Looking for customers is one of the most important and resource-intensive parts of your job. If you don’t have potential customers, you won’t make sales. However, you need to choose your customer search channels and tools wisely.
Whether you are a real estate agent, manage commercial premises, or otherwise work in property sales or leasing, finding potential clients is one of the most important and resource-intensive parts of your job. If you don’t have potential customers, you won’t make sales. However, in order to gather quality leads, you need to choose your search channels and tools wisely.
For your convenience, we have prepared a list of channels and tools. It is more tailored toward real estate agents, but we believe that other real estate professionals can find it useful and inspiring.
1. Recommendations
Recommendations from clients, friends, and acquaintances has never been, and probably never will be, anything more effective than word-of-mouth advertising. Especially when it comes to large investments − property purchases, construction, etc. Various studies confirm that the effectiveness of recommendations far outweighs all other channels. Many of us know from personal experience that a specialist recommended by someone else is almost automatically booked. But there is one small nuance: you must already have experience, and clients will only recommend you if they are satisfied with the service you provide.
2. Cooperation
Cooperation with other agents. If you work for a real estate agency, you have access to the company’s database. If you belong to an association of agencies, there is an association database. If you are independent, you can always negotiate with those who do and earn an agreed-upon commission by selling other agents’ properties to your clients. Agents thrive when they share their properties, contacts, and profits with other agents. We are seeing more and more agents start to see the benefits of working together with their clients. In most countries, this is still a new thing, and people still think "every man for himself."
3. Networking with other professionals
Expand your network and maintain close relationships with other professionals involved in real estate in one way or another: bank staff, notaries, surveyors, property valuers, bailiffs, various construction professionals, furniture makers, etc. You can recommend them to your clients, and they will recommend you to theirs. This is almost as effective as recommendations from friends and acquaintances.
4. Thematic gatherings
Depending on the type of property you are selling or renting, themed events can be a source of quality leads. If you feel it’s right for you, attend exhibitions, conferences, and similar events that bring together your target audience. These events are about finding inspiration, solutions, or partners, so it’s a great opportunity to showcase yourself and your services or properties, and to be seen by a large number of potential clients or partners.
At such events, you should appear as an expert or a team of experts. Depending on the specifics of the event, you can give a presentation, actively interact with other participants, etc. These events require a lot of preparation, but when done properly, they can bring great benefits in the long term, or, with a little luck, immediately.
5. The local press
The internet may have pushed the press to the background, but there are situations when it is simply irreplaceable. Regional newspapers allow you to reach older people who are less likely to use the internet and live in the region you are interested in. New, more luxurious homes are worth advertising in publications favoured by a higher-earning audience. Flyers and ads with contact details are useful when you need to find a property in a specific building or neighbourhood. Posters, billboards, and similar visual advertising help reach people in a particular neighborhood. And if you want to be the face of property sales in a particular area, it is worth considering outdoor advertising: billboards, posters at bus stops, etc.
6. Property portals
Moving on to the internet, we can’t forget property portals. There are a few major websites that everyone knows about, and if you specialize in residential property, then this is one of the most effective channels to attract potential buyers. The plus point is that almost everyone who wants to buy, rent, or sell property visits them. Placing an advert there is guaranteed to get you calls, so it is an effective tool. The downside is that no single website has information on absolutely all properties, they are expensive and the cost of their services keeps rising year after year, there are all sorts of updates that push agents’ listings lower than those placed by private individuals, etc. It's true that they're still important for now, but there is a probability they'll be replaced by big companies like Google and Facebook, or by new start-ups that can offer better services at lower prices without making it hard for agents to work with them.
Smaller, less well-known websites are also worth considering when promoting your properties. These tend to specialize in particular areas (rentals, farmhouses, specific regions). They have specific audiences and compensate for their lower financial resources with more effort and smarter ways to attract their audience. One small, isolated website might seem ineffective, but as with the press, there will be situations where this is the best tool.
7. Representative homepage
A representative website is your online business card. When recommending a professional to someone else, it is common practice to give not only their contact details but also their website address. You can also attract new visitors by featuring your property or project on a separate page. For example, if a person clicks on a link and comes to your website instead of a property advert on a property portal, they are most likely looking for a specific agent to help them find the property they want. Your page will influence the decision on whether to contact you, so take a responsible approach to its creation and maintenance. Today, there are many solutions that make it easy and inexpensive to create attractive websites.
8. Internet advertising
The internet is amazing because it can help you reach both very broad audiences and very specific and narrow segments quickly and easily. It is possible to achieve very good results with a relatively small budget, and nowhere else is it easier to measure the real return on investment. Online advertising can be done through a wide variety of means: search engine advertising, banners, Youtube advertising, social media advertising, influencers, sponsored articles, etc.
It would be a shame not to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the internet, but it requires specific knowledge or, in some cases, a lot of time. In addition, all channels have their own specificities, advantages, and disadvantages, and it can be difficult for a layman to choose the most appropriate channels and use them effectively. If you don’t want to invest time and/or money in knowledge and skills, your best bet is to outsource your work to professionals in the following areas: digital communication, social media, SEO specialists, and others.
9. Social networks
The advantage of social networks is that it enables easy contact with potential clients, but most estate agents do not yet know how to use social networks to their advantage, thinking of them as an advertising wall rather than a social circle of live people.
On Facebook, it is worth paying attention to the various groups where people with more specific needs can offer or search for accommodation (e.g., there is a group for finding pet-friendly accommodation in Vilnius). Such groups can be an extremely useful and completely free source of customers in some situations.
For those working with commercial premises or prestigious real estate, the professional social network LinkedIn can be very useful. It is much easier to communicate here than on Facebook, and all users are basically potential clients of each other, looking for some kind of professional benefit for themselves or their company.
As for other social networks, there are already a number of RE agents that have their own Youtube channels. This is a good idea, since the video is an increasingly important part of the content viewed on the internet, but you need to carefully assess whether you really need it and whether you can produce videos that are interesting and of sufficient quality.
If you’re interested and think you’re not using social media to your advantage, or if you don’t know where to start, here are some useful tips.
10. Contacts you already have
The longer you have been in the property business, the more contacts you have. Or you could have them if you were to properly register them. Depending on the type of property they work with, some agents are already looking for buyers or tenants for their properties, mainly through their contacts. This is usually a narrow specialization but could also be appropriate for a broader segment, this just requires technology and patience.
A good CRM helps organize and manage large amounts of information. When used properly and over a long period of time, the system starts to pay dividends in the long run − you may not even need to look for customers through other channels, as in some cases, filtering a list of potential leads based on certain criteria and sending them an offer is sufficient. This way, the person or company you worked with, for example, seven years ago, can become your customer all over again.
Summary
There is no single most appropriate source or channel. It’s worth trying all the tools available to you to find the combination that works best. In addition, you should always think about what you are selling/renting and who the target audience is − the customer interested in buying/renting the property. These factors will determine which measures are effective and which are not.
It is important to assess the effectiveness of all the measures in order to know which ones really work and which ones don’t. Some channels are easier, others are harder, but you have to look at the resources used, and the benefits gained (not only the profit but also the valuable new contacts that may be useful in the future). It is particularly important to remember that your time is also a resource and the most precious one of all, so it should be taken as seriously as the obvious financial costs.