You know that capturing real estate leads is basic to the realty business. But how do you entice your real estate prospect to give you their contact information? The secret to this is to use proven and effective direct marketing offers. You have to give the real estate prospect something in return for them supplying you with their information.
You offer them something that grabs their attention and compels them to reply through an "opt-in" form giving you the lead information you want. It's like bait on a fishing line. Your bait is the information they are looking for.
Let's look at some of the techniques you can use to accomplish this goal: My favorite is "free" reports. These are also known as "white papers". You offer the prospect a report on a topic that is of value to them. You can offer a variety of these, like, "How to Prepare Your Home to Make It Ready to Sell" or "The Ten Important Things to Pay Attention to When Looking For a New Home".
With and opt-in form and an autoresponder, these can be provided as downloadable resources. Or, you can provide free reports offline. Brochures, booklets, homes magazines, virtual tours on a disk, or even boos and relocation kits can be sent to the prospect through the mail. Offline, prospects not only receive the report but are assured of your responsiveness and customer-oriented focus.
One nice thing about online, downloadable reports is that they can contain a "call to action" for the prospect with links such as: "Contact Me", "Refer Me to a Friend", or "Forward This Information to Others That Would Benefit".
You can have prospects sign up for for "automated property updates". The prospect then receives emails at regular intervals of the properties that are new on the market. Usually you can receive these through you MLS service and have them matched to your prospect's location, profile of price and location.
One that I ran across on the web is the price estimate/market value of a sellers home. Sellers that are just starting the process of selling their property want to know what their home is worth. They would like to find this information without meeting with a real estate agent in person, so this is a great way to capture them as a lead.
You can supply this information to them by phone (within 24 hrs), meeting with them, or online. You can go to MSN.com at MSN.com>House and Home>Selling Your Home>Estimate a Home's Value and get the information instantaneously. This service is free and only requires a .Net Passport account where you set up a username and password. All this can be done without leaving the office. And a service that you will be well appreciated for.
A great idea is the "sellers package". This can be a powerful motivation for your prospect to allow you to capture them as a lead. This should come in the form of a "pre-listing kit". You can give the prospect all the details of the selling process and what they need to prepare for selling their house. Give them everything except a detailed, market analysis. Make it a two-step process where they receive the kit and you follow up and make an appointment to view their property with them and make a listing presentation.
In fact, there are many types of "kits" you can offer. Relocation kits, pre-qualification kits, city and neighborhood kts that detail the demographics of the location their looking for, etc. The sky is the limit on these as it is with free reports.
Then there's the traditional newsletter. Your prospect can sign up to receive your newsletter that contains vital real estate information plus tips, hints, market reports, and friendly interests. This should be focused on the city that they are interested in. It should also contain interesting articles focused on regional events, businesses, and related items.
All of these items can entice prospects to give you their personal contact information. And, all of these can be done online or offline. If you do them online though, you'll need an autoresponder or autoresponder service like
aWeber.
Generating and capturing leads is the first step in the selling or buying process. Direct marketing techniques are time tested and proven to work. Try out some of these lead capturing ideas and see if they don't increase your real estate business. I'm sure they will.
