No matter if you’re a realtor looking to win back clients, or a startup looking for local opportunities, knowing what lead generation tools are out there can help. Many businesses use real estate lead generation ideas to find customers. If you want to generate real estate leads and have them come to you when they’re trying to make major purchases, these are the best places to start.
It’s obvious that lead generation is the single most important aspect of real estate marketing and lead generation strategy. Given that, you need to choose wisely which real estate leads are going to be counted as “best” in your opinion. You can learn about some good ones for free or at least for a nominal price compared to others which will cost you an arm and a leg.
It’s no secret that real estate is a competitive business, and you need to give your lead generation campaigns the best chance of success. Everyone is after the same thing: home-owners. They have an interest in selling their house, and it falls on real estate agents to find potential buyers. There are a lot of lead generation strategies you can use, but some are more effective than others.
Real estate is one of the most sought-after investments in the world today. While buying a property, many people are in search of options to find quicker and cheaper alternatives. Fortunately, you are at the right place. There are many free or inexpensive advertising options available to advertise your properties.
The Cost of Real Estate Lead Generation Websites
There are a number of ways real estate lead gen websites price their services. Some of them charge on a flat monthly basis, others charge on a per-lead basis, and yet others charge on a monthly per-agent basis.
What most of these services have in common, however, is they don’t come cheap. The overall expense can easily range from a few hundred to thousands of dollars a month. In order to sign on with a lead gen website service, it’s necessary to keep an eye on these key details:
- Be clear about your needs: Sites offer vastly different lists of features with different operation sizes in mind. Make sure you have a clear idea about what kinds of lead gen features you absolutely need and what kind of budget you have to pursue them.
- Check how the site delivers on the features it promises: A site with a strong record of delivering results through its promised features is key to justifying the often-considerable costs involved. Some sites skew less expensive than the norm, in which case you’ll want to ascertain whether the lower expense is still delivering a level of service that’s going to make a real difference to the bottom line. This guide aims to give you a starting point for that kind of research.
- Be on the lookout for added expenses: Many sites operate by custom quote. It’s important that any such quote is broken down in enough detail that you know whether and how much you’re being charged for setup, maintenance, and other services. These kinds of additional charges can add up substantially.
Market Leader
Market Leader is our top choice for real estate lead generation companies because it offers robust features, offers buyer and seller leads from multiple sources, and can be set up easily. The company was founded in 1999 in Bellevue, Washington, and it helps over 250,000 customers with leads, education, and customer support. Industry leaders such as EXIT Realty, Better Homes and Gardens, and Re/Max all use Market Leader.
Market Leader offers a guaranteed number of exclusive leads each month and it never sells the same lead twice, so you won’t be competing with another agent for the lead. Market Leader sells leads from its site Housevalues.com, which attracts prospective sellers when they’re trying to value their homes. A second source is Leads Direct, which is a pay-per-click advertising campaign targetted at consumers who are looking for home listings.
Market Leader offers the following features:
- Both buyer and seller leads
- Marketing automation
- Customizable website
- Mobile app
- Integration with Market Leader systems
- Customer relationship management (CRM)
Getting started with Market Leader is easy. All you have to do is create a profile, customize alerts, and add and organize your contacts. The company’s pricing varies based on how many leads you sign up for. Normally, you’ll pay a cost per lead and a monthly fee for other services such as CRM.
The company has also introduced its Market Leader Professional, which includes a fully integrated lead capture website, CRM, and marketing center to seamlessly engage and manage leads. With this service, you can capture powerful insights in the CRM when visitors register on your website and leverage automated marketing to send relevant listings.
Overall, Market Leader has positive reviews; agents like the platform’s exclusive leads and report that the service is easy to use and helped them grow their business. However, there are also some common complaints about the company, including that leads aren’t always reliable and customer service is sometimes not helpful.
RUNNER-UP, BEST OVERALLBoldLeads
Bold Leads is based in Chandler, Arizona and is active in supporting their local community. It has helped 6,000 real estate agents across the U.S. and Canada. The company offers a vast array of features for producing great buyer and seller leads, which is why we named it our runner-up. It also offers comprehensive customer support and training, so you can get to know the system and get up and running quickly.
Bold Leads only provides exclusive leads to agents. It places ad campaigns on platforms such as Google and Facebook and then draws customers who click on the ads to customized real estate websites where they provide their contact information, which then gets sent to the agent in that area. You can contact and organize your new leads from the built-in CRM.
Bold Leads features include:
- Buyer and seller leads
- Automated follow-ups
- Software coaching, like video training
- An all-in-one platform with its own CRM
- Text concierge and email templates
- Lead engagement indicator tools
Bold Lead offers customer support, training, and coaching, as well as videos to get you up and running, learn how to accept and manage leads, and become familiar with the platform. In addition to a monthly budget for purchasing leads, expect to spend more for market reports and other features. Generally, reviews indicate that customers are satisfied with the company and like its lead system. However, some customers said it’s difficult to cancel and found some of the buyer leads to be poor quality.
BEST FOR AUTOMATIONZurple
Zurple was founded in 2009, is headquartered in Hunt Valley, Maryland, and is owned by Constellation Software. The company is our choice for best automation because it offers leads as well as integrated CRM and other automated tools that make contacting and maintaining leads easier and more efficient. Zurple’s automated responses are personalized and data-driven and intelligently engage with clients on your behalf.
Zurple is end-to-end software that captures leads and converts them into conversations and then into clients. It optimizes your marketing budget by only targeting your specific area and can even target specific sub-areas within individual zip codes. You can use Zurple’s targeted ads and combine them with your own leads from places like Zillow. Zurple will personalize emails from your email address to contact leads about houses they’ve already been looking at.
Some of Zurple’s features include:
- Buyer and seller leads
- Automated, personalized, and data-driven emails from your email address
- Integration with Zillow, Trulia, and Realtor.com
- CRM
- Complete online profile of each lead
- Lead contact alerts
Zurple is easy to set up and it offers all the tools you need, including creating and customizing your ads and website, as well as a CRM to manage your leads. It has a blog and success center resources to help you get started. You must put your information in to see pricing and availability in your area.
Customers have mostly positive things to say about the company. They appreciate that leads are converted into clients. However, some users think that the interface needs to be updated.
Zillow Premier Agent: Most Viewed Lead Generation Platform
Overall Score: 4.67 OUT OF 5 i
- Includes extensive training
- Exclusive placement on listings
- Ability to reach millions of buyers on multiple platforms
- Lacks robust follow-up tools
- Leads are not qualified
- Can become expensive
Additional Features
- Featured, targeted placement on listings
- Reach audiences on Zillow, Trulia, StreetEasy, and HotPads
- Integrated CRM with lead tracking
- IDX lead capture website with a custom domain name
- Performance tracking Customer Experience Report
- Blog, agent toolkit, lead conversion scripts, training, and customer support by phone or text
- Customer review rating of 4.7 out of 5
Zillow Premier Agent (ZPA) is a real estate lead generation tool offered by Zillow, the top real estate listing site in the U.S. The service puts your contact information on listings in your area, making you more visible and accessible to buyers and sellers.
Since your profile is featured directly on listings, potential leads can connect with you via phone to begin a qualifying conversation and discuss their home search needs right away. It also includes a free IDX website and customer relationship management (CRM) software. Zillow also integrates with other lead sources such as HubSpot and Real Geeks to funnel all real estate leads into one platform.
ZPA is the best choice for real estate agents and brokers who want to have a piece of the pie where billions of homebuyers and sellers are already extremely active. However, if you’d like to use a more comprehensive CRM with more follow-up tools, try BoldLeads.
(Source: Zillow Premier Agent)
Customer Reviews
ZPA customer reviews vary widely. While many Premier Agents credit Zillow for receiving and converting many leads each month, others note that Zillow doesn’t qualify leads before sending them to you. There is also notable frustration with customer service and unavailable ZIP codes. That said, Zillow dominates the market, and agents who take advantage of ZPA’s features report a great return on investment (ROI). Learn more about how Zillow Premier Agent works for real estate lead generation.
Pricing
- $20 to $60 per lead on average, although the cost can go well above $100 per lead
- Pricing depends on ZIP code, housing prices, and competition from other agents
- Additional charges for advertising
Infusionsoft
Infusionsoft is quality lead generator software with about 125,000 users. The web-based tool and real estate lead management software is specifically designed to aid small businesses in building effective business-customer relations while generating leads.
Highlights:
- Features marketing automation, social media, email and lead generation tools
- Marketing and online sales solution specifically built with small and midsize businesses in mind
- Personalised coaching services to get you started
- Easy to use
- Simply click and command diverse options from mass messaging via text to automatic emails
Cons:
- A/B testing unavailable
- Minimal customisation if any
- Setup requires some amount of experience
Benefits of Real Estate Lead Generation Websites
Optimizing for lead generation can be of crucial benefit to the success of a real estate office in several ways:
- It builds a business’ credibility to have an online home thus optimized, which also means having a website that’s informative, streamlined, and easy to interact with and that sells the capability of the real estate professional operating it.
- Lead generation tools can improve targeted traffic to a website, ensuring that the eyes on its content belong to prospects with intention, thereby increasing sales and profit ratio and increasing word-of-mouth awareness and online visibility for an agency.
- With the right databases, tracking, and reporting, lead generation can help collect important information about prospects and about what needs and preferences brought them to an agency’s proverbial door, making it easier to convert them from prospects into clients and to close deals, as well as gain a general sense of what helps a particular agency stand out from the rest.
- Optimizing for lead gen is a cost-effective way to maximize ROI (return on investment) for marketing outlay, especially if a lead generation website can also be used as a tool for effective branded advertising, email, and SMS campaigns, which can be powerfully combined with CRM tools and prospect databases to improve conversion rates.
Conclusion
A Lead Generation Tool is one of the main assets of your real estate business. If you don’t know what it is, read on to find out what a Lead Generation Tool for real estate is, how you can use it in your own real estate business and what type of tool is the best for you.
If a real estate company is still operating without such lead generation tools, it is already outdated. If you are looking for the best lead generation ideas for your business, it would be best if we consider the facts about why is there this need to generate free leads for sales and marketing products and services.