Real estate lead generation tools are a great way to find potential buyers for any kind of real estate, from residential homes to million dollar mansions. The more quality buyers that an agent can reach, the better off their business will be. There are some great lead generation tools out there that can help them amp up their sales and take full advantage of all their marketing efforts.
Lead generation tools mean various things of different people. Lead generation tools for real estate refer to tools that help generate leads in realtors’ business. Real estate lead generation tools differ based on their primary function and product type. We will give an overview of these function and product types.
There are numerous lead generation tools out there. With real estate in a boom, it’s actually difficult to keep up with all the new innovations. Let’s see what they actually offer us and which one would be best for your business
Real estate agents are always looking for new ways to get leads in their business. Whether it’s a realtor wanting to learn how to generate leads as a small real estate agency, or just a new agent wanting to get his/her first customers- there are so many options out there. In this article, I’ll go over the various methods of lead generation and which ones might work best depending on where you’re at in your career.
How to Get Real Estate Leads at No Upfront Cost (Checklist)
Here’s a complete checklist of free lead gen ideas broken down by must-haves and nice-to-haves. How many of these are you already using? Which ones would be the easiest to integrate with your current lead management system?
The Must-Haves
- Past clients
- SOI
- Referrals
- Reviews
- FSBOs
- Partner with a lender and attorney
- Open House
- Use landing pages + Drip email sequence
The Nice-to-Haves
- Phone duty
- Video content
- Virtual tours and open houses
- Volunteer, speak at, or attend free community events
- FRBOs
- Moving companies
- Marriage announcements
- Start a blog
- Contribute to articles, podcasts and publications
- Connect on social media
- Answer questions on Quora
- Door knocking
- Cold calling
- Zoom housewarming party
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.
BoldLeads
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.
Zurple
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.
BoomTown
If you’re looking for a trusted real estate agent tool, BoomTown has a 5-star rating on G2. BoomTown is a SaaS real estate lead generation platform that automates lead generation, marketing, and analytics for real estate agents and brokerage firms.
Here are a few features people like about Boomtown:
- It has a clean design which makes it easy to navigate.
- It allows realtors to set up alerts for new leads.
- It helps you diversify your leads with multi-channel campaigns, such as social media, paid ads, and remarketing, and makes it easy to follow up with prospective customers (for example through bulk texting).
BoomTown does have some drawbacks. Users say that some of its follow-up options can feel rather impersonal. It’s also relatively expensive. Pricing is not displayed on the website, so clients need to get in touch with them to see what they can offer. But plans are around $1,000-$1,700/month.
REDX
REDX is our best-priced option because of its a la carte pricing with no setup fees, which allows you to pay for what you want and nothing more. Its monthly prices are reasonable and you can combine leads for a more robust prospecting campaign. It was founded in Utah in 2003 as a solution for providing expired leads to real estate agents and has since been used by over 50,000 agents in both the U.S. and Canada. REDX provides lead data to agents for prospecting. It’s specific to the real estate industry and uses aggregate data from public records to source leads. Every lead that they provide includes contact information.
REDX focuses primarily on seller leads and includes pre-foreclosures, expired listings, for sale by owners, for rent by owners (FRBO), hard-to-find contact information for homeowners, and its Power Dialer feature, which helps you contact more sellers quickly. It offers online training, tutorials, and unlimited customer support.
REDX features include:
- Multiple types of real estate seller leads including expireds
- Geo-focused leads
- Full range of training and support
- Prospecting platform
- Help with lead conversions and lead management systems
- Leads are verified against active listings and the Do Not Call list
- Scripts built into the system
Agents can start using REDX right away by contacting customer support and watching tutorial videos for additional help. Pricing varies depending on the lead source. For example, for sale by owner (FSBO) and pre-foreclosure leads are $39.99 per month, GeoLeads are $49.99 per month, expired leads are $59.99 per month, and FRBOs are $79.99 per month. You can add the Power Dialer for $99.99 per month. There aren’t many reviews out there, but the ones that exist are positive and highlight that the expired leads are current and updated.
Zoho CRM
Zoho is our top lead generation company for social media because it can easily be used to capture Facebook or Twitter leads, as well as leads from websites and emails. It was founded in 1996 and is used by multiple industries including real estate, small businesses, and retail.
It offers a free trial and features opportunity tracking over an entire sales cycle. It can also track the competition and features an app, live support and training, webinars, prospecting tools, and lead tracking. It can help you manage your pipeline of leads once they come in. Customers can contact support to help get set up and take advantage of webinars and online training. The company offers multiple different support plan options.
Some of Zoho’s features include:
- Buyer and seller leads, as well as sales leads for other industries
- Social media and email lead capture
- Predictive analytics
- Customized reports
- Management tools to assist with assigning leads
- Real estate CRM and marketing tools
Zoho’s pricing is between $14 per user month and $52 per user per month when billed annually depending on the plan. If you pay monthly rates are higher. A limited, free version is available and custom plans may be available as well. Customers complain about being overcharged and poor customer service. However, other customers like its marketing tools and integration with compatible products and think it’s a good value.
How Does Real Estate Lead Generation Work?
Real estate lead generation is a marketing and advertising process which stimulates interest in either a house for sale or a realtor to work with. This interest is then turned into a sales pipeline with the goal is to turn the lead into a client, who then closes a deal by either buying or selling a house through an agent.
Agents and brokers generate leads in different ways, including via social media, referrals, their own network, open houses, and from lead generation companies. Leads are what keep a real estate brokerage in business. A closed lead provides a commission check to the agent and a check to the brokerage.
Conclusion
In real estate, online lead generation forms have become a necessity. It’s time-consuming to get leads using the traditional methods as they are expensive and slow. A few years ago lead generation software has appeared on the market, which made it possible for real estate agents to increase their leads without spending too much money and time.
If you are in the real estate business, and regular like most people, you would like to see your business stand out from the rest. This means it is time to think of ways through which you can do that. One good way of doing so is by making use of high quality lead generation tools. Lead generation tools have been known to have several benefits associated with them, which include higher productivity as well as better quality leads.