If you’re interesting in making a positive first impression with your leads, and who isn’t at this point, you can’t escape hearing about the power of context marketing. Pelle Snickars said it first, “If content is king, context is it’s crown.” Context Lead Generation is understanding who your lead is, what they want, and most importantly what stage in the buying process they are in.
The problem with online leads is that the model is broken. Many Realtors are being sold leads without any knowledge as to what that lead wanted. To add insult to injury, often those leads are being resold to multiple agents.
The result is a really bad experience. Both for the Realtor and the prospect.
The lead doesn’t get what they were expecting and the Realtor doesn’t get what they need, a future client.
If the story ended here it would be a very sad story indeed. There is a solution, but first let’s start at the beginning.
1. Why are online leads so valuable to your business?
Lead generation drives growth. Most importantly, lead generation keeps you busy month-after-month. Many agents get swamped in summer time. While they are working in their business they need a system in place working on their business.
Because some agents aren’t doing anything to generate leads when they are busy, they come out of summer and find their business in a sudden lull.
A lead generation and nurturing system ensures this won’t happen.
2. Why isn’t my website getting online leads?
There are 2 reasons your website isn’t getting you online leads. First, agent websites are designed to sell you and are not designed to convert leads. They educate visitors about your service, why you are credible, trustworthy and good at Real Estate. Websites are ill equipped for lead generation. The forms don’t convert because they were never designed with lead conversion in mind, and even if you spent ten or twenty thousand dollars optimizing it, personal sites don’t get nearly enough traffic to make them effective.
3. Why are agents buying bad leads?
The industry has gotten used to the fact that 99% of online leads are useless. For some agents a good lead is worth 99 bad phone calls. The sad truth is that many agents are okay with bad leads.
4. Is there a better option?
Absolutely. It’s called “context marketing”.
Here’s a quick summary of what’s different. Leads submit their contact details in a form. This captures the prime suspects “name”, “email”, “phone number”. Most lead capture tools stop there. After getting the contacts name and email they call it a day and pass the lead onto the Realtor.
But, they don’t know if the info is correct, valid, or if the lead even wants to be contacted. So really these are unverified leads and not true leads.
“Context marketing” takes it 2 steps further.
1. It shares with the Realtor the reason that the lead submitted the form.
2. It asks the lead more questions, such as what exactly they are interested in, and shares those answers with the Realtor.
5. How do I make a good impression when contacting leads?
When you have insight into what a lead wants you know why you are contacting them. Making it much easier to prepare prior to the conversation and really knock your leads socks off.
But… there is a secret to making this first call even better.
6. How to get introduced to your leads before contacting them
Dale Carnegie, author of “How To Win Friends And Influence People”, suggested that the best way of winning friends is by talking about topics that others are interested in. When you know what your lead is interested in because of “Context Marketing” you can talk about things to get keep them hooked along the funnel.
And then use systems (like your assistant) and technology (like email) to introduce yourself to them earlier in the process.
The result is that your leads will learn who you are and why you credible while you provide information that is interesting to them.
That way when you call your lead they are expecting you to contact them. Making your experience way better and your first impression a positive one.
7. How to I convert these leads
A staggering 80% of online lead conversion happens during follow-up and nurturing. Smart agents like Darryl Reuter and Isaac Verge have systems in place to ensure their leads get weekly drip-emails and follow-up phone calls.
This is the real secret behind online lead generation. To learn more about a long-term lead generation strategy click here.
8. How do I get started with lead generation like this?
If you are interested in a solution like this, we offer an amazing Lead Generation platform that you can check out here.