The Number One Marketing Mistake Real Estate Agents Make

Overview

In my earliest days generating real estate leads, I got a call from a friend who manages a real estate brokerage.

"You generate leads, right? Can you generate listing leads for me?"

I was young and excited about lead generation. I mean, I'd already been generating leads for other agents and they'd been thrilled with the results.

"Of course."

I had a formula for generating seller leads (what to say, who to target, and how to get people to actually share their contact information), so I knew I could replicate that same formula to deliver leads for my friend.

And I did.

We launched our campaign and my face lit up as I saw new leads piling into his inbox. We're talking qualified seller leads with name, email, phone number, home address, the timeline for selling, the whole deal.  

In a three-month span, the campaigns generated over 500 seller leads at less than $4 a lead.

The client was excited (and probably surprised, to be honest!), that I was able to turn a relatively modest marketing budget into this many leads.

After all, I was fresh out of college and just finding my footing as a marketer. I don't blame him for treating this as a side project.

So we sat down and had a meeting after a few months...

"Look, you've done a great job generating leads. I just don't have the time to follow up with these leads. Once I have some free time, let's jump back into this."

The reality was that other than a basic automated email follow-up, no one was actually reaching out to these leads.

No calls, no texts, no nothing.

Ouch.

Followup is Everything

At the time I was young and naive, and I just assumed that every real estate agent I worked with had a system for following up with leads and qualifying them.

What I didn't realize until that meeting is just how busy real estate agents are, and how few of them have their follow-up process down to a science.

Plus, how could I ever expect a real estate agent to consistently follow up with hundreds of leads on a monthly basis?

Even if they spent all day working the phones, shooting off texts, and responding to DMs, there really just aren't enough hours in the day to work full-time as an agent, and be on top of every single lead that comes in, the minute they come in.

This was the moment everything clicked for me. Something about this entire real estate lead generation process needed to change.

This led me to my first two "a-ha!" moments for real estate lead generation:

1. Most agents don't have a standardized system in place for following up with leads
2. Most agents don't have the time and availability to follow up with leads consistently, day in, day out

So I did some digging.

I called up my clients who were turning leads into clients to figure out what they were doing differently.

For my clients that were succeeding at converting their leads, what were they doing right?

What I discovered shouldn't be too surprising:

1. Real estate leads are some of the most demanding and require the most immediate follow-up
2. Spending money generating real estate leads without a follow-up system in place is basically the same as lighting money on fire

Real estate leads demand instant followup

Real estate leads are expecting a call in a matter of minutes, not in a matter of hours or days.

And if you aren't reaching out within the first couple of hours, you might as well be not reaching out at all.

It doesn't matter if you're constantly checking your email or texts, or if you have a marketing platform or CRM sending out automated emails - the question is: do you have enough free time in your day to hit the text and call volume you need to sift through say, 100 leads per week?

Because here's the harsh truth:

Real estate leads is a numbers game.

You're looking at 1-5 leads out of every one hundred turning into a transaction.

Can you honestly say to yourself that you have enough free time to call, text, leave voicemails, and send emails consistently enough to separate the time-wasters from the people who are going to put a commission check in your bank account?

Don't feel bad, because no busy real estate agent has this amount of free time!

The number one real estate marketing mistake

This is the single biggest mistake I see from real estate agents: first, they get roped into marketing by an agency or a freelancer. If they're lucky, they'll generate some leads. Then, they call as many as they can, but some inevitably slip through the cracks. They eventually escape their marketing contract, often thousands or tens of thousands of dollars worse off than when they started, with very little to show for it.

These unfair (and frankly, fraudulent) contracts  

So the question becomes: how can you generate leads if you don't have the time to ensure that every single lead is being followed up with?

Simple. You need a follow-up system in place.

Something that allows you to focus on being a real estate agent, instead of needing to call every single lead (even if they're just tire-tickers).

And no, I'm not talking about an automated email drip campaign.  Even the best of those tend to become spammy very quickly, and real estate prospects are some of the savviest, and unsubscribe-happy people you'll come across.

That's why it's so critical to have a rock-solid sales process in place that can reach out to every single lead on your behalf, as soon as they come in.  You don't want leads slipping through the cracks due to sheer lack of availability.

The truth is that lead generation in real estate is a numbers game, and you're going to need a system that can handle hundreds of leads at the same time in order to ensure that you're talking to the highest quality prospects possible, and converting those leads into clients.  

Here's what you need to do

The most successful agents have a system in place that turns leads into closed transactions.

Having a virtual assistant is a huge step in the right direction.

Virtual assistants do two things:

1. They follow up immediately with new leads, giving you the all-important speed to lead advantage
2. They save your most precious resource: time, by only forwarding calls and setting appointments with qualified leads

If you want to handle followup on your own, you need to commit to immediate and persistent followup with your leads before investing in lead generation.

Otherwise, leads will slip through the cracks.

You won't hit the call/text/email volume that you need to hit in order to actually convert your leads.

So you end up frustrated, with a moun

How much simpler would your life be if you were not only generating leads and growing your email list but also had an expert real estate sales team following up with leads on your behalf?

This is what we do.

We generate buyer and seller leads, pre-qualify them with our U.S.-based call team, and send you live transferred and booked appointments.

You only talk to people who are ready to talk business with you.

It's that simple.

We do it this way because we value your time, and we're sick of marketing agencies taking and taking from unsuspecting realtors and never providing a positive return on investment.

So if you're new at this whole real estate lead generation thing, or you've been burned in the past, then I encourage you to schedule a call with our team.

We can get you up and running within one week, and we have a no-questions-asked money-back guarantee. If you aren't winning, we don't want your money. It's as simple as that.

Click here to schedule a 30-min intro call with me.

If you don't feel more confident about your marketing after our call, I'll send you a $50 gift card for wasting your time.

- Connor Goulding-Miles, Founder | Goldsmith Marketing