The Fast & The Furious: The Battle to Convert More Real Estate Leads Online

Gone are the days of homebuyers driving down streets and looking for “For Sale” signs. Any realtor worth their salt understands the impact that today’s modern, digitally-driven, and lightning fast generation of homebuyers is having on the industry. In fact, the very first step of almost half of all buyers is to search online. Online consumers can be a fickle (and impatient) group- and many times, the agent who wins their business is the one with the quickest response time.

A few stats that should make you want to rev up your speed to lead:

As a real estate agent or broker, how will you be the one to provide consumers with the information they need, when they need it?

Here are three strategies for getting to your real estate leads before the competition:

1. Get the Right Tech

Unfortunately, there is just no way around it. The agent or broker with the best tech (and processes to support it) will win the day.  Capterra saw a 94% reduction in response time once they implemented marketing automation. The right tech stack will allow you to route your real estate leads instantly, weed out the junk, email leads you can’t call right away, and have a much larger online presence than you ever could on your own.  At a minimum, you should have the following tools to ensure you reach leads first:

A good CRM (Customer Relationship Management)Platform to help you manage all your relationships with clients and prospects. Your CRM should be able to do the following:

• Segment your database into “smart lists” for hyper-focused targeting (i.e. first time homebuyers, luxury sellers, buyers in X market, etc.)
• Integrate with your website
• Aggregate leads from all your portals (Zillow, Trulia, etc.)
• Work on all web and mobile devices
• Allow you to create your own custom fields on lead records

A Marketing Automation System to nurture and stay top-of-mind with leads and past clients. Your Marketing Automation system should be able to do the following:

• Create and send Drip Campaigns (multi-touch email nurtures)
• Create custom workflows (a series of alerts, emails and tasks to nurture specific contacts)
• Auto-route your online leads and send instant email and text notifications to follow up
• Allow you to build custom lead capture forms and landing pages
• Provide extensive lead intelligence (i.e. lead scoring, activity history tracking, etc.)
• Work on all web and mobile devices
• Integrate with your website
• Open API (so you can plug in all your important systems- i.e. transaction management, testimonial tools, etc.)

A modern Real Estate Website. Your website should be able to do the following:

• Provide you with full control to create and manage your own pages (you should never have to ask a tech vendor to make updates every time you need a change)
• Be 100% responsive on any device
• Be loaded with SEO and hyper-local content (including town, neighborhood, and development pages)
• Easily embed video and lead capture forms

The best solutions will provide everything you need in a single platform. This ensures all the tools work seamlessly together, so there’s less tech to manage (let’s be honest, we are all already in tech overload). it also gives you full visibility and control over your data. The Boston Logic Sales & Marketing Platform, for example, provides a real-estate website on the front end and a CRM and Marketing Automation solution on the back end. This means that you have complete insight into your online real estate leads from click to close.

2. Automate the Process

Having a good CRM behind your website is the foundation of your follow-up efforts. Once you have the right tools in place, it’s all about setting up a cadence of workflows for following up with your leads. Most CRM’s and Marketing Automation systems will deliver leads to your agents in real time.  Start by creating flows for the top three category of leads that come to your site, and map out a follow-up process for them. Your automated outreach should look something like this:

3. Implement Automated Live Chat

51% of customers state that businesses need to be available 24/7. Having 24- hour communication available speaks volumes about your commitment to customer service.  Don’t panic. Being “on” 24/7 doesn’t mean you have to be glued to your phone, email, text or social media…always ready to respond.

So, what if a lead contacts you at 8:00PM?

In an era when instant gratification rules the roost, it’s no surprise that 42% of customers prefer live chat because it avoids having to call or wait on hold.  Solutions like ReadyChat respond and provide quality customer service for you, so you and your team don’t have to be tied down trying to answer incoming chats! Additionally, ReadyChat is powered by intelligent tech that can provide a more nuanced response, including the ability to:

• Monitor visitor behavior
• Communicate the right message
• Use algorithms to engage at the right time (sometimes even before they have to ask!)

The moral to the story is, with automated live chat, a good CRM, and marketing automation in place you can reach all your online leads instantly, ensure you follow-up appropriately in record time, and then nurture them with email going forward. All with very minimal work on your end. Ultimately, it allows you to  provide a more personalized buying or selling experience from start to finish, all while being able to focus more time on what matters most- closing more deals.