How to Cost Effectively Generate Leads

This is step 3 of a five-part series on how new agents can successfully break into the real estate market.

Yesterday, I discussed why agents should focus on creating education-based marketing materials that address prospects’ key problems and concerns rather than focusing on “getting their name out there.” In today’s article, I’ll talk about the best ways to generate leads using those education-based marketing materials – but first, let me again stress why education-based marketing is so important.

Marketing in the Attention Economy

Irrelevant advertising no longer works. Sure, back in the ’50s when there were only a handful of magazines, TV and radio channels, it was fairly easy to reach a broad audience and tell them virtually anything you wanted them to know. If you repeated your message enough or had a cute jingle accompanying your commercial, prospects would remember it and, hopefully, they’d buy because of it.

Unless you have hundreds of millions of dollars to spend, those tactics don’t work in today’s marketplace. Consumers are so bombarded with information they have to filter out things that aren’t relevant to survive. We live in an “always on” society, often called the attention economy, where there’s always something demanding our attention. If it’s not advertising from companies wanting us to pay attention, it’s our colleagues, family, and customers who want us to always be available for their call, email or instant message. Or the magazine, blog, and ezine publishers who want us to read more. Or the info-marketers who put out more books, audio, and video programs. Or the speakers who want us to come to their seminars. Or … you get the point.

There are so many things competing for our attention that many of us live in a continual state of information overload. We don’t need more information. We don’t need people telling us how wonderful they are or why we should buy their services. We don’t need more junk mail or spam or commercial breaks. Rather, we need ways to organize and make sense of information so that we can base our decisions on the good stuff and toss out the bad stuff. This is what people look for – and this is the type of advertising that grabs people’s attention enough for them to say “tell me more.”

Lead Generation Made Simple

OK, so now you’ve got a few articles, free reports or other goodies that contain valuable information that will help your prospects make sense of their chaotic world – how do you let them know about these gems? The answer is simple: Advertise in the publications that your target market is likely to engage with regularly.

This is common sense, yet so many agents are lured into advertising in publications that will be delivered to hundreds of thousands of readers or on billboards by the side of major highways or on the backs of shopping carts or in free circulars that have nothing to do with real estate. This is the equivalent of a hope-and-pray strategy: If they “get their name out” into enough places, eventually, someone looking for an agent will notice their ad while they’re out doing their day-to-day activities, write down their number or website, and contact them.

Rather than interrupt people while they’re engaged with other activities – and therefore, their No. 1 priority isn’t finding a real estate agent – why not put yourself in front of people already looking? For instance you could:

• Advertise in real estate circulars and classifieds (offline and online). – Most agent advertising looks very similar. For instance, imagine how your content-rich ad offering free reports would stand out prominently in free house ad circulars.
  
  
• Create a pay-per-click campaign on Google to specifically target searchers looking for homes in your area. – Pay-per-click advertising is a great way to test your offers and headlines quickly and cheaply before you run your ad in offline publications. For instance, you can run two ads that differ only by the headline and see which ad gets more clicks. The one that does better is your winner.

In addition, you can get plenty of free (or cheap) advertising if you’re willing to put in a bit more time and effort by:

• Writing a real estate column for a local publication your target audience reads.
• Creating an informative website about your local real estate market or writing for a popular local blog or online publication.
• Giving talks about the local real estate marketing or aspects of buying or selling a home to local organizations that are likely to include members of your target audience. If you don’t like public speaking, offer free reports or recorded CDs for them to distribute to their members.
• Sending press releases to local newspaper writers describing local market conditions or announcing your new free report that would be beneficial to their readers.
• Networking at events your target audience or potential referral partners are likely to attend. When you have education-based marketing materials, you always have a reason to follow up with “Here’s the guide I mentioned I’d send you. Let me know what you think or if you have questions.”

With each of these options, you should get a brief author byline to explain who you are and what you do, how interested prospects can get your free report, and how they can contact you.

So, what’s the point of all of this? The point is to get prospects to raise their hand and tell you they’re interested by giving you permission to continue contacting them in exchange for the valuable information and advice you provide. In other words, attention is the currency and over the course of several exchanges, you start to build a relationship with prospects. Your goal is to give content to get attention, which leads to prospects getting to know, like and trust you, which leads to more educated, easy-to-work-with clients and more referrals.

Tomorrow, I’ll talk more about how following up is the secret to closing more sales.

Related Posts

• How To Get The Most Bang for Your $2500 Marketing Budget
• How to Create Education-Based Marketing Materials That Demonstrate Your Credibility
• How To Build a Referral-Based Business
• Following Up: The Secret To More Sales
• Reader Q&A: How New Agents Can Break Into Real Estate on a Shoestring Budget