Episode 49: "33 Lead Generation Ideas for Real Estate Agents

Episode 49: "33 Lead Generation Ideas for Real Estate Agents: Online & Offline Strategies for a Tough Market" 🔊

Description:

Welcome, fellow listing agents! Join Bob Mangold, the Listing Coach, in Episode 49 of the If You List, You Lastpodcast. This week, we dive into 33 actionable lead generation strategies to elevate your real estate game—even in a tough market. Whether you're just starting out or looking to boost your current tactics, these unique and often underrated methods are here to get more deals in your pipeline.

Episode Highlights:

• Mortgage Market Update: Why are interest rates climbing despite Fed rate cuts? Learn about the October interest rate spike and how government budget cycles influence mortgage rates.
• 33 Lead Generation Ideas:
  • Optimize Your Website: Tips for enhancing your local SEO and content strategies.
  • Social Media & Video Marketing: How to leverage Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube ads to stay top-of-mind.
  • Community & Networking: Explore hosting virtual open houses, attending local events, and creating neighborhood-focused content.
  • AI & Automation: Use AI tools like ChatGPT to automate blog posts, social media, and lead nurturing emails.
  • Offline Tactics: Traditional but effective strategies like door hangers, postcards, and client appreciation events.
  • Special Tips for New Agents: Partner with experienced agents, attend investor meetups, or start as an assistant.

Takeaways & Resources:

• Join the Conversation: Share your thoughts, comments, and questions in our Real Estate Asset AdvisorFacebook group.
• Stay Consistent & Creative: Experiment with different lead generation ideas and see what resonates with your market.

Whether you're doubling down on digital strategies or taking it back to basics with offline methods, the key is consistency. Get started on these ideas today and build momentum in your business. See you next time, and remember—if you list, you last!

Join our Facebook Group at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/realestateassetadvisors

Visit our website to watch replays of our Wednesday "Elevate Business Briefings" at: www.RealEstateAssetAdvisors.org

Download a copy of my book, "If you list, you last!" at www.IfYouListYouLast.com

Transcript

Hey, welcome fellow listing agents. Bob Mangold, the listing coach here with episode 49 of the If You List Your Last podcast. Hey, as always, thanks for listening, sharing and downloading.

I'm really excited to have you here today because while we're diving into some awesome real estate lead generation ideas, that are a little bit underrated, but can make a big difference in your business. Whether you're just starting out, or maybe you're just looking to spice up your current strategies for, you really need to take and kick some butt and get some deals in the pipeline.

I've got 33 different ideas to share with you. And trust me, there's something for everyone in here. Now, just a reminder, make sure you join our Real Estate Asset Advisor Facebook group. So you can join in on the conversation, share your thoughts, comments, Or questions on any of the topics I discuss right here on the podcast.

So grab a cup of coffee and let's jump in All right, we're going to get started with this week's mortgage market update I really wish I had some good news to give you Unfortunately, it stinks, but it is just the nature of the beast I thought I would cover for you one of the most common questions i'm getting right now It's from whether it's consumers or agents doesn't really matter  I'm hearing, hey Bob, the Fed cut the interest rates by 50 basis points.

Why are interest rates going up? Because as I record this, folks, rates currently are almost six and three quarters. Now, how does that work where the Fed cut the Fed fund rate, but mortgage rates went up? It's two, two pronged answer for that. First, Fed fund rates has absolutely nothing to do with mortgage interest rates.

Okay. It does impact car loans, credit card loans. The fed funds rate is literally the amount of money that banks lend each other To to do business. Okay, so it does impact car rates credit card rates things of that nature But at the end of the day it has other than some psychology on what's happening in the economy It doesn't have an impact on mortgage rates.

The real reason you're seeing mortgage rates jump number one historically We don't know what the anomaly is, but it just works this way In october of every year for the last I think it's 13 years interest rates spike in the month of October. Does that mean they'll automatically come down in the month of November?

Doesn't, or does it necessarily anyway? And, but it is likely at the end of the day, the real reason, and I can give you the answer on why it spikes in October. It's not rocket science and it's not just wow, is the market crazy? The federal budget expires or ends. The fiscal year goes to September 30th and the way our government works, both federal, state, local County, they all do this.

It's insanity. But if they don't spend the amount of money they were budgeted, they lose it next year and they also don't get the increase.  So at the end of the year, they flush out literally hundreds of billions of cash. And if you're watching this on YouTube, I put the chart or the graph where you can see How at the end of September, from the mid to the end of September, they literally dumped 600 billion dollars of money into the economy.

Now when you dump money into the economy,  It spikes inflation. The reason interest rates aren't going down is because there's still the fear of inflation, and when you drop 600 billion into the economy, you're going to get inflation. So imagine this, compare the government To how a business runs if I don't spend all the money that I was allocated I lose it for the next year So the way the government runs is they're going to do anything they can to spend the billion dollars Even though they don't need to do it  So that they can get the cost of living increases on top of the billion dollars that they didn't spend  They're actually rewarded by giving more money by spending more money. 

Compare that to the private sector. If I was running a business and I had a budget of a billion dollars and let's say I saved or only spent 800 million dollars, my stock price would go up, the value of our company would go up, we would have money to pay more or more money to pay our employees, more money to expand into other markets.

We're rewarded that way. But the government rewards inefficiency. Imagine just doing one simple thing in the government. Reward every department head with a percentage of the money they save each year they could cut each year. So let's take that billion dollar department that let's say they only spend 800 million.

What if they got 10 percent of 200 million or 20 million bonus?  Do you think those bureaucrats would be motivated to now start using our money more efficiently?  And the only answer to that is well, hell yeah, they would but that's not how government Seems to work now ultimately we have control of that by the people we elect But that's why you're seeing the interest rates spike right now Will that settle down after the first of the year it will because you won't have that dump of literally 600 billion I want you to realize that folks  just what half a trillion dollars just got pumped into the economy in a three week period. 

That means that companies are spending that money, prices get raised, et cetera, et cetera.  That's why you're seeing the interest rates do what they're doing right now. It's absolutely ridiculous. It's no coincidence that interest rates spike every year in October because it's literally the government bureaucrats dumping their unused budgets into the economy and just annihilating us.

So that's why we're seeing the things that we're seeing in interest rates. So I wish I had better news for you, but it is what it is. So let's get into some stuff that's more positive, at least more fun. Let's talk about some different lead generation ideas. And full disclosure, I didn't put these in any order. 

I want you to listen to these and figure out which one works best for you. Are you going to employ all of these? Of course not. But I wanted to give you a list, especially as we, start closing down over the course of the next couple of months for the last year. This will go down as the worst real estate market since 1995. 

Just so you realize 2008, 2009, 2010 still had more transactions than we will this year. So it's a tough market folks. So it's time for us to up our game. So let's talk about what we can do to generate more leads. Okay. First thing, optimize your website. What do I mean  Optimize it for local SEO.  What does that look like?

You folks you can go to Google and YouTube and say hey, how do I optimize my website? You could go to chat gpt And they'll do that you get all these different ideas On how to do that, but the number one thing you can do  Is start to blog that's really tip number two Create a real estate blog on your website and have topics that are geared towards your specific market And most importantly And start answering the questions that both buyers and sellers Need information on and if you want to learn how to do that, it's real simple go to google And punch in how much money do you need for a down payment? 

You know how google gives you the suggestions in the drop down box. Those are the most frequently asked questions Guys, you can go to chat gpt now and say hey, what are the 10 most asked real estate questions in phoenix, arizona?  You know the 10 most asked online questions in Phoenix, Arizona  Then the cool part is you can literally say chap GPT.

Can you write a blog post a call it a 1500 word blog post for me on those 10 topics And can you optimize that for SEO? Guys, it'll write your blog post for you and they'll be good. Now obviously you can customize them if there's things that you don't like or you want to change. You obviously have the ability to do that.

So let's do that. Okay, you can start using Google pay per click ads. You get your message out in front of people that are actively searching for real estate So if you want to do that google ads are well, it's a powerful way to do that It does keep you top of mind by popping up right when they're looking For an agent or a new home now, they can be very expensive depending on your market And as an example, in Scottsdale, Arizona, a pay per click lead could be 125 to 175 each.

But those are people that are specifically punching in questions about buying a home or selling a home in Scottsdale, Arizona. Those are pretty good leads, right? It's a little expensive, but definitely worth doing. Number five, next. Start running social media ads. Google pay per click is not the only game in town.

What about Facebook and Instagram? Are you running Facebook custom audience ads to your  database? Now, the good part about that, guys, you only have to spend a dollar or two a day, and your database will see you all the time. Now, the best way to do that is to have a very clear, concise message that And understand branding.

What that tells you is that people need to see your ad at least eight times before they actually think about contacting you. So you can stay in front of your database for a buck or two a day online. And there's, certainly other social media that you could be doing. You could be doing YouTube ads, Google network ads.

Things of that nature. So number four is run social media ads. So let me recap number one Is to optimize your website for local seo Number two create a real estate blog number three use google pay per click ads number four run social media ads number five A little bit different. What if you hosted virtual open houses? 

What if on a Saturday you literally took your phone and did a walkthrough and then put that onto a video landing page  in order to be able to do that? Here's the good news folks, you can use AI to do that for you too. And simply run like a, again, maybe a Facebook custom audience ad, or maybe a lead generation ad on Facebook, and say hey join my virtual open house from one to two on Saturday.

Click here to watch it or whatever and you ran that and you spent maybe five bucks a day For four or five days in advance, right? You can do things like facebook live To showcase properties what if you did you did facebook live Hey, you're gonna go visit five houses on saturday between the hours of one and three and you're gonna broadcast those live on facebook that would be a virtual open house Number six create engaging videos and if you were to ask me If I had to start over in the real estate business again, what would I do?

It would be to start with video. Now, what's an engaging video? That is a different story. Remember those topics I told you to go into ChatGPT about, hey, what are people searching online for when researching moving to Phoenix, Arizona? ChatGPT will give you the topics. Then you could say could you write a video script?

And a video script. About 150 words equals about a minute of video content, okay? So let's say that you wanted a 10 minute video on those things. Then you could say, can you write me a video, a 10 minute video, using approximately 150 words a minute on that topic? Also, can you give me the hashtags that will best optimize that video?

So if you started doing things like, Hey, the five best places to live in your neighborhood or in your area or your city, or five things you need to know about before you move to this city, what's the cost of living in your city? Is it more expensive? Things like that where people are online searching and folks, I can tell you, I know dozens and dozens, probably hundreds of agents.

The only marketing they do. is video, they spend 0, 0 on advertising.  So  get over your fear of having a camera. There's so many different AI tools out there now. I used to have a professional video editor. I don't do that anymore. I use AI. My assistant edits a video in five minutes.  So at the end of the day, use that AI. 

Number seven, build a social media presence. I know you're all gonna go. Yeah. Yeah, I heard that before. Guys, if you're not posting three to five times a day, seven days a week with engaging content Things that people are looking for  well, you're missing out you go. Oh my gosh, bob. That's a lot of content I get it. 

But guess what guys we have this stuff called ai I actually created a software program that will basically go out and gather content Could be rewritten in AI and scheduled to post. So somebody using that software could post five times a day, seven days a week, sit down and schedule six months of content  to be uploaded  and do it in about an hour.

So there's ways to take and do this. Stop thinking of the old fashioned way. Ten years ago, AI is changing our business and making it really simple. To the point where I just thought, Gosh, what if I create a software program that would do this for people, and they don't have to think about it? How cool would that be?

But, still gives control, right? Our people that use our software are able to create their own content and brand, and, we do those kinds of things. Guys, if you can't be found online, you're not getting business. Think of it this way. When somebody refers you,  what's the first thing that, that person that got the referral is going to go do they're going to Google  and if they can't find you,  chances are it's 50, 50, if they're going to hire you number eight, engage in online communities.

Now, when I say engage in online communities, most people are thinking of Facebook. But there's communities all over the place. There's school communities, there's Reddit communities, there's LinkedIn communities. What if you started your own community of online things, right? So if you're not in those real estate forms and online committees, that's a great place.

And you go, Bob what do I need to be in a, in an online form with other real estate agents? I just taught this to my group the other day.  Give you the easiest example. If you're in a market where you have a military base, so in Phoenix, where I'm based from, we have Luke Air Force Base. Luke Air Force Base has new pilots being transferred in every couple of years.

It's a training base.  Gosh, what if you created an online group for the military members that go to Luke Air Force Base. You find out where these people are getting transferred from and you go and start building referral relationships with them. With other agents in the markets where they're getting transfers to us at in Phoenix, to Luke Air Force Base.

Great, you're paying a referral fee, but you've got all those agents to do it. That's where you do it. Number nine, leverage your email marketing. Now, I'll be the first to tell you, Lots of people don't read their email. So what's the answer to that? Send lots of email. Because maybe they'll see something.

We have follow up campaigns for all the different kind of categories of buyers and sellers that we have. But we also have three other emails that we send out every single week. You could send emails out promoting local partners, which I'll talk about in a couple of minutes.  Offering some kind of discount or savings, right?

You'll be amazed how many views those get so don't  put that out You know just think oh You know I'm gonna send an email once every 30 days and I'm gonna be in front of my database that doesn't work folks  You might as well not even send out one email a month, right? You get a lead in an open house and you put them into a drip campaign Where they're getting an email every month from you and you think somehow that's going to turn into business It's not you've got to be out there.

You've got to be in their face, obviously polite But you've got to be bringing things of value to them Don't just send the normal drivel right all these pre crms no. Figure out what your message is and do that. And so we have a whole strategy on how we do that. Number 10, implement chatbots on your Facebook pages.

Let people interact with you. They're not that hard to do anymore in today's world.  If you have somebody that, let's say you were running a Facebook custom audience ad, and at three o'clock in the morning, you had a customer or somebody online send a question, wouldn't it be great if there was somebody with an answer there?

These AI chatbots folks, they're really good at  being able to like, Even give a generic answer and you can set it up. Hey, thanks so much for asking that question Unfortunately Bob's asleep right now. He starts work at 8 30 in the morning. Let me get your information I'll have him reach out to you.

Like you can have a chat bot do that There's nothing wrong with saying he's asleep.  It also humanizes and sets you apart from your competition  number 11 offer downloadable guides you see them all the time 10 ways to sell your house for the most amount of money, or, 10 things you should know about before buying a house.

And you're going, oh my god, Bob, where would I get that stuff? I gotta write it.  Chat, GPT chat, GPT. Pretend that you're at a Harvard educated copywriter with training from Dan Kennedy, Russell Brunson and Frank Kern.  I need a five page e guide  on 10 things a seller should know before selling their house.

I'd like you to write it in a friendly, professional, and humorous conversational tone.  Click. There's your guide. So I hear a lot of agents say, oh, AI, it's, I don't use it, too complicated. Guys, it'll change your life. You can do all this stuff on AI. Number 12, cross promote with local businesses.  I have a whole process in my training class or that I teach my production team.

Transcribed Or I teach my listing agents on how to build a local business referral network.  Folks, I went from spending a ton of money at one point To spending no money because I've built a referral based business mostly with local business partners, right? Hey, you want to send out a couple emails every week?

What if you went to  a myriad of different businesses got them to give you a whatever 10 off coupon or something like that? And you said hey i'm here with bob at bob's bakery And he's offering, buy one dozen donuts this week get another dozen free and you sent that out to your database And you made that your Facebook custom audience ads for a few days so that your database seen that. 

Now do you think they're gonna engage with that? And so there's a whole strategy far too detailed to go into on this. Start thinking about how you can start working with local businesses.  Number 13, use LinkedIn. Most people think LinkedIn is just for resumes and all that. Folks, you can go and start building referral relationships with agents across the globe, not just nationally, across the globe. 

Plus, if you start taking that blog content that you have ChatGPT write for you, and you post it in all your social media, and you're Googling my business, and you're posting it into LinkedIn, you're becoming active out there, guys. And you'll also be surprised to see when you start to Google your name 90 days from now, You're doing these things that these LinkedIn articles can show up for you. 

So don't worry about, just get that content, create it and get it in as many places as you can get it. 14. Make sure your website is mobile optimized. If it's not, get it done. It's easy to do. In most cases, folks, most people's website is mobile optimized. But if you're doing things like building landing pages and things like that, when you build them, you need to make sure that they're mobile optimized.

Number 15. Don't like this one, but I'm going to give it to you. You are expensive.  And they have a very low conversion rate. If you're going to do that, I would rather see you buy a lead that you pay at closing. Yes, you pay a much higher transaction fee, but if you're going to do that, at least it's a better way, especially if you're cash strapped, then I wouldn't be signing up and buying leads from Zillow spending, a thousand dollars a month.

If you're cash strapped, it's far better to do the pay at closing then at least until you leverage that. And start to have cash flow.  Number 16,  leverage AI and predictive analysis. So I wanted to drop this in the middle because  it, I wanted to give you some ideas as we went through, how you can use AI in your business, but stop saying you're afraid of it, or you don't know how to use it.

Go in, Get a subscription to ChatGPT. You can get it for free, pay the 20 bucks a month, and get it where it works faster and has more opportunity for you, right? I use ChatGPT, I've taken my books, I've taken my videos, I take my podcasts, I take all the video content that I create, and I can create what's called a GPT.

Think of it as like an extension on Chrome. But what happens is ChatGPT learns all about, the things that I teach are all about the home boss listing system are all about the equity max system that we have for lead conversion. And then when I needed to write an email campaign for me, for example, I go in to my equity max GPT and I see, I say, I need a 26 year old.

26 week email campaign based around EquityMax, make it professional, friendly, whatever, and it'll take and print out a 26 week email campaign that I did that about three weeks ago. I didn't need to change anything, that's how good it was. But the reason it worked is because I educated ChatGPT and created something specifically to learn about my content.

How cool is that? And then let's switch gears real quick and talk about like offline lead generation ideas, right? We're talking about things to do online. Let's move to offline. So number 17, attend local networking events. Common sense, right? But, is it the B& Is and the Latips and all that? Yeah, it could be.

But, you're one of one, one of one industry, right? What if you started going to chamber of commerce events and started paying attention to these local business owners and asked them how you could help them? But, networking is a great event. Now, one of the things I teach is agents to start working with flippers.

You want listings, start working with 10 to 20 flippers. Let's say they flip 3 to 5 houses a year and you've got 10 flippers that you work with. You got 30 listings a year. Go to those kind of events, and if you can't find them, what if you started your own? Don't say I couldn't find anything.

Great, then start your own. Number 18, you can sponsor community events. Charity runs, things like that. But guys, the best case scenario is do stuff locally. Sponsor your school sports teams. You'll get a banner out there on the baseball field and the football field. But become known as a participant in these events.

Thanks. Sponsor a Halloween party in your neighborhood at the park, a couple of weeks before Halloween. Things like that. And if there aren't those events, what if you actually did the events and promoted the events? That'd be even better, folks, because well, then you're the one running the event.

Join number 19, join business associations, right? Chamber of Commerce, if they're investor groups, things like that, join those. Number 20, start partnering with other professionals. So think of it this way. How many people come to you and say, Hey Bob, could you recommend a good mover, a good plumber, a good cleaning person a window cleaner, a painter, a carpet cleaner?

Folks start to partner with those people. Because people ask for that, right? One of my agents literally just had a closing, and it was a condo that this young single girl bought. It's dirty. The agent actually paid to have a cleaning lady come in and clean it because it was fairly dirty.  Folks, that was far more valuable gift.

Then giving them a calendar or whatever a petco night things like that The girl cried that the agent actually did that for her Because she was planning like hey the whole weekend moving in before they could do that She had a clean well helps to have those other professionals to work with right? 

21 distribute door hangers you go. Oh, I hate door knocking. Okay, cool distribute door hangers I know it's old school, but guess what folks it does work, especially If you have a powerful message, right? Imagine I have a door hanger that would say I could help you pay your home off in seven to ten years Scan this QR code if you want to learn more.

And then we had a video attached to it where they could download an ebook to do that, right? I'm going to get people. Number 22, advertising your local media, local radio, local tv, local newspapers. But be careful in the newspaper folks. You need to make sure that the viewership is in there to be able to do that.

Now that you know that obviously requires a little bit more money if you're going to go on radio or tv. But I can tell you I advertised on radio and tv for about five years. You  And I spent a lot of money, but I also generated a lot of business at one point though I said, look at the money i'm spending, you know well into six figures a year And they said what if I could build a referral based business That generated as much money and I didn't have to write the seven hundred thousand dollars in checks Took me two years to do that, but you can do that  send postcards again old school stuff  But so many people stop doing that folks go and do that The divorced homeowners that we work with or the people that we know are you know are getting divorced?

We know that seven out of ten of them are going to sell their house Would you be okay sending them a postcard for the next 24 months? If you could get like 10 percent of those listings number 24 host client appreciation events  I have agents who rent out a movie theater on a saturday between thanksgiving and christmas, right?

Usually one of the christmas blockbusters come out and they do that. Does that cost money? Yes But the rate of return in the referral business from it is astronomical number  25 target fizz bows Yeah, I know y'all hate. Oh my god. I hate cold calling. The good news is we don't cold call anymore We text  They're goldmine folks.

These are people that want to sell their house chances are great If we're not selling out as many houses in the mls Coordinating and networking with all these agents think of the likelihood of somebody selling their house on their own, right? number 26 expired listings That's not new folks. But guess what you get business from it I have one agent who all he does is fizz bows and expires and he's going to close about 40 homes this year  those two things 27 target absentee owners You can get that data from your title company.

It could be a second home. But guess what? You can search on people that own five homes, and two of them are vacant. Those are probably people that might be looking to sell. Number twenty eight. Identify distressed properties. What's distressed properties? Foreclosure, probate, fixer uppers, things like that.

Go back and listen a few weeks ago. I did a podcast on how you can make 8 percent more money for your sellers by not using the word price to sell or motivated seller or relocation causes, sale or whatever that, people are putting in there.  Those are the ones you should be targeting.

Let's talk about a few strategies. If you're a new agent, number one, reach out to your sphere of influence, your friends, your family and colleagues, but I'm going to give you a different twist on that.  Because I actually, if you don't do it this way, I disagree with doing that. Your friends and family and people that you know already know you're a rookie agent.

You don't know anything. And then they're going to go gosh, I, yeah, I love this person to death, but they don't know what they're doing.  So they feel funny doing business with you because they know you don't do anything. So here's how I teach agents to do that. I would just reach out and say, Hey I, and you can just do this via text even.

Hey, I just wanted to reach out. I've had a bunch of my real estate clients asking me if they could, if they, if I knew a good plumber, handyman, mover, do you have anybody that I could refer to them? You go I have real estate clients asking for that. You're just doing this in advance.  They go, they'll text you back and they go I didn't know you got into real estate  and you could go Yeah, I've been in real estate for a while now. 

What's a while? It could be an hour. It could be a week It could be a month. That's a while to you. But now they actually hear you reaching out to try and help clients They're not going. Oh my god, they're new at this. I didn't know I haven't talked to him in six months Oh, yeah, I've been planning this for a couple of years put a whole business plan together to get this done Yeah, I couldn't be more thrilled.

It's great. Don't let them know you're brand new and hey Send me business because i'm brand new attend in i'm sorry number 30 attend investor meetups Investors are great sources of business folks And oh, by the way, especially if you're new the best thing you could do is learn how to take and become a customer Of your own product.

It's the number one source of building wealth in the world real estate You might want to start buying some of your own number 31, start assisting experienced agents. Just offer to help them. Hey, I'll go show I'll work your open houses with you. I'll do all that. Don't ask him for a split. Don't ask him for a referral fee.

Just go learn from them. Number 32, host a new agent, open house,  right? It's a chance for you to start introducing yourself into the real estate community. So that when you get new listings, like one of the things I teach, when you're in your listing presentation, we have a list of all the agents that we personally send our new listings to.

And so we explain that to a client that way, Hey, I've got a database of about 180 different agents that are some of the top agents in the market that we know are great agents, have databases and work with buyers. Tomorrow morning, we're going to get the information on your listing out to that 180 agents.

Guess what folks you got to go find agents So do a new agent open house  and then finally guys you could just join a team or find a mentor Like we actually have a process where we coach And mentor our new agents  for like the first year They actually have an assigned mentor and assigned coaching and assigned training class that they go through So that's going to be your best way to learn the business if you're a new agent So that's it folks Went a little longer than I'm sure that I wanted.

That's just a wrap So yeah, there you got 33 different lead generate 33 different lead generation ideas  that can help you build your business now Whether you're diving into online marketing or hitting the pavement with offline strategies The key is creativity and consistency. So go ahead, try a few of these out, see what works best for you, and keep growing.

Until next time, keep crushing it out there. And remember, if you list, you last. Talk to you next week.