Real Estate Lead Nurturing: A Definitive Guide

Real Estate marketing like many other businesses including sales is all about leads and lead generation. However, not all generated leads are ready to make a purchase. In fact, the majority of leads are not ready but that does not mean you do not need them or they are not good enough to be considered. Only a small percentage of all generated leads in the business are willing to buy a home in the immediate future and everybody is looking for them. However, that will not be enough. Agents need to nurture those leads who are not ready over time and turn them into deals. In this article, we will discuss Real Estate leads nurturing, what it is, why it is important and agents should do it.

What is Real Estate Lead Nurturing

At its most basic level, lead nurturing refers to the process of engaging, supporting, developing, and reinforcing meaningful relationships with your prospective customers by providing them with appropriate and relevant content and information at every stage of the buyer’s journey toward making a purchase. 

These steps can be simple but regular follow-ups, targeted content, personalization, multi-channel nurturing, and multiple touches.

Lead nurturing helps your buyer get to know your business. It enables you to educate, inform and build trust with your leads and move them from the top of the buyer’s funnel (when they are not quite ready to buy) into the lower part of the funnel (when they are ready to buy). 

Lead nurturing tries to reach out to your leads and answer their questions at precisely the right time. The information you share should be basically helpful and what they are looking for at that point in the buying process to move them on to the next stage.

A thriving lead nurturing program concentrates marketing and communication measures on listening to the needs of prospects and delivering the information and answers they need so that it:

• Builds trust
• Boost brand awareness
• Establish and maintain a connection until leads are ready to buy.

Why Should You Nurture Leads

Not all leads generated by your marketing efforts are sales-ready, and while they might be interested in your service, they would naturally have questions and concerns that need to be answered to move them from the awareness stage to the purchasing stage.

Based on a research by, 73% of leads are not ready to buy when they first give you their contact information.

Maketing Sherpa

and

It takes about five to 20 touchpoints for a lead to convert.

99firms

This goes to show you that generating the leads is just the beginning of the way. Most agents think that once they have generated leads, they are ready to close deals. Well, that might be true in a utopia but definitely not in the world we are living today. Watch the video below:

And buyers today are not the herd buyers they tended to be in the past. Rather than wanting to be “sold,” they want to be listened to.

That’s why it’s essential to nurture leads. If a lead isn’t ready to buy and you are too aggressive, leads are less likely to do business with you. When leads don’t know where, how, or what to do next, chances are they’ll walk away.  This is why nurturing leads is absolutely critical for every Real Estate agent.

Benefits of Real Estate Lead Nurturing

According to a study by Annuitas, nurtured leads generate a 47% higher average order value (AOV).

Here is more stats, Businesses that nurture leads get

• 50% more sales-ready leads.
• 4–10 times the email response rate.
• 45% greater ROI.
• 9.3% higher sales quota achievement rate

Here are some more benefits of Real Estate lead nurturing:

Introduce Your Business

Lead nurturing is an effective way to teach leads about what you do. Lead nurturing allows you to show leads a more complete picture of who you are and what you can do for them.

Gain Trust

Showing leads that you understand their concerns and providing them with useful content can help you gain their trust. Sharing your knowledge allows them to know that you are not just trying to make a sale but you are there to help them and they come first.

Thought Leader

As you share practical and relevant content it helps boost your reputation and introduces you as a leader in your farming area. After all, you are not the only agent in your neighborhood or city.

Top of Mind

If you nurture your leads regularly and get in touch with them in a timely fashion, they are more likely to remember you. Staying top of mind is essentially helpful so they will turn to you when they need or want an agent.

Less CAC

Lead generation allows you to get less-expensive channels of getting clients, and spending less on marketing will improve your Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC).

What is The Marketing Funnel?

The marketing funnel is a journey from brand awareness to becoming a new client. Every client has a journey from the first interaction with you to becoming your client. Almost every new lead goes through the steps above and becomes a client. 

The concept of a marketing funnel has developed through the past few decades, particularly with the rise of digital marketing but here we simplify it as a 3 step process. From a marketing perspective, you should be able to consider necessary touchpoints and have a plan for each step to maximize the efficiency of your campaigns.

Step 1: Awareness

Awareness in the marketing funnel is the first time a prospect hears about you. It is considered the Top Of Funnel (TOFU) layer.  

Let’s consider a well-known scenario: referral.

You sold a house to Fred last year. You offered extra care and now he has introduced you to his cousin Jenny.

You don’t have to create awareness for Jenny anymore because Fred made that happen. Now Jenny has moved to the next step in the funnel: Research & Consideration

All you have to do for her is maintain awareness and make sure that you remain on top of her mind. This can be done by ongoing awareness and consideration campaigns.

The same goes for your social media platforms. If Jenny sees your Facebook ad or likes your Instagram post, then your social media has done the introduction. Your Instagram is the touchpoint and you have created brand awareness with social media. 

Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook are channels with which you can build your brand awareness and are places to find more potential leads. Whoever likes your page or follows you, might not become a client immediately but are placed in the awareness stage.

It takes time to establish your awareness with social media marketing and it needs consistency and patience. 

Digital Channels for Brand Awareness

• Social media Posts
• Facebook and Instagram Ads (for awareness)

No matter what medium you choose, you won’t be able to measure the impact on your sales directly. Keep in mind that you are increasing awareness especially if it’s the first touchpoint. So the dollars you spend today won’t necessarily lead to sales next week or month.

Step 2: Research & Consideration

Back to our story. Either through a referral or a Facebook ad, now Jenny needs to know more about you. So she does her research to evaluate you. 

She searches for your name or your real estate brand. She might talk to the other clients who provided testimonials or she might read up on you online.

The million dollar question:

How are you building your digital (online) brand? 

Just like the Awareness phase, the budget spent in the Consideration phase may not directly result in sales – nurturing process.  

Digital Channels to Improve Consideration

• Website 
• Social media 

Social media channels such as Instagram or LinkedIn are tools to send prospects from the Awareness phase to the final step: Action. That is what we believe to be the main form of Lead Nurturing.

Step 3: Action or Purchase

Now Jenny is ready to discuss the details of her future home with you. This is the last step where you can close the sale.

This could be by filling out a lead capture form or simply calling you to schedule a meeting.

Why Leads won’t Convert

A small part of businesses including Real Estate successfully nurture their online leads. This is mostly due to the fact that they do not carefully plan lead nurturing campaigns or they do not even think about it in the first place. The main reason your online leads regardless of their source, do not convert is

You are not following up with your leads.

If you don’t follow up with them, you risk losing them. With all the information readily available online now, people will take their, time to learn more about agents and homes they need and weigh their options carefully before finally making a purchase.

Furthermore,  you can deter your leads if your are too aggressive, annoying and pushy when a lead is far from ready to make a buying decision. If that reminded you of some past memories, do not forget that you are not alone. This is one of the most common mistakes agents and other businesses make.

Real Estate Lead Nurturing

The process of Real Estate lead nurturing involves engaging your leads by providing them with relevant and practical content, helping them with their questions and needs, and maintaining this meaningful relationship throughout every stage of the buyer’s journey.

Regular Follow-ups

Follow-ups need to be consistent. You can’t just start something and leave it in the middle of the way. But that is easier said than done. However, automated lead nurturing can help you reach your leads through timely follow-up emails to share meaningful and relevant content.

66% of marketers use marketing automation for lead nurturing.

99firms

Personalized Emails.

Email marketing is still one of the highly-effective tactics for lead nurturing and personalized emails happen to deliver better results. Watch the video below.

Lead nurturing emails have 4-10 times better response rate than stand-alone blast emails

Source

When you combine the power of marketing personalization with marketing automation and relevant content you can deliver the right marketing messages to the right people, at exactly the right times.

Relevant Content

As mentioned earlier, Real Estate lead nurturing requires agents to send relevant content to their leads in a timely manner. Nurturing leads does not mean sending listings to your leads. In most cases, they could not care less. Yes, sending leads is a good validation that you have a business but it is far from the required push to gain trust and make your leads more likely to work with you.

We at roomvu provide our agents with local, relevant video content they can share easily across different platforms. We know that social media, sending emails, and nurturing leads can be hard tasks. That is why we have automated the process. All you need to do is connect your roomvu account to your social media and leave the heavy lifting to us!