How Townsend Realty Group is Predictably Growing Business with Carrot
Georgia-based Townsend Realty Group uses Carrot’s training and resources to gain clients online within their community.
Within 5 months …
190 Leads Generated
25% Conversion Rate
6 Keywords Rankings in Top 3
Snapshot:
Industry: Agent
Location: Cherokee County, GA
Clients Served: served 1,500+ clients
Year founded: 2002
All other marketing channels are just tactics, Carrot is the big chunk in the middle that was just missing.”
Tom Townsend is a real estate agent in Georgia. In 2002, he decided to pursue a career in real estate, fueled by a desire to work on his watch and spend more time with his family.
He started out flipping houses. But in 2013, he pivoted to buying and selling homes, uniquely using his expertise as a Certified General Appraiser to serve his clients. Now, he’s a Keller Williams agent with a four-person team. They aim to close 53 deals this year (they’re on track!) and, for the first time in a long time, Tom feels clarity and peace of mind about where his business is headed.
The growth is steady and predictable. But it wasn’t always that way.
“All other marketing channels are just tactics, Carrot is the big chunk in the middle that was just missing.”
– Tom Townsend
The challenge: Marketing his business was difficult and produced unpredictable results.
Before joining Carrot, Tom will be the first to admit that marketing his business was difficult and produced unpredictable results. He would cold call, send mailers, network, and do anything else that came to mind. Some of it worked. Some of it didn’t. That was the problem. Rather than planting seeds and harvesting leads, Tom hunted for his deals. And while that worked for a while, Tom realized that if he ever stopped working, his business would crumble… he hadn’t created processes to predictably generate leads and close deals.
His business was successful. But it was also exhausting, unpredictable, and dependent upon him working long hours. Tom knew he had the knowledge and the skill to be one of the best real estate agents in his market, but he struggled to consistently get his message out about his business. There was a gap.
He knew how to serve clients… but he didn’t know how to find them in a sustainable and scalable manner. His Keller Williams website wasn’t supporting his other marketing efforts like he needed it to — people might visit, but they rarely turned into leads. Even his paid Google Ads traffic was converting poorly. And SEO seemed like something he’d never be able to figure out.
That’s when he discovered the power of Carrot: search engine optimization, predictable lead flow, consistent business growth… allowing him more time for the things that matter most in life. And he decided to give it a try. That’s exactly how he uses Carrot.
The tools: Carrot features
For Tom, Carrot is the central hub that combines all his marketing efforts. He’s running PPC ads to drive traffic to his site in the short term while leveraging Carrot’s easy content marketing tools and strategy to build his SEO for long-term lead generation. And since he’s driving traffic from all of his marketing efforts to his Carrot site, he can track performance across all campaigns and channels, giving Tom the clarity and comfort he needs with his marketing strategy.
Here’s how Tom is using Carrot as the central hub to tie together all the marketing efforts they were once doing on their own to become the authority in their area:
Trainings & Resources
Tom says he’d be lost without all the content and resources we’ve created and shared to help him build his strategy as an agent.
Automated blogs & VideoPost
Carrot keeps Tom from having to outsource content marketing to become the authority in his market by making it easy to schedule and post content to his site with pre-written automated blog posts and our VideoPost feature that transcribes your video content into long-form articles.
Campaign Tracking Links & Lead Manager
Tom sends traffic from all of his marketing channels to his Carrot site and can track the performance of his marketing campaigns using campaign tracking links. Instead of guessing what he should try next, he now has the visibility to see where he should put his marketing budget for maximum ROI.
Landing pages & Location pages
Tom can niche down his marketing with hyper-targeted landing pages and location pages, allowing him to beat the competition and improve his SEO rankings for people searching for homes with specific parameters.
The results:
Tom Townsend has been a successful real estate professional for quite some time. But it wasn’t until he learned about online marketing for Real Estate Agents through Carrot that he was finally able to consistently grow his business and create predictable lead flow.
Now, he knows what the future of his business holds and he knows where he wants to take it. More importantly, he knows how to take it forward.
What about you? Are you ready for consistent and predictable growth in your business? Click below to learn more!
“Clarity is power. I know and can see where we’re going and I feel confident in where we’re going. And I finally know how my marketing is doing.”
– Tom Townsend
Ready for Predictable Growth Like Tom?
Start generating consistent leads and building your authority in your market today.
The pandemic is pushing the need to get online and understand technology like never before.
– Tom Townsend
Tired of Tire Kickers? Get This Agent’s Step-by-Step Strategy for Consistent, High Quality Leads w/ Tom Townsend
Tom is a seasoned real estate agent w/ Keller Williams, who was burnt out on cold calling and struggling to compete with the big guys when it came to SEO. By shifting his strategy, and maxing out his AgentCarrot site, he is completely confident about the next 12 months.
Today, we’re looking at what messaging is working best, how Tom is using his Carrot site to convert more leads, and we will even make some tweaks to his site right here on the podcast to make his site perform even better.
Read the Full Show Notes Below…
A month or two ago, my team hit me up and said “You need to check out Tom Townsend.” I was blown away when I saw the data for his site and how he was implementing our training into his business.
Tom hasn’t been with us for a long time. In fact, he has only been a Carrot member for a few months. But in that short amount of time, he is already holding the top 1 and 2 spots for many keywords he is creating content around.
Where He Started
Tom has been in the real estate business since 2002. He began as an investor, flipping properties and holding a few here and there. He then took his real estate skills a step further by becoming a certified appraiser.
He was always heavy on the phones, chasing down leads, and setting up meetings. A few years ago, Tom and his team began utilizing Facebook Ads, but they weren’t directing them to any particular landing page or call to action.
They built a website via Wix, but it lacked flexibility and the ability to grow as the business did. The team moved the website to another platform, but it was cumbersome and time-consuming and wasn’t manageable while they were busy running on the hamster wheel.
The Lightbulb Moment
The pandemic has forced people to improve their online presence or get online if they weren’t already. For Tom and his team, it has allowed them to spend time creating evergreen content that will get them off of the hamster wheel. They are building their brand as the local authority and having the leads search them out instead of the other way around.
COVID has made a lot of people analyze what they are doing and what is important. For Tom, it was time. He wanted more time to do the things he loves, while still building momentum and credibility within the community.
The evergreen content Tom is creating is providing consistency and predictability, giving him the freedom he is after.
His Strategy Today and Why It Works
Many of the 100+ leads Tom has received in the past few months have been through paid PPC campaigns. This is exactly how we recommend agents and investors get the ball rolling.
In fact, Tom and his team have followed our advice and recommendations to a tee, thus bringing in more and more leads, creating more conversions, and closing more deals.
Next, they began creating content, with an emphasis on VideoPosts and our VideoPosts transcription service.
They have utilized our Advanced Marketer Articles, which only require a minute or two of personalization before posting.
They have modified their Facebook and Google advertising, directing people back to their website… err authority portal.
Tom and his team have spent time niching down their content to become the local experts.
They use our Campaign Tracking Links tool to track all of their advertising – even links printed on mailers they are sending out.
The Campaign Tracking Links have become one of Tom’s most important tools. It gives him a clear and centralized place to see what’s working, what’s not working, and where he can improve.
The Power of Testimonials
Many people will seek out testimonials just because they think they have to. They don’t spend time optimizing them or using them to fight objections. My advice is to seek out 5 very specific testimonials that will fight objections and be relatable to the ideal client you are seeking out.
For example, if you are an agent, use a testimonial from someone who was friends with another agent, but chose you instead because of your experience. Or, you can find an FSBO client you were able to help by getting them more than they would have on their own.
Many people will try to avoid working with an agent in order to save money. A testimonial letting them know they will likely get more money when all is said and done is a testimonial that will actually help you to convert.
Because of COVID, so many agents and investors are working from a home office. They’re not out and about attending open houses and networking events.
Here at Carrot, we have seen many people using this time to amp up their websites. To change them from glorified business cards, and instead, turning them to authority hubs.
Go to Carrot.com to see what we are doing to help agents ramp up even more as we close out the year strong.
Last modified 5/15/2020 – Honesty. Integrity. Ethics. And Fun. That’s what we’re about… and we like to work with customers who live and work the same way. If you live life the same way, great! We’ll get along swimmingly. Please read our terms of service below so we’re all on the same page :-)
Here, you can review the most current version of the Terms of Service at any time. Carrot, LLC (together with its officers, directors, employees, agents, subsidiaries, and affiliates, “Carrot”) reserves the right to update and change the Terms of Service by posting updates and changes to the Carrot website. You are advised to check the Terms of Service from time to time for any updates or changes that may impact Your continued use of the website following the amendment confirms your consent to the amendment. Any new features that augment or enhance the current service, including the release of new tools and resources, are subject to these terms.
Violation of any of the terms may result in the termination of your account.
By using the Carrot.com services (“Service”), you are agreeing to be bound by the following terms and conditions:
You must provide your legal full name, a valid email address, and any other information requested in order to complete the signup process.
Your login may only be used by one person — a single login shared by multiple people is not permitted.
You are responsible for maintaining the security of your account and password. We are not liable for any loss or damage from your failure to comply with this security obligation.
You are responsible for all content posted and activity that occurs under your account.
Use of Carrot Content On Non-Carrot Websites Is Prohibited: You will use and post Carrot’s content (including our blog posts from our Content Marketing system) on Carrot’s sites without posting the content on another platform. Posting any of our stock website content, Content Marketing articles, Automated Content articles, or any content written by Carrot on any website outside of our system is prohibited. We will pursue any website hosting any of our copyright protected content with a request to cease and desist and/or we will pursue every measure possible including requesting the web host to remove the website containing the protected material.
Carrot has a world-class website backup protocol with multiple redundancies, stronger than that of traditional web hosts; however it is your sole responsibility to save any unique content you create and add to your website in an external location periodically. Examples could include copying and pasting a VideoPost transcription into a Google Drive document for external access in the future.
If you have a free account you may not block ads.
You may not remove our branding from your account.
PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK. We do not verify the accuracy of content posted on the website. Any agreements you make with others through the website are strictly between you and the third party. Investigate appropriately before dealing with someone you do not know. We are not responsible or liable for any claim, loss, or damage, of any kind related to your use of the website.
You promise and warrant that you will not use the website to:
Gather or extract any data or content;
Post or send anything that is false, fraudulent, or misleading;
Post or send anything that is unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, or sexually explicit;
Post anything that does not belong to you, that you do not have the legal right to post, or that impersonates someone else;
Send any unsolicited advertisements (SPAM);
Reproduce, duplicate, copy, sell, resell or exploit any portion of the website.
Your content may be transferred unencrypted over various networks.
Your site may be used in any Carrot publication without payment or any other consideration
If your bandwidth usage exceeds 300 MB/month or significantly exceeds the average bandwidth usage of our other customers, we reserve the right to immediately disable your account or throttle your file hosting until you reduce your bandwidth consumption.
We may collect information you provide to us. We may share your personal information if required to do so by law or in order to enforce these terms.
YOU ARE USING THE WEBSITE ENTIRELY AT YOUR OWN RISK. THE WEBSITE IS PROVIDED ON AN “AS-IS” BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND. ALL EXPRESS AND IMPLIED WARRANTIES, WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT OF PROPRIETARY RIGHTS ARE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMED TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW.
WE WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR EXEMPLARY DAMAGES DUE TO YOUR USE OF THE WEBSITE.
Our Legal Terms shall be treated as though it were executed and performed in Oregon, United States and shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of Oregon, the United States without regard to conflict of law principles.
IF YOU ARE DISSATISFIED WITH THE WEBSITE, YOU DO NOT AGREE WITH ANY PART OF THESE TERMS, OR HAVE ANY OTHER DISPUTE OR CLAIM WITH US OR ANOTHER USER OF THE WEBSITE, YOUR SOLE AND EXCLUSIVE REMEDY AGAINST US IS TO DISCONTINUE USING THE WEBSITE. OUR LIABILITY RELATED TO YOUR USE OF THE WEBSITE IS LIMITED TO $100 IN THE AGGREGATE FOR ALL CLAIMS. ANY CLAIM YOU MAY HAVE RELATED TO YOUR USE OF THE WEBSITE MUST BE COMMENCED BY FILING SUIT IN DOUGLAS COUNTY, OREGON, WITHIN ONE (1) YEAR OF THE EVENT UPON WHICH THE CLAIM IS BASED FIRST OCCURRED.
You agree to indemnify and hold us harmless from any claim or demand, including attorney fees and court costs, made by any third party related to your use of the website.
Carrot reserves the right to adjust pricing of plans and/or services at any time, which includes but is not limited to existing user accounts and/or new user accounts. As with any other expense in your business, as we improve and innovate on our product we incur more expenses to create a better and better tool for your business.
We do not screen any content you post. We do have the right, in our sole discretion, to remove any content from the website.
We do not allow the creation of forms or other material that would capture and store sensitive information on the sites including but not pertaining entirely to social security numbers.
If we fail to exercise or enforce any right or provision of the terms, we do not waive that right or provision. These terms constitute the entire agreement between us and govern your use of the website, superseding any prior agreements between us (including, but not limited to, any prior versions of the Terms of Service).
Your account may be terminated at any time for violation of these terms. In the event your account is terminated, no refund will be due to you. Termination will result in the deactivation or deletion of your account or your access to your account, and the forfeiture and relinquishment of all content in your account.
One powerful advantage with Carrot is we’re dedicated to being the highest performing website solution in the industry. We get this by continually testing changes and ideas on our clients’ websites. By joining Carrot you agree to allow our team to proactively run conversion split tests on your website with the intention of improving conversion rates over the long-term, with or without notice. Carrot has the right to run tests on websites with or without notice but you always have full access to the data and results of every test we run on your website(s) by simply requesting the results at any given time.
Payment, Trials, Refunds, Upgrading and Downgrading Terms
A valid credit card is required to sign up for all accounts. You will be charged for the first month when you sign up. All monthly fees are due in advance on a monthly basis.
If your card is declined and your credit card is not updated within 10 days, we reserve the right to cancel your account and deactivate your sites.
Our system will continue to automatically attempt to process an active account’s overdue invoices for 30 days.
Carrot will attempt to communicate if your account is in arrears. Communications include, but are not limited to, email, chat, sms/text, phone calls, and ringless voicemails.
If you cancel your subscription within 30 days of signing up, you will be refunded your first month upon your request. If you cancel your account after 30 days of signing up, you will not receive a refund and the account will remain active for your remaining subscription time.
If you have chosen the option to pay one annual payment for your subscription, the renewal and cancellation policy is the same as above. You have a full 30 days to try out your account and cancel within that time to receive a full refund, per these terms. There are no pro-rated refunds on annual accounts if you cancel more than 30 days after the initial purchase.
Each customer is entitled to only 1 refund under our 30-day guarantee. If you sign up and cancel within 30 days of signing up and receive a refund then sign up at a later date, you’re not eligible for a refund if you cancel again within the first 30 days.
Each customer is limited to one special or discount upon signing up for a subscription.
There is a 3% refund fee for each invoice that is refunded outside of the 30-day money-back guarantee.
If your account was canceled and you return to Carrot, you will be reactivated under the current plans and rates.
For any upgrade or downgrade in plan level, your credit card will automatically be charged the new rate on your next billing cycle.
Downgrading your account may cause the loss of content, features, or capacity of your account. We do not accept any liability for such loss.
Sales Tax. All fees are exclusive of taxes, which we will charge as applicable. You agree to pay any taxes applicable to your use of the Subscription Service and performance of Consulting Services. You shall have no liability for any taxes based upon our gross revenues or net income. If you are located in the European Union, all fees are exclusive of any VAT and you represent that you are registered for VAT purposes in your member state. At our request, you will provide us with the VAT registration number under which you are registered in your member state. If you do not provide us with a VAT registration number prior to your transaction being processed, we will not issue refunds or credits for any VAT that was charged. If you are subject to GST, all fees are exclusive of GST.
Cancelation and Termination
To cancel your account, you must log into your account at carrot.com/account/subscription and click the “Request Cancelation” button. Cancellations won’t be considered final until you’ve clicked the “Cancel Subscription” button inside of your account on your end. You fully control your own cancellation process. Immediately when you click the Cancel Subscription button our system stops all future billings. We may reach out to you to get feedback or see if we can help you afterward, but all future billings stop once you click the Cancel Subscription button for that subscription.
Cancellation is effective the day after you confirm your cancellation via email with our support team. Future monthly/annual charges will not be charged after the date of cancellation. There are no refunds on monthly or annual payments already made. The annual plan is intended for customers who are committed to utilizing Carrot in their business for at least 12 months and want the discount in exchange.
Upon cancellation, all of your content may be immediately and automatically be deleted from the Service. This information can not be recovered once your account is canceled.
CHARGEBACKS — In our history as a business, we pride ourselves in great customer service and helping our customers reach their goals. If our website isn’t a good fit for you, it’s your responsibility to cancel in a timely manner inside your account by clicking the “Cancel Subscription” button per the terms of this agreement. If you call your credit card company and claim you canceled when you did not formally request to cancel in our secured account, you agree to fully compensate us for all costs we incur as a result of your actions, which may include chargeback fees and attorney fees.
SEO Service Terms
You understand and accept that the practice of search engine optimization is risky and that results are not guaranteed due to certain factors being outside our control.
SEO results are not guaranteed. Previous poor SEO supplied by others may cause a devalue in rankings.
Google frequently make changes to the search engine algorithm which may impact your results.
Google does not publish its 200+ ranking factors.
We will not commence any work until you have paid for the Service.
You understand and accept that you may see no improvement of your website rankings or that there is the chance of a search engine not including your website in their search index.
We make no warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, infringement, or arising from a course of performance or dealing. Our service is provided AS-IS.
Failure to make payment per the contract agreement will result in penalties and the account will go to collections. If you have an active Carrot website with us Carrot has the right to terminate your website account if there is a default in your SEO service payments.
IDX Set Up Service Terms
You understand that the fee to set up your MLS listings on each Carrot website is a 1-time fee that will result in Carrot submitting paperwork to the IDX broker on your behalf. There is no guarantee that your MLS application will be approved and we will only submit to your local MLS what you submit through our intake form.
There is a monthly or annual fee to have access to the IDX integration feature on your Carrot website. If there is a lapse in payment the IDX service will cease and be removed from your website(s) and in order to reactivate and add IDX back to your website and submit paperwork to your local MLS, another setup fee will be required to re-add the IDX service after a lapse in the account.
You understand that in some cases the local MLS provider will charge a fee to use their listing service and we will pass that fee along to you with no markup.
You understand that if we are not able to successfully charge your card on file we are required to suspend your account’s access within 72 hours of a payment lapse to the IDX and MLS service so fees are not incurred on our behalf.
You understand you are fully responsible to follow all of the requirements of your MLS provider and will follow them while using Carrot’s platform. We are not responsible for any violations, fines, sanctions, or any other penalties you incur from a result of misuse, whether known or unknown, of the IDX or Carrot Agent services.
You understand there is paperwork that we will require you to sign so we can submit your paperwork to the IDX provider. We cannot proceed until you sign the necessary documents and we are not responsible for incorrect information submitted to your local MLS. If the resubmission is required for your IDX setup paperwork to your local MLS provider there may be a resubmission fee to do so.
Managed User Master Account Terms
Managed User account owners may only market and/or sell the Carrot services as part of a higher value package that includes other high-value products or services that the end customer is paying at least 3x the retail value of the website plan as it is sold and listed on our website. For example, if you are providing your customer with a 1 website package that sells at the retail value on the carrot.com website for $69/mo, the package your customer is purchasing from you must be at least 2x that amount ($138/mo or annual equivalent) unless otherwise agreed upon in writing with Carrot.
You agree that you cannot sell any Carrot products or services as stand-alone products or services or as the main and/or highest value element of the package as it may cause confusion or dilution in the marketplace for the Carrot product line.
Pricing: Pricing is on a per active user basis and depends on the level of account and number of websites we’ve agreed upon in writing that your clients will receive. Please refer to the signed agreement for the pricing details of your account.
Term: Managed user master accounts require a minimum 6-month agreement with a MINIMUM billing of $100/mo during that 6-month term with a 60 day grace period from the time we set up your Managed User account where we’ll waive the minimum billing requirement to help you learn the platform and ramp things up.
Copyright: The copyright terms that are lined out in our main terms of service also apply fully to the Managed User and the Managed Users end user fully. Carrot fully owns all content and design elements that come on our websites by default all or in part and may not be used outside of the Carrot website platform.
Payment: A monthly invoice will be generated and sent to you with charges for all active users on your account at 11:59 pm PST on the 15th of each month. Payments are due immediately. Payments will be considered late 30 days past the date of the invoice and will incur a 2% per month penalty.
Active User Counts: You agree that it is fully your responsibility as the Managed User account owner to ensure that your account is accurate. If a customer cancels your service, it’s your responsibility to cancel out the customer from the Managed User interface to remove them from your “actives” list for billing. All active users at 11:59 pm PST on the 15th of each month will be counted in and invoiced for.
Support: Billing support with your end user is fully your responsibility since you are collecting the payment from the customer on your end. It’s your responsibility as the Managed User account owner to help the customer set up the CNAMEs for their domain names. All other everyday technical support on the use of the Carrot products is provided through our normal support channels that our direct customers enjoy access to.
Cancellation: 30 days notice must be given to cancel your Managed User Master Account. Cancellation must happen by email to support@carrot.com only.
As you can see, the drop in daily budget can significantly impact accounts.
When your account is limited by budget, it’s as if you are trying to withdraw money from a bank account with no funds.
That means Google has to wait until more money is available to be able to show ads.
In this post, we explore what that “limited by budget” notice means and some strategies you can use to get the most out of your real estate Google Ads campaigns after seeing this message.
What Does “Limited By Budget” Mean?
The Google Ads support guide states that your campaign status is “Limited by Budget” which means:
“A campaign status used when your average daily budget is lower than the recommended amount. When this happens, ads aren’t regularly showing as often as possible.”
Simply put, if your keywords and bids could spend more than your daily budget limit, you will get this message.
To see what Google recommends your daily budget be, click on the bar graph icon “Eligible (Limited) Limited by budget” message. You will see a graph like the one below. This can help you understand how much you limit your account and what a new budget might mean.
What Happens When Your Real Estate Campaigns Are Limited By Budget?
Your ad impressions will be lower. Being limited by the budget will impact how often your ads can be shown throughout the day. If you run out of budget early in the day, you’ll have data that don’t necessarily represent the campaign’s health.
Your ads will not receive as many clicks. Obviously, your clicks will go down if your ads aren’t getting impressions. From the example above, sometimes you can see a significant dip even in 14 days. We’ve been asked, “Isn’t having fewer clicks a good thing?” meaning “bad” clicks are eliminated. That’s not the case. Even a limited-by-budget campaign can attract clicks that aren’t 100% what you’re looking for.
Your conversion rates can suffer. Hockey great Wayne Gretzky once said, “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.” If your Google Ads budget is limited, you’re missing opportunities to convert visitors into leads with each missed click.
What Limited By Budget Factors Impact Your Real Estate Campaigns
Your real estate keyword selection. If you’ve done your job finding the keywords that fit your real estate business research, then the keywords in your account should give you a chance to convert to leads. So, if people search for motivated seller keywords and click on your ads, your limited budget will be spent quickly.
Your real estate ad copy. Be specific in your ad copy. If your ads are too broad, it might attract the wrong type of real estate visitor.
Your keywords bids. Every keyword clicked is going to cost you money. You’ll tap out your budget sooner if your bids are higher.
Your campaign settings. Google Ads offers many campaign settings that can impact your budget. You can raise and lower device bids, ad schedules, and target locations and use automated bid strategies.
Overall… Your daily budget will be the #1 factor.
Ideas That Can Help Optimize Google Ads Accounts Limited By Budget
Here are some ideas you can implement for an account limited by budget. These ideas can help stretch your daily spending, but at some point, you’ll be sacrificing keywords, impressions, and/or leads if you don’t have the budget to 1) show ads throughout the day and 2) show ads in the top four ad positions.
Decrease keyword bids. Since your budget will only stretch so far, each click puts your ads closer to shutting down for the day. You can decrease your bids on keywords that you’ve found are too expensive to be at the top of the page or have consistently been within the number one or two ad positions. You can bid for a lower ad position, such as three or four. You’ll need to monitor your average ad positions to be sure your ads still serve on the top of the page.
Create an ad schedule. You can run some reports to see if you can find time pockets that have generated the most leads and create schedules only to show ads within those times. Unfortunately, real estate isn’t like other industries. Your best-motivated seller lead might come at a time you don’t expect. But, if you can find good data, playing the odds can help extend your budget.
Consider your target locations. Run some geographic reports to find the areas with the highest cost per click, the most clicks, and, most importantly, the highest conversion rates. If you’re targeting multiple areas, find those with a lower cost per click and enough search volume to help conversion rates. Remove some areas from your target locations if they are too expensive and/or aren’t generating leads.
Device bid adjustments. You have the option to change your bids for devices – mobile, desktop, and tablets. Run a device report to find your cost per click, clicks, and leads. You might find desktop devices get clicks, but leads aren’t as high as mobile devices. You can adjust your desktop bids by decreasing them by a percentage.
Negative keywords. Not all real estate keywords are created equal. Motivated seller campaigns aren’t looking for buyers, and real estate agent buyer campaigns aren’t looking for sellers. Find the keywords that don’t make sense for your campaign and add them to your negative keyword list. This will allow your budget to, for the most part, be spent on searches from your target audience. Need a little help? Here’s a free negative keyword list for a motivated seller campaign.
You always want to be evaluating your Google Ads account. That could be on a bi-weekly or monthly basis. It would be best to constantly track your current keywords, ads, settings, bids, and so on. You’re always looking for the best ways to accomplish the end goal… generate more leads at a lower cost.
One of the biggest advantages to Google Ads and other paid traffic sources is you can see data quickly and restructure accounts to improve results quickly.
If you have keywords that aren’t generating leads but have the most clicks in your account, it might be a good time to re-evaluate your keyword approach. Ask yourself:
Are you getting enough leads to justify the cost of these keywords?
What are the actual search terms that are converting?
Is it possible to focus on less expensive variations of that keyword?
For example, if you’re bidding on “sell house,” but the actual search terms that convert are “sell house fast,” you might be able to save some money by being more precise with your keyword targeting.
Being limited by budget might be part of your Google Ads experience. Some might be starting and managing their campaigns without the comfort level. Others might split marketing budgets between Google Ads, Facebook, and direct mail.
But you can still make the most of your real estate Google Ads account by knowing what causes the “limited by budget” status and adjusting your strategy to fit your account’s expectations better.
If you shut off your marketing, you have no business. Your pipeline is 3-4 months down the road.
– Gary Boomershine
Marketing for Real Estate During COVID | How to Adjust Your Messaging and Budget through the Pandemic
Back in May, I shared the data behind how COVID is affecting motivated sellers and exactly how investors should be adapting through this unpredictable market. Now, this was all on a private Zoom call with our friends at RealEstateInvestor.com.
I want to share it with you because the concepts and strategies we go over are just as relevant today as they were a few months ago. When others are not willing to change with the times, this is your chance to serve people better than ever, and come out thriving.
Read the Full Show Notes Below…
One thing I really love about what we do here at Carrot is the data we are able to provide. When we started, it wasn’t just to help people create pretty sites. It was to help them create sites that perform. Our friends Robert and Gary over at Real Estate Investor have a similar mindset: helping people succeed in this competitive market.
With an unstable economy, the wrath of COVID, and uncertain sellers, it can feel discouraging to spend your marketing dollars when you aren’t certain about the results. In this call, we talked about why you shouldn’t be pulling back, what you should be doing instead, and the results you can expect from your actions going forward.
Shifting Into Opportunity
With everything going on, many investors are pulling back on their marketing, which in all honesty, is a huge mistake. Here at Carrot, we see about 80,000 leads come through our system each month.
Since the stay at home orders hit, these numbers haven’t dropped off. What has dropped slightly is conversion rates, and this is exactly where savvy investors and agents will find opportunity.
Problems Aren’t Going Away
There are many homeowners out there who are struggling with a mortgage, repairs, or other financial concerns. However, they are hesitant to make a move because they don’t want people in their homes or they aren’t sure if they can move or where they can go. It is up to YOU to educate them on their options and the solutions.
Change your messaging and answer these questions for them before they even ask! Acknowledge their concerns and let them know exactly how you will help to keep them safe during the pandemic. As you’ve heard me say before, shake the skeletons, address their concerns, and let them know that you are here to help.
Trust The Math
When you look at your sales pipeline, it could be several weeks or even months before you are able to close a deal. Many statistics show it takes around 6 “touches” to successfully close a deal.
If you pull back on your marketing today, this affects what you will be closing in 30, 60, and 90 days. Your competition, who stays with it, will reap the rewards, where those who stop their marketing will see their earning potential quickly fade away.
What you are doing today, creates the results you will see tomorrow.
I always advise people to trust the math. I’ve been asked, “What can I do for 5k?” And the answer is that I really don’t know. You need to run the numbers for your market to find out what you are willing to trade in order to generate a profit. Here’s the equation I use:
First, I will look at the average profit per deal.
For this example, let’s say it is $20k. Then I will determine how many leads it takes in order to close one deal. Let’s say it takes 10 high-quality leads to get a deal. Now ask yourself, what would you trade to get that $20k?
Many people would happily give up $5k in order to get $20k, which equates to $500 per lead. Sure, that may sound high, and you will likely be able to get leads for less, however, don’t give up on your marketing until you have spent that $5k. You can use multiple channels and keep in mind that there is an ebb and flow process to all advertising.
If you were to Google “sell my house fast” and any given city, you are likely to see Carrot websites dominating the search results. I hear people say that a lot of the Carrot sites look alike, but with our new designs and simpler editing process, it is easy to make your Carrot site more unique.
We have recently launched several new designs plus a drag-and-drop editor making things easier than ever. We have many clients who have done so much to their site, you would never know it was built by Carrot!
Right now, people may seem hesitant to sell, however they are likely going to need more help than ever before. Now is not the time to slow down. It is the time to shift to meet the market demand.
With iBuyers taking a step back along with many other investors and agents out there, now is your time to swoop in, show people what you can do, and become the solution that so many people need right now.
To be fair, many real estate agents focus on offline marketing tactics… and they do well for themselves.
In fact, we’re going to discuss some of the most effective offline marketing strategies in this article.
But here’s the thing: online marketing is still the best way to find clients and grow your business in today’s world.
Just consider some of this cold hard data…
But before you start driving traffic to your website, you need to optimize your website to actually convert that traffic.
That way, the phone is ringing and you’re collecting clients left and right.
Well, that’s what we specialize in at Carrot.
We’ve created (and tested) real estate agent website templates that convert like crazy. Here’s a little preview of what they look like…
There are a few things we do that most websites don’t.
And these differences are critical.
First, we put your phone number in the upper right corner, so that visitors are encouraged to pick up the phone and call.
Second, we shamlessly prompt people to give you their contact information whenever they click on the “Search Properties” button…
That way, even if they don’t call you, you can follow up with them.
We even provide text message notifications so that you get immediately notified when your website receives a new lead.
That’s just a quick overview of why Carrot websites convert better than any other websites in the industry.
(We have a ton of other included features to help your business grow!)
If you want to try us out risk-free for 30 days, go here to start building your high-converting website!
2. Optimize Your Website For Search Engines
Search engine optimization — commonly known as SEO — is one of the best ways to collect leads and find clients over the long term.
You probably won’t find clients overnight using this strategy.
But after weeks, months, and years, SEO is one common factor of real estate businesses that stand the test of time.
Why?
To explain what we mean, you first have to understand how SEO works…
92% of all home buyers use the internet at some point in their home search. And the websites that they find help to determine the house that they buy and, more importantly, the realtor that they work with.
This is also true of home sellers when they type things like “realtors in my city” into Google when looking for a real estate agent to work with.
The goal of SEO is to get these people — your target market — to find your website.
Because if they find your website, then they might call you and they might become a client.
In fact, most of our members claim that SEO leads are far higher quality than leads they get from paid advertisements.
The best part is that once you’re ranking on page one for a high-value keyword phrase, you’ll start generating leads on autopilot, without any additional marketing.
And websites that make it to page one usually stay there for quite a while.
Which is why SEO is such a great long-term marketing strategy.
So… how do you optimize your website to rank in Google?
Our Carrot sites are built to help you tackle this process.
We provide all of our AgentCarrot members with monthly optimized content for their blog, tools for tracking rankings, and more.
Click the link to learn more.
3. Real Estate Facebook Ads
Facebook ads are great because you can turn them on to generate leads and find clients whenever you want… but turn them off when you already have plenty of work coming in.
Our most successful members use SEO for their longterm lead generation, but paid advertisements and mailers (which we’ll talk about next) for faster results.
Especially if you’re just getting started, Facebook ads are a great way to find clients.
Even simple advertisements of your listings, like the below example, can do really well…
4. Send Mailers
Direct mail is one of the most powerful client-finding tools for real estate agents.
It feels more personal than email, you can send a lot of it at once, and if you do it correctly, it’ll almost always get the phone ringing.
But naturally, you don’t want to waste money.
And direct mail can certainly be a little expensive.
So how can you ensure that your mailers are going to get responses before you send them?
Here’s some advice…
Know Who You’re Targeting — What are the demographics of your mailing list? Are you sending to homeowner who might be interested in selling? Or are you sending to renters who might be interested in buying? Your mailers should speak directly to the people you’re targeting.
Make It Personal — When people choose a real estate agent, it’s primarily an emotional decision. That is, they have to like the person that they’re going to work with. And making your mailers a little more personal with photos can go a long way toward helping them make a favorable decision.
Be Friendly — Most people will choose to work with you because they like you and they trust you. And creating direct mail that feels friendly is a great way to build credibility and increase your response rate. This can be as simple as sending “Merry Christmas!” mailers during the holidays.
Send Enough Mailers — Direct mail is mostly a numbers game. So long as your mail is friendly and appealing to your recipients, getting a response is simply a matter of sending enough mail. According to most stats, the average response rate for real estate direct mail is between 2% and 4%. So you should be sending several hundred mailers at a time.
There’s no question: social media is a very powerful marketing platform for darn-near every industry… your real estate business is no exception.
How quickly you find new clients through social media will largely depend on how much of a following you already have and how much people in the community trust you.
So if you’re new to social media, don’t expect overnight success.
Building trust on Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms isn’t something that should be sporadic — it works best if you create a content schedule and then stick to it… posting at least a few times per weepk.
The Farr Group — a husband-and-wife owned real estate company — is great at using Instagram to build brand awareness and even generate leads.
And when we spoke with Aaron and Krista Farr, one interesting things that they mentioned was how engagement on social media only means so much when it comes to actual lead generation.
They said they’ve met a lot of people who knew them from social media or who even became clients because of their Instagram profile, but who never actually commented on or “liked” their content.
In other words, your content is probably reaching more people than you think.
Don’t take your engagement metrics at face value.
Be consistent, follow the process, and you might be surprised at how social media helps you to grow a thriving business.
It might not be the first method you choose for finding new clients, but looking through for-sale-by-owner listings on Craigslist — especially ones that have been around for a while — can be a helpful strategy.
Just go to Craigslist and click on “real estate for sale”.
Then, you can filter the listings as for sale by owner…
Browse through the listings and look for indications that the seller is having trouble closing on the home — a long time has passed since it was originally listed, for example, or the sellers sound desperate in their description.
These might not make the best clients in the world… and some people will probably get mad at you for calling them and offering your services.
But you might just stumble across someone who’s glad you called.
And it’s the victories you have to fight for that are often the sweetest, anyways.
So why not give it a shot? You’ve got nothing to lose!
7. Network, Network, Network
When it comes to finding your first clients, building trust in your community, and growing your business organically, there’s nothing quite as powerful as networking.
And we’re talking about networking with other business owners, local politicians, and anyone else with sway in the community.
The fact is, everyone needs a home to live in… so there’s really no one who you shouldn’t network with.
Everyone probably knows someone who wants to buy or sell a home in the near future and so networking is always a benefit to your business.
Real estate is one of those industries where just getting to know people can grow your business.
And the more people you get to know — more importantly, the more people who get to know you — the more clients you’re going to get through friendly referrals.
So go to business meetups, attend community celebrations, and join in on charitable events.
Meetup.com is a great place to find local groups of people with different interests.
With enough time, you’ll become an icon of the community and people will start to automatically think of you when they think of buying or selling a home.
And that’s exactly what you want.
8. Door Knocking
It’s not the prettiest or flashiest (or even the most time effective) way to find clients for your real estate business, but door knocking can certainly help!
Here’s something to keep in mind: when you’re just getting started as a real estate agent, you’ll have to work harder to find clients.
You’re just starting to build trust and become an icon in the community… but that takes time.
And a simple stroll through the neighborhood where you knock on a few doors and introduce yourself can go a long way toward building meaningful relationships.
It can even help you generate leads and referrals.
You might be surprised at how willing people are to help when you ask nicely.
This is something you can even do on your daily walk around the neighborhood — just commit to knocking on 5 new doors every day and see what happens!
Two FREE Real Estate Scripts for Door Knocking
Script 1
Hey!
Sorry to bother you. My name is [name] and I just had a quick question. Do you know of anyone who is thinking of selling their home in the area?
I’m new to the area and I’m just trying to get my real estate business off the ground, so I’m looking for some folks who need help selling their home or buying their next home.
[Wait for response]
That sounds great. I really appreciate the help… just thought I’d knock on a few doors as I’m going for my evening stroll.
Here’s my business card, by the way.
Feel free to contact me at any time if you or someone you know wants help with a real estate transaction.
Have a great day!
Script 2
Hey there,
My name is [name] and I’m a new real estate agent in the area. Are you or someone you know trying to buy or sell a home?
I’m just trying to get my real estate business off the ground.
[Wait for response]
Great! I appreciate your help.
Here’s my business card — feel free to contact me anytime to chat about all things real estate.
Have a great day!
9. Brochures & Posters
How many people visit your local coffee shop every single day?
What about your local bakery or your local gym?
In many communities (especially smaller ones), local businesses want to support other local businesses.
And one great way to leverage that fact is by getting to know local business owners and asking them if you can put up a poster in their window or lay some free brochures on their counter.
Many of them will be more than happy to help.
As for what your poster or brochure should look like, just think of it as a compelling piece of direct mail — people you’ve never met before are going to see it and, in an instant, they’re going to decide whether to call you or not.
So put your best foot forward.
Here’s a great example…
10. Get Some Local Press
You might not know it, but your local newspapers, magazines, and other media outlets are constantly looking for interesting stories to tell.
How about they tell a story about your new business?
Just give the editors a call and tell them about what you have going on — if you have a particularly interesting angle, then be sure to mention that as well.
Alternatively, you could pitch a letter-to-the-editor article that updates people on the local real estate market, further establishing your expertise.
Here’s a general idea of what you might say (via email or phone call)…
Hey there!
My name is Mike and I just started my real estate business in the area.
This is a big undertaking for me but I’m very excited about it.
If you’re up for it, I’d love to talk with you about what it takes to start a new business in the community and how amazing our city really is — maybe we could even include some other local businesses owners in the project?
Maybe I’m wrong… but it seems like we could create a great article on that topic!
Let me know if this catches your interest :)
Mike
You might be suprised at how people respond!
Shemeika Fox, one of our awesome members, actually flips the script. Instead of seeking out press, she creates the press. She interviews local business owners, publishes their stories on her website and asks them to share it on social media.
This generates additional traffic to her website and builds her local authority — not a bad idea!
11. YouTube for Real Estate Agents
In terms of marketing, real estate is highly visual.
People want to see the homes that you’re trying to sell, they want to get to know you as a person, and they want to learn about how you can help them.
YouTube is a wonderful platform for accomplishing those goals.
You can easily upload house-showing videos…
And you can upload educational videos…
Posting content like this will help you build credibility and generate leads for your business.
But how do you get people to see your content once it’s live?
The first step is to share your video on all of your social channels and email it out to your subscribers — take advantage of the audience you already have.
Then you might also consider trying to get your video ranking in YouTube for a high-value keyword phrase.
And if you’re a Carrot member, then you can transcribe your video with a single click using our VideoPost feature, turning it into a long-form blog post that can also rank in Google.
12. Drip Marketing
Whenever you collect leads, you should put those people on an email list.
This allows you to contact those leads all at once in a semi-personal manner. Over time, your email list will become one of your most valuable assets.
Because the more that you provide those people with free value, the more that they’re going to trust you and the more likely it is that they’ll reach out to when they’re trying to buy or sell a home.
Well, the first thing you’ll want to do is set-up an automatic 5- to 7-email drip sequence that sends to everyone after they subscribe.
This sequence should build your credibility and work to drive them toward taking the action you want them to take.
But it doesn’t need to be super complicated.
Here’s an idea for topics you can focus on with each email…
Day 1 – Get To Know Eachother — Tell the new lead about yourself and ask them to do the same by replying to your email and telling them a little bit about why they joined your email list.
Day 2 – Testimonial/Case Study — Talk about a past experience where you helped a buyer or seller to accomplish their goals. Use this to build credibility.
Day 3 – Why Are You a Realtor? — Tell people why you decided to become a realtor in the first place. This gives them an idea of who you are and what makes you tick, which helps them to build a meaningful relationship with you.
Day 4 – Free Value — Provide some sort of free value for the lead. Teach them something new or point them toward a blog post that you recently wrote or a video that you recently recorded.
Day 5 – Ask — Tell them you’re going to start emailing them just once a week, but that if they ever want to sell their home or buy a new home, you’re ready to roll.
Setting this drip sequence up will do a lot for making the most of the leads that you’re already generating.
Plus, once it’s set up, you don’t need to think about it again for a while because it’ll run on autopilot.
13. Open Houses
If you’re looking for homebuyers, then running open houses is certainly a great way to find leads.
Just make sure to announce your upcoming open house to as many people in the community as possible.
The more people who know about it, the better turnout you’re going to have.
But here’s the other opportunity that many real estate agents don’t think about… all of the people who come to your open house are also probably thinking of selling their home. This is a great chance to not just get to know people in the community and generate buyer leads, but also to find some sellers you can work with.
Don’t be pushy, of course.
But do collect contact information, hand out business cards, and gently converse with anyone who attends.
14. Get Real Estate Referrals
Especially when you’re starting out, referrals are one of the quickest and easiest ways to find clients.
If you’re still trying to find your very first client, then reach out to friends and family and ask them for referrals.
If you have a few happy clients under your belt, reach out and ask them for referrals.
You will probably be surprised at how many people are willing to help you out.
Just take a look at the stats…
Real Estate Agents: Ready To Find Your First Clients?
You now have everything you need to find your first clients… and to find clients well into the future.
These strategies are simple, straight-forward, and relatively easy to execute. But they are also very effective.
It might take time for you to build momentum and grow your business to where you want it, but stay the course, trust the process, and keep going.
The real estate agents who win are the ones who keep going even when the going gets tough.
The above 14 strategies work for other agents and they’ll work for you, too.
Hey, JT with Silver Street Marketing here. I’m going to discuss why it’s important to have an active Facebook page to find motivated sellers.
We’re going to be going over a couple of reasons of why that’s going to help your business, and how it’s going to be able to benefit you in finding more leads, as well as help give you a little bit more of a different, social proof aspect and kind of add to the identity of your business.
Why You Need a Facebook Page to Find Motivated Sellers
Reason 1: Obviously one of the first reasons that people think of why it’s important to have a Facebook page is the ability that it has to drive traffic to your website, it’s an extra point of conversion so another place that people can find you.
The goal of digital marketing is to take up as much of the screen as possible. So if you can be on Facebook searches, when people Google search you and they can find a Facebook business profile on Google even, that’s just going to add one more, one more little key, one more little piece to taking up that entire page.
That’s going to give you the opportunity to drive more traffic, get in front of more eyeballs and ultimately raise more impressions and get more people reaching out to you. It’s all about taking up as much digital real estate as possible.
Facebook gives you a platform in itself that is very extensive and can be found in multiple different pieces and can help add to that idea of just taking up more digital real estate space.
Reason 2: A second reason why it’s smart to have a Facebook page is because of social proof.
This is a place where you can really show people who are following you, why it’s important to sell their house to you for cash, or why it works, or tell them a little bit about who you’ve worked with in the past, or how you’re able to help somebody and the solutions that you offer.
It’s really easy to do that because it’s such a content-based platform. And because people are searching you out actively, you’re going to have people that you don’t even know, follow you or anything like that, coming back and checking your page.
They’re checking to see what you’re doing. They are interested. And this gives them the opportunity to be able to become a conversion, to be able to become somebody that you help, somebody that is your next client.
To be able to add that to your business is really a big deal because social proof is really the reason why people fill out a form. The reason why they give you a call is because they have found the proof by somebody else that reaching out to you is not a mistake. That it’s a good thing and that it will help them. So adding that social proof by adding a Facebook page really will help grow your business.
Reason 3: A third reason why it’s important to have a Facebook page is the habit of getting into content creation.
When we talk about social proof, this kind of goes hand in hand. In order to get more social proof, which you can do on multiple different platforms, having it on Facebook really helps you get into the habit of producing content.
Producing content will help get more impressions and more eyeballs, but it’ll also help you understand your potential clients more, by giving them value and finding things that will give value to them.
Your Facebook page can really get you in the habit of that. You’ll see reactions and you’ll see how people are reacting to what you’re posting. Maybe it’s really good reactions; maybe it’s negative reactions. How do you present that differently to make sure that it is positive or stay as positive so that you can later engage with the audience when they’re maybe a little bit more ready? Content allows you to drip on those people and stay relevant in front of them.
Reason 4: The next reason kind of follows that same method of thinking, that content will help raise that those impressions and it’ll help give you more social proof, but what it will also do is the Facebook page will give you and your business a true identity in the space.
People are able to connect with you on a different level, whether your business name is Rick Buys Houses, or We Sell Houses Fast Memphis, it doesn’t matter. By having all this content on your page, what you’re doing is you’re creating a brand personality and identity, and that’s what people want to connect with.
They don’t want to just connect with companies and businesses because companies and businesses are related to making money, right?
A person is related to service and to helping you, by producing that right brand identity and that right image through your content. This is done through your Facebook page.It’s going to give you an upper hand when it comes down to people deciding which company they want to work with.
When there’s an identity that they can relate with, that’s where most likely they’re going to go. They relate with what your business stands for because you’ve put that into an image.
You’ve put that into something almost tangible for them, almost a relationship for them. Creating that brand identity through your Facebook page is really important. We can do that by showing people into our own beliefs, into our way of thinking into our benefits, because we say, “We are people trying to help you. We’re not a business trying to make money.”
That’s something that a Facebook page naturally can do as well because it’s so based on having an identity.
Reason 5: A lot of people come forward and say, “Hey, I want to drive more traffic to my website.” Your Facebook page is necessary in order to run Facebook ads which is one of the best ways to get traffic and driving people to your website.
It’s very important that you have a Facebook page in place before you do that because a Facebook page that’s already more established is going to perform better because it already has audiences that are engaging with it.
The algorithm already has some data that’s in the background that it can work off of. So having a Facebook page for longer, is going to season your account and help you be more successful.
Ultimately when it comes down to a Facebook page, you need to be consistent with it.
You are going to see results come in all ways, shapes and forms, but definitely the way that we talked about in this post, as long as you consistently give your page some attention, commenting back to people who are commenting to you, answering any questions that are coming through the messenger, treating it as if you are a person behind that logo, because that’s what’s going to get people to keep flocking towards you and you’re going to attract more people instead of having to put so much time and effort into purely just try to find them.
There’s a lot of things that Facebook can do for you and I hope you guys can take this and go on and make your page.
If you need help creating your page, continue to read this post. Below, we dive into how to create your Facebook page to find more motivated sellers.
How to Create a Facebook Business Page for a Real Estate Investor
Video Transcription
In this section, we are going to be going over how to create a Facebook business page to cultivate more motivated sellers and give you a little bit of a hub to build some brand awareness on Facebook and get started on your Facebook journey.
If you have never created a Facebook page before, it’s very simple. Just log into your Facebook and you’re going to come up here to the top and you’re just going to hit, create. It’s going to pop up and a little section here that says, page.
And we can just click away. It will load up and you’re going to find under business, get started and we’re going to name our page. I’m going to name it JT Homebuyers.
Now, we’re going to do our category. I like to just type in real estate and just do the broad real estate right here. Obviously, there are other options you can pick from, but generally, I just do this one.
We have the option to put in your address and a phone number, it just depends on what you want. So that is up to you.
For this example, I’ll go ahead and add the address.
That brings us to a page where we need to now upload a profile picture and get everything working for the new page.
For this example, I’m going to upload a picture of myself and my wife. I recommend to either upload a picture of you, or you can upload a picture of your logo, as long as it’s going to fit in there. But people oftentimes like to respond to personal looking pages.
So sometimes I’ll do a picture of the actual owner of the company or an acquisitions manager, or sometimes I’ll do a picture of the logo itself.
Now we need a cover photo. I made this cover photo using Canva. I’ll show you how in a moment, but Facebook also offers a free appointment booking tool that people can book appointments through your page.
You can take advantage of this, or you can build a Calendly scheduling link that you can put in as well. Just be sure to have those connected to your posts or your app. I’m going to go ahead and skip this just for the time being, but you can always go back to using this stuff as well.
Back to the cover photo, I created on Canva. It’s very simple. There are general templates you can already use, but this is where you start.
Now that we have our profile picture up and ready to edit. You can update and edit it, change it, crop, and do numerous other changes to make it look nice and pretty.
The next thing we want to do is add a button. Generally, I will recommend to people they either do a call or a learn more button.
If you decide to do a “contact you”, you can see more options such as, send message, or contact us, call now. I’m just going to use www.silverstreetmarketing.com, click save, and then we’re going to hit finish.
Now somebody clicks on that button, they will be taken to my website. Or, if you did a call us, it would just call you immediately from either their cell phone or if they have some sort of service hooked up to their tablet or computer.
Now it’s time to add more to our “about us” section. Generally for this, I’ll use the same picture as my cover photo, or I’ll create a new one entirely just for it.
I’m going to name it, we buy houses with cash in any condition. This is going to show in the bottom right hand corner of our actual page.
Then we write an article.
One thing to do is go to your website and actually copy and paste your information from there. Or, you can write this freehand, whatever you’d like. I’m just going to go ahead and write freehand for just the example.
I’ll use, “We buy houses all across Utah with cash. No matter the condition or situation, we can provide a custom solution for you.” with a quick call to action, “Get your cash offer at www.silverstreetmarketing.com.”
Then I’m going to keep talking about what I offer. So, “Cash solution can be a good fit for you if you need to sell quickly, are behind on payments or taxes.”
You can keep going on and talk about why your offer is a good offer for them.
Once we finish that, we’ll just go ahead and hit publish, and we’ll show you kind of where this is going to pop up so that people will actually be able to click and read it.
The more information that you can give on this page, the more likely you have a chance of having somebody actually reach out to you because they feel comfortable. They feel like they’ve got what they needed from understanding you and the social proof and going forward from there.
You’ll have additional options to add too. I would definitely say, enter your website. What this does is gives multiple points of conversion. You can enter an email or, add more about us, whatever you’d like.
Going to come back to the homepage we want to go into the page information and make sure that we’ve got everything set up correctly and have enough information in there so that when people come across our site, again, they have more information that they can get their social proof from.
Next, we can add a description, “We buy houses with cash.” Go on and describe your business a little bit. Add your phone number and email. I always like to add operations. I don’t just do always open. I feel like people come across that and they kind of think that’s a little weird.
So I’ll actually put times for every day, like 8:00 to 5:00 or 7:00 to 7:00, and I’ll leave Sunday off or whatever I want to do. I’ll leave the price range off. Then the privacy policy. I go to my website and grab the content from the privacy page, and add it.
Adding People to Your Page
Going forward, if you ever want to add somebody to your page, you can come down here into page roles. And what you can do is you actually find them on Facebook and add them to the page.
You can type them in right here and then you can assign them to the page. I really like using a business manager. I think it’s a little bit easier to manage all this and to be able to do it and add an agency to the page without having to make them an admin.
The way that you do that is you just go to business.facebook.com and you hit sign up and it will link through your Facebook account and link your page to your business manager, where you can share your page with other people without having to add them manually and without having to give them so much access. You can choose what they’re going to see and what they’re going to do and send them actual invites. So that’s a little bit easier.
Automated Messaging
Next, there is an option to set up basic automated messaging. You can add the messaging in the advanced messaging tabs, where you can actually set up different messaging parameters for when people are sending messages to you.
This is where you would connect your ManyChat or other Facebook chat software. You can also request different features.
Hop into the “other messaging” tab where you’re going to be able to set it some basic messages and settings for the messages. If you were to want to show a greeting, you just go ahead and turn this on, and then you can type in what it’s going to say.
For example, the generic version is, “Hi, first name and last name. Thanks for getting in touch with us on Messenger. Please send us any questions you may have.”
Some other things that you can do are add Messenger to your website and set up automated responses.
You can set up little tabs that they can select that say, like, “Learn more about our business.” And they can press it, and then you’ll tell them more about your business with an automated bot.
I would suggest if you’re going to do stuff like that, ManyChat is a really good platform to get used to and to add that it’s a little bit easier to build on their platform. Another thing that you can always do is take the link for your Messenger and share that if you have people who want to reach out to you.
Just copy and paste it and people can click on it and message you from there without having to go to your page and then go through messaging. They can just click on that little link.
From here on out, you’ve got your Instagram that you can connect. You can obviously connect WhatsApp. You’ve got different platforms that these can kind of go together with.
Then, if you have any messages coming in, you can access all that up under “inbox.” You can also manage any of the posts that you’re posting just by going over here to the more and going to publishing tools.
It will bring up past posts. You can go into the Creator Studio and make different posts as well. It’s a little bit more seamless, a little bit easier to schedule posts for the future.
I’d suggest grabbing all of your Carrot blog posts that you’re getting or the SEO that you’re doing, and come into Creator Studio and start creating these. And say, “Hey, I want these scheduled out.”
You can do this on the homepage too, but I just find it a little bit nicer to use the Creator Studio. It seems to flow a little bit easier. You can upload multiple videos at once, you can upload multiple pictures at once and assign those out to different posts.
So it’s really simple.
How to Create Posts
Start by clicking “create posts.”
This is where you would paste your Carrot information. Next, you can click the schedule, backdate, and saved draft. If you schedule, you’re scheduling for the future. If you backdate, you’ll backdate up until the day that you created the Facebook page. So for this example, we created it today, we can’t backdate anything.
If you had created a Facebook page a year ago, you could backdate all your posts, so you can put a bunch of posts in the past to give you an essence that you’ve been around, been posting on the page longer. Or you have a little bit more social proof for people to go back in this scroll line with.
Just in case, I want to show you again, if you don’t want to use this Creator Studio, you can just go back to the main page and post this right here in the beginning.
If you’re posting on your own Facebook page, use write post. In the end, it will give you the option to schedule your post.
If you guys have any questions about how to set this up, we’d love to help you and make sure that everything’s working well and that you’re on a great path to get success from Facebook.
Be sure to check out our other videos about how to set up ads, what ads we’ve been using, what KPIs we use, and how we’re getting more leads for our clients by using Facebook.
The COVID-19 crisis is impacting all of us in some way, shape, or form. So what I wanted to dive into is what data we have in our system with over 10,000 real estate investor and agent websites.
What data are we seeing right now and how the lead flow has been impacted by COVID-19 for real estate buyers and sellers?
[Updated August 6] New Data Pointing to Conversion Rate Increases
New Research
There has been a clear shift towards new lead generation, and how our members are acquiring those in the past two months during the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to our Google Analytics data, when comparing April and May to June and July, there has been a conversion rate increase of 10.92%.
Paid Search has seen the largest shift, jumping 39.48% over the past two months. Compared to what we reported in April, it seems paid traffic has begun to normalize.
Sessions are coming down as more people are feeling confident in the house selling process.
Here are the numbers for the eight common channels:
Organic search: 3.21% increase
Direct: 7.84% increase
Social: 10% increase
Paid Search: 39.48% increase
Referral: 21.23% increase
Email: 36.72% decrease
Other: 0.26% increase
Display: 21.43% decrease
In May, our data was showing sessions steadily increasing:
We also saw conversion rates have begin to increase since a dip in mid-April:
Here’s what one Carrot member said recently…
Some of the main changes we’re seeing are:
Overall traffic from all sources has continued to increase week over week… meaning there is more demand right now for buyers and sellers needing solutions to their problems than before.
Conversion rates stayed low for a few weeks but are now on the uptick as the overall sentiment in the US is improving and people are starting to get out more.
Predictions: I predict once the stay at home orders lift we’ll see conversions go up above where they were for a short period then settle into normal zones.
Double down on why it’s important to NOT stop your marketing even if lead costs are higher from lower conversion rates… because the people are still searching… so you need to be getting content in front of them NOW while they’re researching and followup w/ them through retargeting so you’re in front of them when they’re ready. This should create a surge in demand once stay at home orders lift… but only those who stayed in front of the market will capture that demand.
I pulled up our own Google Analytics account, which is a master account for all of our member websites that are generating the top rankings in Google for motivated house sellers.
So we have crazy, crazy cool data from every major market in the country.
The first thing to notice is a report from March 1st through the time that I’m diving into this data, which is April 7th.
Number one, we’ve reported this data in the past, Monday’s tend to be the hottest time when your sellers and buyers are hitting the internet to search.
Now this includes Google searches. It does include some direct search, where people are typing your URL directly, but mostly Google search and Google pay per click. When people have that pain point the most, is your Monday or Tuesday.
Monday and Tuesday have the highest demand for searches.
Now here’s one thing that we saw as soon as the stay-at-home order took place in most of the cities around the country in early to mid-March.
Image Explained:
From March 1st – April 7th. On the right, sessions are “visits to our member’s sites” from sellers and buyers. Notice only about a 10% dip for a couple of weeks then it’s climbed back to normal numbers by April 1st.
On the left, is the conversion rate on that traffic. While the traffic remained essentially the same… buyers and sellers are STILL searching for solutions. Some of them aren’t submitting their contact info because they’re unsure how to buy or sell during the Coronavirus stay at home orders.
This EQUALS a huge opportunity.
While you may be seeing your conversion rate dip on your marketing, the SEARCH volume is still there. You need to create content (VideoPost, our automated content, retargeting ads, around how you can help them during COVID still, etc.) and get it in front of them on your site, update your hero section to link to one of our COVID-19 automated articles (Content Pro and Advanced Marketer) and place retargeting content on FB specific to how you can still help them during COVID.
You can see traffic to our client’s websites, agents and investors, has not really gone down much. There was a slight blip by about 5 to 10% in traffic volume with house sellers and house buyers.
Now you can see it started to climb back up. So right here at the start of March before the shutdown started to happen, on a normal Monday it’d be just sub-50,000, between 45,000 and 50,000 people hitting our client’s website each day. And then you can see right there, somewhere between that week, week and a half, we started to see that drop-off.
Image Explained:
This is organic traffic (traffic from google searches) from March 1st – April 7th. You’ll notice that initial “shock” of COVID dipped organic by 10% or so the 2 weeks after it hit.
But, the past 2 weeks of organic traffic is increasing week over week again for motivated sellers and buyers (including land). We see this getting stronger as more sellers have more motivation the longer it goes on.
Now towards the end of the month and even into the first part of April, we started to see traffic go back up a little bit. We think that that’s probably because that initial fear, that initial, “Hey, let’s wait and see what’s going on,” started to fade off and we came into that new normal.
Here’s the thing that’s really, really important. That data shows that the traffic really has not gone down in a measurable way from your sellers and buyers.
Now, if I map back to the start of March, the conversion rate of one of our homepages which are geared for lead generation, those range usually between 5 and 25%.
So when we’re looking at gross conversion rate, that’s all traffic, all sources, any page that they landed on, even non-conversion pages, what percentage of them became a lead?
And this is a really respectable percentage, between 2 and 4% of all traffic comes to a lead on the Carrot system.
If you’re driving to a landing page, there might be a 20 to 30% conversion. If you’re driving to a rent-to-own page, it might be between a 30 and 40% conversion rate.
But here’s what’s interesting.
Right when the stay-at-home order started to hit around the middle of March, in California and Oregon and Washington and a bunch of other states, conversion dropped off by about 20 to 30%.
So what does that mean? If the conversion rate of a website for buyers, sellers, for agents and investors, dropped off by about 20 to 30%, while the traffic of the demand from buyers and sellers didn’t really change much, what does that mean?
Well, one thing that we’re hearing a lot of, or a good number of even experienced agents and investors say, is you might see your lead cost go up a little bit, possibly.
Some people are seeing their lead costs down right now because competitors have pulled out of the marketing spaces. You might see your conversion rate of PPC, of SEO, of direct mail, of cold calling, of any of those, you might see that actually go down right now even though the demand is still there.
What Should You Do Right Now?
Here’s what I want to give you guidance on. The demand is still here, but many sellers and buyers aren’t sure what to do right now in the midst of the Coronavirus. Do they reach out to you and try to elicit your services?
Many of them might be nervous about…
“Well shoot, I don’t want to have someone come to my house right now. Maybe I’ll wait until this is all over.”
Or, “How can I still sell my house if this person can’t come in?”
Or, “Where am I going to move if we’re in a stay-at-home order in my state of California?” as examples.
Direct Action Items
Here are some direct action items for you right now.
#1. The demand is still there y’all for buyers and sellers, that’s not going away.
Actually, even more so you’re starting to see it pick up here and get back to pre-Coronavirus numbers because people are in that new normal. They’re at home on these cell phones and they still have the problem or they have the desire that they’re searching out.
Image Explained:
Paid search-demand through Google Ads hasn’t changed much at all. It dipped less than 3% after the stay at home order… but now is growing to more google ads clicks than before Coronavirus.
The opportunity here… in many markets we’re seeing paid ad costs dip as less savvy investors or agents pull back their marketing budgets (the worst thing you can do).
Now, many motivated house sellers actually have even more of a desire and even more of an acute problem because their financial situation might be worse now.
As an investor or as an agent, you can really step up and help them right now and show them that they can still be helped during this pandemic.
#2. What can you do if you are seeing a softening conversion rate right now?
Having a lower conversion is natural right now because of the “wait and see” attitude from some buyers and sellers.
So what can you do?
Right now you should be creating more content!
We talk about that a lot, but you need to be creating content and local authority right now as people are still doing their searches. As soon as the Coronavirus is over and we’re back to life as semi-normal, demand is going to pop back and they’re going to be reaching out to the person or the people that they want to have help them.
So right now, they’re doing the research. They’re digging in and saying, “Who do I want to work with?” As soon as it’s all over they’re going to be moving fast as a buyer or a seller to solve that problem.
The way that you become the one that they’re working with is by putting out content, put out VideoPosts on your Carrot website to where it’s a short YouTube video.
You can do it with your cell phone, talking about how they can still sell their home during the Coronavirus. Do a walkthrough in the house through Facebook, or through FaceTime or Zoom or whatever it is.
You can still protect their safety and their health. Or if they’re a buyer, how can you start to work with them now to ensure that when they’re ready to buy or maybe they are ready to buy right now, that you can pull the trigger on it?
If they’re a seller, they might be thinking…
“Well, you know what, I kind of want to wait to sell.”
What happens if they wait until everything is back to normal and then reach out to you?
Then they’re going to be behind the eight-ball by two, four, six weeks, and there’s going to be buyers that are hungry and ready to go at that point and they might miss some of that high demand window to get the most out of their property.
Talk with them with your content and videos. Put the content on your Carrot site using our VideoPosts feature. Put them on Facebook as retargeting sequences so they can shift they’re thinking into…
“I’m going to start preparing right now and I can still get this taken care of during the Coronavirus pandemic, and I can work with these investors or these agents even right now and we don’t have to meet in person.”
🔥 Diving Into More Data 🔥
Let’s dive into a couple of other cool pieces of information.
Social Media TrafficData
Let’s hop over to social media. Social media is actually even picked up a little bit. There are a lot more people on your Facebook as well as other social platforms.
That’s where you need to be putting those videos about how you can help them during this crisis, or how you can still help them buy or sell. That content needs to be going on social media right now. We’re seeing traffic picking up on social media over the past month.
Direct TrafficData
Let’s take a look at direct traffic. Now a hunk of this is actually organic search that Google lumps in, and a hunk of it is somebody actually typing in your URL. You can see the same thing. The demand for that has not really gone down at all.
Paid TrafficData
Looking at paid search, that demand hasn’t really changed, either. It’s actually gone up. On Monday, April 6th, there were 7,730 sessions to our websites through Google paid traffic. A month later we’re actually seeing more traffic.
So while there’s a lot of agents and investors pulling back their marketing right now, what’s happening is we’re in this interesting window where oftentimes your paid traffic through Google and through Facebook is a little bit cheaper because there’s less competition.
Some are even stopping their marketing. You should not. You should be leaning into your marketing because we’re starting to see that data come back.
Time Lag Data
There is a situation called “time lag”.
Image Explained:
How many visits it takes someone to turn into a lead. Why is this important, those people who are not sure about how to sell/buy during Coronavirus who are searching but not acting, they need content and YOU to be the trusted Authority.
Create a COVID-19 update on your home page that links to our new COVID-19 articles (content pro and adv marketer upsell. Link direct to those packs in the article) and also create video posts right now, one per week on how people can sell or buy right now.
41,628 opt-in conversion leads, not including the 40,000-plus phone call leads that came in through the same time period.
Look how long it took some of those people to become a lead. The vast majority, become a lead on the first day.
But then, some of them, it takes weeks if not months to become a lead for you. So this is where putting in really good retargeting campaigns is very, very important, especially right now while some people are waiting it out.
Length of the path for visitors to actually interact and engage with you
How many times does it take them visiting your website, especially right now during this time period, to become a lead?
Right now that time period is lengthening versus our normal because some of those sellers and buyers are unsure how they can best be served during this Coronavirus time.
How they can get people into their house right now
How they can still stay safe and healthy during this process
From the last image above, 86% of people on the very first interaction become a lead on your website, agents and investors.
But then it takes some people over 12.
So one half of 1%, it takes over 12 interactions. But the sweet spot is six or under.
The vast majority of people take between one to six interactions on your website to become a lead, and that’s actually lengthening right now.
Organic Conversion Data
The one single most consistent, predictable, and highest converting lead source, is organic. It’s putting content online and getting high rankings in Google, which we specialize in. It converts the highest.
On average, no matter what page they land on, there’s a 5.54% conversion rate percentage and very, very low bounce rate on Google organic search.
Whereas, social has the lowest conversion rate. It’s lower by almost two thirds. But it still converts well. That’s because people are seeking a solution to their problem in Google organic. Social, you’re kind of interrupting them with content but it still works. Keep that in front of them.
Paid Conversion Data
Let’s look at paid traffic. Paid traffic on average is about a 2% conversion rate. That’s still great. You can still make an amazing, amazing ROI with that.
Create evergreen content
I want to come back to evergreen marketing because that’s what is going to be around in a year, two, three, four years from now.
How do you do less marketing that performs better?
How do you do marketing that is consistent, predictable, and momentum-building?
That’s with evergreen marketing.
Publishing content online that builds authority, that attracts people when they’re seeking out solutions to their problems, and then once they land on your website, it’s not just the normal broker-provided website or a custom website that looks pretty but doesn’t convert well, or a Wix site that performs terribly.
It might look pretty but it doesn’t convert well. You need to be delivering amazing authority-building content, which we do with our content marketing tools where we have COVID-19 automated articles now.
If you’re on the Content Pro plan or Advanced Marketer, we have COVID-19 articles written for you to publish on your website. You can go right now into your system and schedule to tell people how you can help them. Share those on social media.
Use VideoPosts right now. Create a video every single week. I’m creating a podcast every week about COVID-19 and how you can wade your way through that. Do the same thing with your buyers and sellers.
We’re here with you. We want to see you start to thrive and crush it in this market. We’re starting to see the traffic grow. We’re starting to see conversions start to go back up.
The way you wade through this market is creating more and more content, becoming the authority. So when things get back to normal, you’re going to see a pop in demand when all your other competition’s waiting it out.
Lastly, check out our Authority Building Webinar to learn more ways to stand out in this market, build authority, and build momentum.
Most real estate agents can’t afford to miss out on leads and deals. They don’t know it but having the proper lead generation tools for real estate agents is the holy grail of their business growth.
You probably became a real estate agent because you’re a bit of a “people person”… because you’re great at sales and know how to talk to clients.
But if there aren’t leads to convert into clients, your business can’t grow.
No matter how good you are at sales — no matter how convincing, charismatic, or persuasive — none of that matters if you’re not consistently generating leads for your business.
Consistent, high-quality, and high-volume real estate lead generation is the secret to dominating your market and building the business of your entrepreneurial dreams.
More leads mean more closings, which means a more successful business.
Of course, that’s easier said than done.
So how do you get leads in real estate consistently?
19 Lead Generation Tools for Real Estate Agents
Here are 19 of the best lead generation tools for real estate agents to help!
Many real estate agents start out by joining a larger real estate group or franchise. Their face gets added to the company website, and they receive a particular share of the leads.
But it doesn’t take long to realize that if you want to grow your own business, you’re going to need your own website.
Unfortunately, most agents think their website only exists to represent their business — as a sort of digital business card.
The most successful agents, though, know that isn’t true.
Your website is probably your company’s biggest lead-gen asset.
There are two ways that you can use your website to predictably generate high-quality leads for your business.
The first is paid traffic. Running ads on Facebook or Google is a great way to drive traffic to your website. But here’s the thing: that paid traffic isn’t worth a lick if your website doesn’t consistently convert that traffic into leads for your business.
(In fact, driving traffic to a low-converting website is expensive and usually a waste of money)
And our Carrot websites are built to convert and drive leads right out of the box therefore, can be one of the most productive lead generation tools for real estate agents.
We start with a compelling homepage header, which transitions into two separate CTAs for buyers and sellers. And we always include the agent’s phone number in the upper right corner for people who want to take action right away.
Take a look: the entire format is crafted to make taking action as easy as possible for visitors.
The trick to building a high-converting website is to give visitors exactly what they want, as quickly as possible… and to build trust along the way.
That’s exactly what Carrot sites do.
But that’s not all they do.
While paid ads are a great way to drive traffic to your website, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is just as powerful. SEO is working to rank in search engines (like Google and Bing) for keyword phrases that your target market types into Google. That way, those people click on your website and become leads.
And SEO leads are usually even higher quality and more consistent than paid leads.
SEO is a bit complicated but can be one of the best long-term lead generation tools for real estate agents.
This is why our Carrot sites make search engine ranking as simple as possible. Check out some of our best lead-generation features in the second point.
2. Carrot Features
Our Carrot sites convert better than any other websites in the industry.
We’ve generated more than 2 million leads for our members with conversion rates between 10% and 20% (most real estate websites convert at 2%)!
That means more leads and more closings for your business.
Here are some of our coolest real estate lead generation tools
Carrot Lead Manager — When you get a Carrot site and start generating leads, you need a way to keep track of those leads and organize them all. That’s why all Carrot members have access to our Lead Manager, where you can view mission-critical information, categorize prospects, and see how many leads you’ve got in the pipeline.
Campaign Tracking Links — When you run advertisements or post on social media, it’s nice to know how much traffic that content is driving to your website. With our Campaign Tracking Links, you can create a custom link with a single click, and we’ll track clicks and conversions from that link. This is super easy and a great way to test the effectiveness of your advertisements.
Visual Editor — All AgentCarrot sites are built to convert right out of the box. But you can still customize the site however you like, adding your logo, brand colors, and images and changing the copy to fit your business. Our visual editor makes this process super easy. It’s the best of both worlds: lead generation and website customization.
SEO Ranking Tracker — Want to know how your SEO rankings are performing? Just tell us what keyword phrases you want us to track for you, and we’ll give you regular updates on how your website is performing. That way, you can celebrate once you break through to page 1!
VideoPost — One of the most challenging parts of getting your website ranking in search engines is consistently creating content or blog posts. Because the more content your website has, the more keyword phrases you’ll be able to rank for. And with VideoPost, you can record a quick video and then, with just a few clicks, transcribe that into a long-form blog post that can rank on Google. SEO doesn’t get easier than that!
Carrot SEO Tool — There are a lot of rules to creating a new page or post for SEO. You should include the target keyword phrase a very specific number of times, you should have a certain amount of links, and you should use a certain number of images… all depending on the length of your content. It’s hard to remember everything, which is why we give all of our members’ access to our Carrot SEO Tool, which acts as an SEO checklist every time you create a new page or post. Just keep at it until the light turns green, and then you’re good to go!
Carrot IDX — IDX is useful because it allows real estate agents to automatically upload MLS listings to their websites. This saves a lot of time. And Carrot IDX allows you to upload listings and then customize those listings however you like.
Running Google and Facebook ads is much more complex than it probably sounds… especially if you’ve never done it before.
If you have tried your hand at paid ads, then you know exactly what I’m talking about.
You choose the targeting and craft the copy as carefully as possible, then hit launch with your fingers crossed.
But those ads end up far less effective than had hoped.
The truth is, it can take years to learn how to craft high-converting advertisements.
This is why we highly recommend delegating that part of your business to the marketing experts over at Silver Street Marketing if you have the budget for it.
They will manage every aspect of your PPC and Facebook marketing strategy so you can focus on closing clients and growing your business.
4. Citation Building Service
If you want to start building your SEO and website rankings to drive traffic passively to your website, then citations are a great place to start.
What are citations?
Well, first, you have to understand backlinks. Backlinks are the term used when another website links to your website, and they’re a critical indication to Google that your website is trustworthy. The more high-quality backlinks you have, the more that Google will trust your website (which means better rankings).
And citations are a type of backlink that’s easy to get.
You just go to sites like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc., and list your business information. Doing this on 40 or more sites will typically give you an SEO advantage over your competitors.
But it can take a while.
With our Citation Building Service, we’ll go build 40 citations for you so you can keep your attention on more important business matters.
Direct mail is one of the most common lead generation tools for real estate agents.
Any real estate agents in your market who are trying to grow their business are probably sending direct mail.
That’s for good reason — direct mail is a great way to build brand awareness and generate leads.
The problem is, everyone is doing it.
Which makes it difficult to craft mailers that stand out from your competitor’s mailers. Because of that, many mailers end up in the trash before even getting looked at.
But Ballpoint Marketing is solving that.
They offer robot-written mailers that look hand-written (the ink even smudges and indents the paper).
And these mailers get an exceptional response rate.
It creates a personal touch that feels authentic and is difficult for people to ignore.
Your email list should be the backbone of your marketing strategy.
By consistently growing your email list and interacting with those prospects on a weekly basis, you expand your reach, build brand awareness, and nurture leads.
It’s like this: your ads and SEO leads to your website, which leads to your email list, which leads to follow-up and eventually closing clients.
It might not always be a straight line, but that’s the general flow.
And perhaps the easiest tool for building your email list is Mailchimp, which won’t cost you a dime until you’ve reached more than 1,000 subscribers.
Plus, Carrot easily integrates with your Mailchimp account!
The bigger that your business gets, the more cluttered internal processes becomes.
It’s a natural part of hte process. Promising leads slide under the radar and important tasks don’t get finished… all because your business is growing.
Remember the old saying: what go you here won’t get you there.
And when your business gets to new heights, you’ll probably find that you need software to help organize and coordinate your leads, workflows, and other internal processes.
Many of members love using Realvolve for that. You can schedule a demo on their homepage to check it out for yourself.
What if you could easily get your business and website mentioned on local publications?
With HARO — which stands for “Help a Reporter Out” — you can.
And the benefits are twofold. First, local and even nationwide publications will mention you as an expert at real estate. This will grant you credibility and even give you the chance to put a trust-building bar like this on your website…
Just add the logos of the places that you’ve been mentioned and voila! You’ll build immediate trust with your website visitors.
The second benefit is in regards to search engine optimization, which drives traffic to your website when people type certain keywords into Google.
One of the biggest factors of SEO is how many reputable backlinks your website has — a backlink is when another website links to your website.
And when other sites quote you as an expert, they’ll almost always link to your website.
Win, win.
So how does HARO work, and how do you get leads in real estate from their services?
Well, you can sign up for free as an expert source for journalists. Then every day, you’ll receive an email with potential articles you can contribute to. Just follow the intstructions and you’ll start getting mentioned in no time.
HARO is most effective when you consistently and quickly respond to prompts over a long period of time.
Even dedicating 10 minutes per day to can help to win HARO backlinks, improve your domain authority, and enhance your brand’s visibility.
Answering the phone is one of the biggest, most unexpected challenges of growing your real estate agent business.
If you don’t answer the phone when it rings, then your chances of losing the lead skyrocket. At the same time, you obviously can’t spend all your time on the phone… between negotiating contracts, house showings, and client meetings, you’re busy enough.
So what do you do?
Well, one thing you can do is hire a salesperson to answer the phone for you and make follow-up appointments.
Once they’re trained, you can use a service like Aircall to create multiple phone numbers, ensure that the phone gets answered when it rings, record conversations, and even assign different leads to different salespeople.
You probably don’t need this service when you’re just getting started, but it’s something you might want to consider when your team grows and the phone won’t stop ringing (’cause that’s a good thing, after all).
13. CRM
Following up with leads is an extremely important part of running a real estate business.
Not just so that you can do more closings, but so that you make the most of each lead.
The fact is, most closings happen during the follow up… people don’t decide to work with you after the first call or even the second call… but after the 5th call.
And while that might sound discouraging, it really just requires a little restructuring to be able to follow up consistently and effortlessly.
Really, it takes an effective CRM.
A CRM helps you organize your contacts, your leads, and your touch-points with them. You can keep track of how many times you’ve contacted each lead, when you contacted them, and tons of other person-specific details that make having a CRM one of the best real estate lead generation tools out there.
The first choice for most of our member is Realvolve.
But you know what really sets YouTube apart from other platforms?
Video.
More than any other media type, people love video content. It’s easier to consume and more entertaining than written content.
In fact, 54% of people want to see more video content from brands and businesses that they follow.
And by creating consistent video content on YouTube, you can establish yourself as a real estate expert in your market and encourage people to reach out to you when buying or selling a home.
But what kind of content should you create?
For inspiration, check out the Farr Group’s YouTube channel. They create videos about their listings, their business purpose, and they even offer educational advice.
Building your YouTube channel isn’t going to change your business or your life overnight, but it can make a big impact over the long-term.
The main key to building a following on any platform like this is to be consistent with your content creation schedule (publish at least once per week).
The more often that people see your videos, the more that they’ll view you as a real estate expert.
But YouTube isn’t just great for generating attention organically… you can also run YouTube ads.
And one of the greatest parts about YouTube ads is that your competitors are probably not using the platform at all (they’re probably just running Facebook ads). Additionally, you can target people based on location.
Which means that you can create a “YouTube commercial” that only targets people in your market.
Why not give it a try and see how it impacts your lead generation?
IDX stands for Internet Data Exchange and it’s the tool real estate agents use to bring listings from the MLS to their own website.
This is really important for a few reasons.
First of all, if people see house listing that they like on your website… they’re going to call you and maybe work with you.
(Especially if you have a high-converting Carrot site!)
If they see that same listing on Zillow instead… then who knows who they’re going to call for help? It’s just a roll of the dice.
And second, putting listings directly on your website gives you an excuse to drive people to your website, building brand awareness and generating leads.
Every you add a new listing, you can post on social media and email your list about it… just like the Farr Group does.
Facebook is one of the most popular places for real estate agents to do their online advertising… and for good reason.
It’s an extremely powerful platform with billions of people and remarkable targeting.
With just a few clicks, you can create an advertisement that targets first-time homebuyers, people interested in selling their home, or pretty much any other demographic that you can dream up.
And not only are Facebook’s advertising options versatile, but it’s also relatively inexpensive, costing between $1 and $3 per click.
Of course, before you run Facebook ads, you’ll want to make sure that your website is ready to convert that paid traffic.
Carrot sites are built to convert, but you’ll still want to make some minor customizations.
The best way to find out whether your site is converting as you want it to is to do a test run.
Use this calculator to determine what your budget should be in order to get a single closing, set that money aside, and run some advertisements.
If you’re getting closings while staying within your budget, then you have a winning system. If not, then tweak your ads and/or your site until you’re in the green.
It might take some time to get profitable with your Facebook ads, but stick with it and, eventually, you’ll figure it out.
You might be suprised at just how effective Instagram can be for growing your business and doing more closings.
At first, it seems like just another social media platform that’s easy to get distracted by, but it’s more than that.
Since Instagram is so visual and so full of images, it’s a great place to show your listings and to encourage buyers to buy and sellers to sell… through you.
As you can see below, their Instagram posts aren’t all that complicated, but they are quite effective lead generation tools for real estate.
They share new house listings, cool photos, and buying and selling advice.
And it’s working really well.
When I asked them about this, they even mentioned that some of their posts don’t get a ton of engagement, but then people will mention those posts as the reason that they reached out.
So your social media posts build brand awareness and might be having a bigger impact than you think.
We already talked about Canva, which is a great place to go design your own graphics.
But since you’re a real estate agent — and not a graphic designer — it might be safe to say that… well, you just don’t want to design your own graphics.
In that case, 99designs is a great website for hiring a high-quality designer.
Your first option is just to post a job, check applications and reviews, and then hire someone who you think fits the bill.
But another great option is to “host a contest”, which allows multiple designers to compete for the job. Each designer creates a graphic for the project, you review them, and then choose which one you like the most.
Pretty cool, huh?
That means you can see the designers work before you pay for it.
Social media is an extremely powerful tool for building brand awareness and marketing your business.
Unfortunately, it can easily turn into a time-sucking machine.
Posting turns into scrolling and scrolling turns into wasted time.
Why not avoid social media altogether — but still get all of the business benefits — by using a tool like Planoly to schedule your social media posts on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter.
This ensures that you won’t get distracted by social media when you’re trying to work.
And plus, it also allows you to create and schedule all of your posts at one time, so you don’t have to return to social media throughout the week.
Good for your business… good for your productivity.
Which of these lead generation tools for real estate agents is right for your business?
Hopefully, you now know of several lead-gen tools that you’ve never considered using before.
And more hopefully, you’ll give some of them a try.
Which ones do you think will be the most helpful for your business? Which ones are you going to use right away?
Which ones are you still considering? And which one do you think is the best lead generation tool for real estate?
![How To Get Real Estate Clients [14 Effective Strategies]](https://image-cdn.carrot.com/uploads/How-To-Get-Real-Estate-Clients-14-Strategies-Featured.jpg)
![How To Get Real Estate Clients [14 Strategies]](https://image-cdn.carrot.com/uploads/How-To-Get-Real-Estate-Clients-14-Strategies-Post.png)
![[Updated Data – August 2020] How Has Lead Generation Changed During COVID-19 for Real Estate? – Exclusive Data and Action Plan](https://image-cdn.carrot.com/uploads/Featured-Image-COVID-19-Real-Estate-DATA.png)
![19 Lead Generation Tools for Real Estate Agents [Your Guide for 2023]](https://image-cdn.carrot.com/uploads/Featured-20-Lead-Generation-Tools-for-Real-Estate-Agents-.jpg)
![10 Youtube Statistics That You Need to Know [Updated May]](https://wp-en.oberlo.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Youtube-statistics-01.png)
![10 Video Marketing Statistics for 2020 [May 2020]](https://wp-en.oberlo.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/video-marketing-demand.jpg)
