To succeed in any business, you need to make sure that you have a steady stream of clients who are ready to pay for your services or products. If we are talking about real estate business, this pool of clients is often difficult to build and maintain. Established real estate firms often choose to work with marketing agencies, whereas small time agencies and newly-started real estate business owners seek affordable yet effective strategies to find new clients. Though it seems difficult and hard, finding new clients is not all that difficult today, thanks to a variety of tools available today.
Whether you have just started a real estate firm, or you are firmly established in the realty space, the following methods will help you gain new clients.
Focus on Your Referrals
It is probably a well known fact that referrals drive new business for most real estate agents. As real estate space is something that is built on trust, credibility and reputation, clients prefer to sell and purchase properties through businesses that someone recommended to them. To make sure referrals work for you, begin to work with your past clients, and ask them to refer new clients to you. This should probably begin with making a list of past clients and calling them up preferably on their telephone.
If you begin to work with your past clients, family and friends, you can also expect your own business phone to start ringing. Make sure an informed employee makes and receives these calls. Hiring a virtual receptionist service is a good idea, so that your calls are handled 24/7 by a team of informed and well-trained call center executives, whose native language is American English.
Invest Resources in Lead Generation
While referrals provide a valuable source of new clients, you should not depend entirely on them. Begin to invest in lead generation campaigns online, which usually include organic campaigns and paid advertisements.
Organic lead generation campaigns include blogging, social media, SEO, making lists of prospective leads and calling them up, etc. Paid advertisements help you to reach out to web users on search engines, specific websites, Facebook, Twitter and real estate forums. Synthesizing paid and organic efforts is crucial to your lead generation campaign’s success.
Consider Specialized Websites
There are a number of websites such as Zillow, Trulia and realtor.com which specialize in helping agents find new clients. However, you do not have to stop at using just these famous websites. It is quite possible that there are location-specific websites that help real estate agencies to find new clients. Craigslist and other business classifieds are a great option too, as a lot of people still look for deals on these websites. You can probably start with promoting open house days on some of these websites, and then move on to running specific ad campaigns for each of these websites depending on their target audience.
Do Not Ignore Branding and Marketing
At the end of the day, nothing is more important than getting some professional branding for your business. This usually includes a professionally designed logo, business cards, letter heads, and a website. Investing in marketing is equally important, and like discussed earlier, focus on specific ad and marketing campaigns across social media and real estate websites.
Every point of contact should ooze your business’ personality so that clients can quickly relate to your listings. This means, every call that is made to your business or every call that is made from your business phone should be handled by professional executives who know how to convert leads into clients. Abby Connect’s virtual receptionist service is a good option if you wish to exude your brand identity each time prospective clients contact you over the telephone.
