RE JUNE 2020
D N e I u s W is
Capturing REAL Moments in Real Estate since 1995
2 VOL.
VOLUME 25 • ISSUE 2
Lead Generation FACEBOOK @myrealtyline TWITTER @RealtyLineATX INSTAGRAM @myrealtyline DIGITAL ISSUES Issuu.com/realtyline EVENT PHOTOS Archives SUBSCRIBE
Tools for harvesting prospects online to keep buyer leads coming in written by RIKI MARKOWITZ Leads are the lifeblood of an agent’s real estate business, says Texas REALTORS. In the olden days, generating leads meant hours on the phone cold calling prospects, dedicating weekends to open house events and placing print ads in local publications. The internet and social media have completely redefined the meaning of lead generation. Now, there are dozens of ways to find and attract new clients. And no matter an agent’s unique talents, there’s at least one that will play to his or her strengths, whether it’s schmoozing online, running a Facebook ad campaign or using predictive analytics software that identifies likely buyers or sellers. We checked out various lead-gen tools to see how brokerages and solo agents can harvest prospects online. One thing that a lot of platforms have in common is that they use customer relationship management technology. With a CRM, REALTORS can identify, track and manage interactions with clients. Some are designed for agencies to manage entire teams. Software developed for the real estate industry has features like MLS integration, transaction management tools and workflows custom-made for brokerages and solo agents. But to generate the actual leads that populate a platform’s CRM, agents have to know how to create and place pay-per-click (PPC) ads and understand how to improve their agency’s search engine rankings. Or, instead of learning the online-advertising and search-engine-optimization ropes, agents can subscribe to a platform that manages their lead harvesting strategy.
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Here are just a few lead-gen platforms that offer a unique value proposition for real estate industry professionals. BoldLeads (https://boldleads.com/), is a subscription platform for generating and managing real estate leads. In 2019, it was acquired by Propertybase, which solidified the company’s standing as a leader in targeting, capturing and converting real estate leads.
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BoldLeads operates almost like a marketing agency in that the company harvests high-value prospects from targeted pay-per-click ads they create and then place on social media sites and search engines. By the time potential buyers and sellers are added to an agent’s CRM, according to the platform, they’re vetted high-quality leads. There are a few ways for teams and solo agents to capture prospects with
BoldLeads. Subscribers can manually develop and manage their own PPC campaigns using the platform’s tools, or at a higher subscription tier, agents can just collect leads generated by the campaigns that BoldLeads runs and manages. One caveat with BoldLeads is that they offer area-exclusivity — one agent per zip code. Of course, for the REALTOR who lands his or her coveted zip code, it’s a pretty steep advantage. Real Geeks (realgeeks.com) is a subscription platform for generating and capturing leads via internet data exchange (IDX) websites. It works by using Facebook and Google Ads to drive traffic to the agency’s IDX website and landing pages. Agents can customize lead capture forms and collect the information they want, such as where a prospect is looking to purchase a home and how much money potential home buyers plan to spend. The platform also tracks information on prospects, like how often they visit an agent’s website and how much time they spend on the site. Real Geeks then displays prospects’ data on subscribers’ dashboards. For nurturing leads once they’re in an agent’s pipeline, the platform has a variety of tools. Agents can contact leads via automated text scripts and autoresponders and create one-off or longer email drip campaigns. BoomTown (boomtownroi.com) is also an IDX lead-gen platform, but one of its biggest selling points is that it’s specifically designed for managing teams. The platform employs content and SEO specialists who create and manage Facebook and Google Ads campaigns for subscribers. When prospects click on an ad, they’re taken to an agency’s IDX website and from there, filtered into an agency’s CRM along with data they reveal about their real estate needs. There, managers can distribute leads to the team. Agents use BoomTown tools like targeted SMS and email campaigns to nurture prospects. Meanwhile, every step is documented on a dashboard so that team leaders can track and view how leads are advancing through the funnel. REDX (theredx.com) is unique in that it doesn’t harvest leads from PPC ads or IDX websites. Rather, the platform scrapes expired real estate list[Lead Generation continues on page 16]