate marketing material. The reason why is that you are helping the community to get to know you based on your brand and messaging. Then you will want a very powerful call to action to either visit one of your website’s landing pages and do something or to call or send you a text message.
Local Publication
Local city or community magazines are a great way to get your brand and message out to your farm to help generate seller leads. The publication will have the eyeballs and the trust built-in for their platform. Then you will just need to get your ads up and going for the publication to slowly start to build trust and seller leads. With farming, we expect at least 18 months of following what we are sharing to head into profit. Always have the same brand on every real estate marketing material you make, and have the same message on all platforms for the entire month.
Billboards
Some communities and cities have logical locations of billboards where it would make sense to have one for the lead generation of sellers. Billboards will have to have a very clear and strong call to action to visit your website and do something. If you choose to have them call, you will need a very catchy number as they are driving past the billboard. A billboard for real estate seller leads is more of a branding tool, so you might not be able to track the seller leads to it outside of asking the sellers where they found you.
Social Media Seller Leads
Facebook Ads and Instagram posts have been our best success when it comes to social media lead generation for seller lead on social media. We use the monthly campaigns that we run for our sphere for our farm, so it makes it easier for you. Besides paid Facebook ads, we also post on our Facebook page, Instagram page, and Twitter page.
When you are running social media ads, we highly recommend using video when possible or having eye-catching graphic ads. Our most successful graphic ads have been carousel ads. Besides this, we recommend running split AB ads to help you discover which ones are your more successful Facebook ads for seller leads.
We also run retargeting Facebook ads with a different twist or variation for people who click on a Facebook ad that takes them to our landing pages.
Pay Per Click on Google Seller Leads
Google for geographical farming allows you to go after niched key phrases, unlike Social media which just takes a large swipe across the platform. The quality of the seller leads on google is typically better than Facebook ads, because they sought out the service on Google vs just having your Facebook ads in their newsfeed on Facebook.
After a prospect visits our website from Google we will target them on Google and Facebook platforms to help generate real estate seller leads from our Google PPC that did not convert the first time to the landing pages associated with the niche Google search.
Open Houses
No matter what it takes, you want to have Mega Open Houses every single Saturday and Sunday on your farm. You want to use large bi-fold open house signs and lots of them. You want your brand and name clearly on every single open house sign. You want, in short, for everybody to know you are the top agent in the area without having to say it once.
An open house is not just a boring place to sit because your sellers want you to do one. Oh no, these are large events designed to do lead generation for seller leads. Yes, you will get buyers into your open houses too, and you will even get sellers who are buyers into your open houses.
We have real estate marketing material on our home selling programs and options. It is very clear what our message and branding are at every open house. We do not have to change one single thing for our next open house. Our open houses are designed for real estate seller leads. We do not bring one single printed item for the property we are sitting in. As a real estate agent, you might find that a bit strange. The fact is we are there to get seller leads, and when we do happen to get a buyer lead, we will happily work with them too or give them to one of our buyer agents on the team.
If you are wondering what we do when they ask for the details on the home since you bring no printed material with you, we simply ask them for their cell phone number so we can send them a digital copy of the home. Then, in our real estate app, we generate a link to share with the buyer or seller who asks. Then we ask them for their name. Then along the way, we are professionally probing them about their real estate situation. We either ask for an appointment or if it would be ok if we stayed in touch. If they say no, then we respect that and we do not add them to our database. Our real estate brand and image are worth more than a negative review from somebody who does not currently want to work with us.
Just like our social media ads, postcards, magazine ads, etc, open houses are just one more puzzle piece to our real estate marketing company that so happens to sell real estate and is one of the best local real estate companies in the market.
Door knocking Lead Generation
In our real estate farm, we know how many houses are on it, and we know how many days there are in a month. We need to be able to door knock on every single house on our farm once a month. We will door knock some of them more than once a month if there is an open house within 50 homes in either direction from the open house. We will leave no real estate marketing materials unless the door is answered. We feel no seller lead will want us to leave material on their doorstep for many reasons. One of them is that if the house is empty because they are seasonal users of their house, it will create an image that nobody might be there.
Circle Prospecting Real Estate Lead Generation
Circle prospecting lead generation is just like door knocking, but a lot more efficient. You will want to call your farm once a month. Sometimes it is just checking in to see if they have any real estate needs at the moment. Other times it can be to let them know about a charity event you are hosting – like a golfing event for a charity. You will send them to one of your landing pages to sign up. Other times it could be to let them know about a food drive you are doing to help the local food bank. No matter what you do, you want them to always welcome your calls. Make sure it is not about selling, and that it is about serving and caring for the community.
Youtube Real Estate Videos
There are several different real estate topics to do value-adding videos. Community events, home improvements, things that make your values increase, videos from events, your Facebook ads, etc. You name it! You can come up with some really high-quality videos for your Youtube channel. From an SEO standpoint, you want to use geo-targeting longtail key phrases to help prospective home seller leads find your videos on Youtube. You will always have one of your landing pages built into the description of your video.
Wrapping it up
We want over-the-top, two ways to generate home seller leads. We covered what we call the met group to the group we want to meet. Most of this work makes your real estate career around working with warm to hot leads. The leads that come out of this real estate lead model are predictable and scalable. To be honest with you, these leads are very enjoyable because you are taking tender care of the leads while building and protecting your brand.
The other lead source that we left out is cold calling for expired listings, canceled listings, and for sale by owner listings. There is nothing wrong with cold calling for leads. There are many real estate agents who thrive off of cold calling on a daily basis for leads. For some of you, generating seller leads from cold calling might have to be your very first step in building a real estate business for financial reasons. Just know when you dive into generating leads from cold calling, you will need to master your scripts, rebuttals, and emotions.
Cold calling takes a lot of training, coaching, and mentorship. Plus it takes consistency and super thick skin. It is almost loving and craving strong debates. Then once you get them to agree to meet with you, you will want to see them within one hour, so go go go, because it is that competitive. We have additional articles on cold calling real estate seller leads, which you might enjoy reading.
