Estate Agent Marketing – Lead Generation

Optimising your estate agent marketing to get more revenue for your estate or letting agency is what it’s all about. It’s vital to get more property sellers & landlords on your books.

To get new leads, your estate agency’s marketing needs to be effective. Getting in front of leads, developing your brand and using the right promotion channels are key.

But how do you get your agency ‘out there’? And more importantly, once noticed, how do you ensure you’re managing leads to ensure they become instructions?

Below are 28 easy methods (well, most of them are) to improve your estate agency’s marketing to boost lead generation & conversions.

 

1. GUEST POSTING TO CREATE AN ONLINE PRESENCE

 

Submitting guest posts to websites that attract a lot of property sellers and landlords is an excellent digital marketing tool to get leads.

Topics can be wide ranging, but should include a plug for your estate or letting agency. Be sure to call out your unique selling points and promotional offers.

You may need to pay sites for submitting guest posts, often between £50-£100. The more expensive sites would have more traffic and therefore generate you better exposure.

Many sites will have dedicated pages about their guest post rules, prices and types of content they accept.

Alternatively, if you have some data or information others may find useful, you may be featured on some sites for free.

Rentround was recently featured in The Sun, The Times & The Metro. This was achieved by providing information on rental prices and the property industry as a whole. A majority of the data was sourced from the 10,000+ landlords that have used the platform so far in 2020.

 

2. CREATE DIFFERENT LANDING PAGES FOR DIFFERENT PEOPLE

 

Not all your leads want the same thing. Therefore it’s important to ensure your agency’s marketing caters for all needs.

Property sellers will be looking for a quick sale, while others may not need to sell quickly in exchange for a lower estate agent fee.

Some landlords may be looking for guaranteed rent services, while other landlords might just want you to help them find a tenant.

Your site should include different pages that cater to different services.

You may have one page shouting about your guaranteed rent services are the best in the city. Then another catered towards how your agency is the best at selling property quickly.

Once you have these pages, what do you do with them?

If you’ve created content about how guaranteed rent is now more popular, in that article you’d link to your guaranteed rent webpage.

If you’re advertising your quick sell services, you’d want your audience to be directed to your page that talks about how good you are at selling homes quickly.

Many estate and letting agents don’t bother with creating specific landline pages and miss out on conversions, its a major issue that hampers their marketing.

By directing traffic to specific pages, based upon the source/content they arrive from, helps keep sellers and landlords engaged, thus improving your estate agency marketing.

A few examples of how we direct our leads to certain pages are below.

In this scenario, we created 2 adverts. 1 advertising the ability to compare letting agent fees in general, then the other targeted at just comparing fees for finding tenants.

Our landing pages are catered towards the users exact search. Those looking for ‘letting agent fees’ in general will see that key term on the landing page, while those seeking tenant find services will see that term on their landing page.

Using landing pages specific to the landlords requirements, improved our conversion rates by 17%.

 

3. NOT JUST A PRETTY AGENCY WEBSITE

 

It’s all good having a well designed website. But your website should be designed to capture leads and not just look good. Your estate agency’s marketing will fall apart if your site isn’t up to scratch.

This doesn’t just apply to online agents seeking sign ups through their site, it applies to all agents.

Similar to point 1, your site shouldn’t be just one way. You want property sellers and landlords to engage with your site, ideally leaving their contact details.

Ensure ‘get in touch’ forms, valuation tools and your agency contact details are clearly visible. These aspects are key to allowing sellers and landlords to continue further dialogue with your estate or letting agency.

To enhance your website’s role in your estate agencies marketing, integrate web tools to give you greater insights to landlord & property seller behaviour on your site.

You can integrate tools like Google Analytics, Search Console, Tag Manager, Heat Map, etc, to check the performance of your website.

These tools will tell you:

• Which pages of your site are most visited
• How long sellers and landlords stay on your pages
• What sections are most read
• Where you should place key conversion tools

 

4. JOIN RENTROUND FOR SELLER & LANDLORD LEADS

 

And just when you thought this was an informative article, you come across our plug!

We specialise in getting seller & landlord leads for agents. a great supplement to your own estate agency’s marketing efforts. We’re an agent comparison site that sellers & landlords can use to compare agent fees, location and services.

When leads use our platform, they make their contact details available for us to pass on to 1 or 2 agents in their area.

To be included in the seller or landlord comparisons, we charge agents £49.99 per month (no contract).

20,000+ leads have used our comparison tool since we started 12 month ago.

For a 50% discount on your first month, use code rentround13 while signing up here.

OK OK, the plug is over… let’s get back to being informative

 

5. Blog your heart out

 

We’ve all heard that it’s a good idea to create a blog, but why? This could be an entire blog in itself, but let’s summarise.

Google loooovvvess content. 

One of the best ways to get ranked high on Google searches is through content on your website. The more quality content you have, talking about the things you want to rank for, the better.

Google will look at your content and judge whether or not to place you higher on certain terms.

Of course you need to be blogging about the right things. Talking about what you did on the weekend won’t be exactly attractive for sellers & landlords.

But talking about rental yields, prices & property news in your local area will certainly be a good option.

You get friends

Writing quality blog posts will hopefully get noticed by others, especially website owners. I posted about rental yields being impacted by the Covid lockdowns (it was quite a boring article to be fair), but it got noticed by the Sun, Daily Mirror and the Telegraph

I’m not telling you this to blow my own trumpet.

The reason why this is such a big deal, apart from me being able to brag about it, was that these big outlets linked to Rentround from their own sites.

A link is a vote of confidence that your site is legit and know what it’s talking about. The more votes you have from the bigger outlets, the better Google places you in rankings.

Likes & shares

I could moan all day about how large parts of society has been brainwashed into becoming zombies that thrive on likes & shares. Or how we’ve lost the sense of personal connections and instead we rely on…. Actually this isn’t the right place!

But anyway, people like to like & share good quality content.

If your property related blog gets a like or share, it can cause a domino effect. A landlord on Facebook or LinkedIn will likely have other landlords as connections. A share can be shared by someone else and so on. Before you know it, you’ve got thousands of views and a tonne of new leads to chase up.

Blogs get you leads

Like a fly to s**t, actually that’s not very nice. Like a bear to honey you’ve now got sellers & landlords reading your blog.

As they read, it’s the perfect time to throw up a pop up saying “hey landlord, interested in us letting your property for a small fee? Give us your phone number & email address”.

Capturing details from your readers gives you a great chance for further conversations and hopefully more properties on your books.

6. YOUR AGENCY EMAIL SIGNATURE TO SUPPLEMENT YOUR MARKETING

 

Your email signature gives you an opportunity to promote your agency and yourself.

Signatures to boost interest, should include a strapline about promotional offers your agency has running. Including a direct link to your website that has more information, is also useful for sellers & landlords looking to learn more.

In addition, many agents include a link to their LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn profiles can help enhance your credibility as an agent who can sell or rent out homes quickly.

Has your agency won any awards recently? Adding images or mentions of these awards in your email signature can be a powerful marketing tool to get more attention from leads.

As an example, check out EweMove’s signature below which contains details about the awards they’ve won.

This sort of tactic gives that extra boost to your estate agencys marketing efforts, by promoting yourself in every sent email.

 

 

7. RESPOND TO PROPERTY FORUMS AND Q&AS 

 

Sites like Quora have a tonne of questions from people looking to sell or let out their property. It can be tiresome, but keeping a lookout and responding to people’s queries can attract leads.

Forums are also popular places for property sellers and those looking to let out their property. Responding to queries helps build a rapport with potential leads who may in turn give you their business.

Often property forums have strict monitoring in place, to capture spam and marketing. Therefore your responses should be genuine and not be sales orientated 

 

8. LIVE CHAT FOR ENGAGEMENT (NO, YOU DON’T NEED SOMEONE CONSTANTLY MONITORING YOUR WEBSITE)

 

According to studies, 42% of customers prefer to live chat for their customer support questions, while 73% of website visitors and customers who take part in a chat are happy with the results.

Live chat, via a small icon on your webpage, can give leads quick access to someone from your agency.

You don’t have to have your agents manning the screens all day awaiting questions. Most live chat tools alert you or your team via a phone notification or email, giving you the chance to respond on the move.

Most live chat applications charge a monthly fee, somewhere between £30-£80.

Some even offer the feature of sophisticated automated responses, based on keywords the lead may have included in their question. For example, a lead asking “What are your letting agent fees?” may trigger a response to provide the link to your keys page, due to the words ‘agent fees’

 

9. HOST WEBINARS TO GET LEADS

 

Hosting webinars is a commonly used marketing tool for estate and letting agents.

Webinars give you the opportunity to offer insights to leads on a particular subject.

Property sellers & landlords aren’t going to give up their time to attend a session that will talk about your agency’s services.

However they will attend if you’re offering up knowledge that will help their revenue.

For example, if you have opinions on how property prices will react after the stamp duty holiday ends next year, that may entice leads as they have something to gain.

After the webinar, leads will be more familiar with you and your estate or letting agency.

Further down the line when they have properties to sell or rent out, they’ll have you in their minds as an agent.

 

10. PARTICIPATE IN CONVERSATIONS TO GET PROPERTIES

 

Similar to responding to online forums, social media platforms have a tonne of conversions on various property groups.

Be sure to join groups that discuss the property world in detail so you can give your opinion and gain more exposure to leads.

 

11. DIFFERENT TYPES OF CONTENT FOR YOUR DIGITAL MARKETING

 

Hopefully on your site you’re already blogging about various property related topics.

In our previous article we talked about how blogging can help get your estate or letting agency ranked highly on Google. 

But blogging while helping your search rankings, also attracts leads and nurtures them towards your agency.

Content marketing for your estate or letting agency doesn’t always need to be written blogs. PDFs, infographics and video content are other ways of engaging leads.

A good tip for your estate agency marketing when using content pieces, is to ensure you have social media share buttons. A few likes & shares here and there can help articles go viral or get featured on other news outlets.

 

12. AVOID ONE-WAY CHAT WITH LEADS

 

No doubt your agency will be getting a number of enquiries of leads wanting to know more about services & fees.

Sales teams in their responses will be relying on links to certain webpages, pre-made written material and video links.

This risk is that the property seller or landlords may have a tonne of follow up questions that can get tedious for both sides over email and therefore momentum is lost.

Include easy ways to schedule follow up conversations such as call scheduling tools, that allow leads to pick a time for further discussion on your agency’s offerings.

Scheduling forms are easy to integrate onto most sites and cost as little as £10 a month.

 

13. COLLECT REVIEWS TO IMPROVE YOUR ESTATE AGENT MARKETING

 

According to Search Engine Land, 87 percent of potential customers won’t consider businesses with low ratings.

Ensure your agency has a profile on all sites where reviews happen, Google business, Facebook, TrustPilot etc.

When you have a happy customer, following up for a review quickly increases the likelihood of them leaving a review, as opposed to if you left it a few weeks.

Your estate agency marketing material can then be updated to showcase all the lovely reviews you’ve collated.

Good reviews from a wide ranging number of sources helps build credibility, improving your estate agency lead generation ability and turn them into instructions.

 

14. ASK FOR CUSTOMER REFERRALS

 

A happy customer is going to show you loyalty and return if/when they get more properties later down the line.

In addition, landlords usually have landlord friends. Getting an inroad with a happy customers network is a quick fire way to hit higher revenues.

A good way to get in with an existing customers network is to offer a promotion.

Offering a discount on your estate & letting agent fees, or offering vouchers etc entice them to open up their network.

 

15. ESTATE AGENCY DIGITAL MARKETING WITH GOOGLE ADS

 

It can take years to get a good ranking on Google that provides you with a steady (and free) source or seller & landlord leads.

In the meantime, using Google Ads can help estate agency lead generation when users search for relevant key terms.

You can set up your Google Adverts to only show in specific regions, at certain times, to certain audiences etc.

It can be complex for estate & letting agents to set up their own Google ads. There are many features Google offers that can be customized.

However if you’re not too careful, your agency’s advertising budget can be quickly consumed.

Special focus needs to be placed on bidding strategies, negative keywords, targeted cost per acquisition and a whole load of other jargon based features.

It can get too much for some estate and letting agents, which is why many agents tend to outsource this activity to a Google ads manager. We offer that service at Rentround too. If interested, schedule a call with us

Google Ads can be a powerful ally to letting or estate agent marketing campaigns.  A quick search for letting agents on Google will show you big names like Belvoir, Howsy & Purplebricks vying for their ads to be shown nationwide.

We covered how estate & letting agents can set up their own Google Ads as part of their digital marketing plans in greater detail. Included in the article are more details about the power of Google ads, the basics of setting them up for your agency and what features to use to maximize conversions.

 

16. FACEBOOK ADS FOR YOUR ESTATE AGENCY

 

Facebook ads are the images that show up as you’re scrolling down your Facebook feed, looking at images of your friends pet or your cousin’s corny status update.

You’ll need to create some images or videos, set your locations, determine your budget, tweak some of the possible settings and then activate your campaigns.

That’s a simple high level view. We created a step by step guide on how estate agents can set up their own Facebook adverts.

Facebook is of course a powerful marketing tool across all industries, not just in the property world. However marketing campaigns on Facebook can eat up budgets quickly. Many choose to hire Facebook ad managers who will run the campaigns on a company’s behalf. However these managers can be quite costly, ranging from £600-£1,000. This cost needs to be taken into account when judging costs per lead.

 

17. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION FOR YOUR AGENCY

 

This basically means getting your site to rank organically on Google (without paying per click). So if you’re an estate agent in West London, it’d be amazing if everytime “best letting agent in West London” was searched for, your agency shows in the results.

Ranking well on Google is no easy job, there’s a lot that goes into it.

While how to rank well on Google is an entire article in itself, which is why we created our estate agent digital marketing guide

In a nutshell, ranking high on Google isn’t done overnight, nor is it down to doing just one thing. It’s about a long term task and doing a lot of little things right.

Backlinks

This is when other sites mention your site. The more renowned the site that talks about you is, the more search engine ‘juice’ you get. 

Getting mentioned (and linked to) from the Financial Times is quite a big deal. Google recognises this and therefore starts to recognise your site to a higher degree. The more backlinks you get, the higher your rankings become

Your website

Google doesn’t like slow sites with lots of errors (neither do property sellers and landlords!). If your site has loads of broken links and pages that don’t work, that’ll impact your rankings

Content

Your site needs to talk about the terms you want to rank for. So if you’re an estate agent in Newcastle, your site should talk about property sales in Newcastle, house sales in Newcastle and everything else related to Newcastle that sellers would be interested in. Google will start to see your content and when searches are run in regards to your niche, you’ll start to show in results

 

18. ADVERTISE ON OTHER PROPERTY WEBSITES

 

There’s a tonne of property related websites that offer marketing opportunities. You’ll need to find a site that has your target market. If you’re looking for property seller leads, then find popular blog sites that give advice to people looking to sell their property.

Sites that provide guidance on renting regulations may be ideal to pitch to landlords who could become leads.

You’re then going to need to create banners and artwork to feature on chosen sites pages to attract attention.

The cost of this type of marketing varies depending on the website. The more traffic a site gets then higher the charges will be. In addition, some websites charge based on impressions (how many times your ad is viewed) and others charge based on the number of times your ad is clicked.

However with some sites, they include too may banners & sponsor images, diluting your companies promotions. Be careful not to select an option where you’ll get low return because of over advertising.

 

19. SOLUS EMAILS TO LEADS

 

Other property related websites out there would have over time, created a list of email subscribers. The list is then used for the website to push emails containing news, guides and marketing material to.

The website may also permit 3rd party estate & letting agents to provide marketing material, which will be pushed to the email list.

Costs again will vary. But it’s not uncommon to be charged £800 to send marketing material to these types of lists.

You’ll need to ensure that the list is made up of predominantly the market you’re targeting. If the site is mainly for tenants, using the list to send your latest offers on low estate agent fees wouldn’t work.

When undertaking this type of marketing, it’s important to ask the company what their average open rate is. By seeing how many of their past emails were opened, it can indicate how many eyes are likely to see your email. Just because an email list has 30,000 subscribers, it doesn’t mean your email will be read by 30,000 people. A good open rate is 20-30%.

 

20. ADD YOUR ESTATE AGENCY TO GOOGLE BUSINESS 

 

Adding your agency to Google Business is essential to getting noticed by leads. A business profile allows your agency to show up in more Google searches. In addition, adding a location will enable your agency to show up on maps when leads are searching for local estate or letting agents.

Google will request your agency description, precise location, opening times and images of your business.

In addition, creating a business profile will enable you to start collecting Google reviews.  

By hopefully collating a good set of reviews, leads will start seeing your agency in a more positive light and more likely to give you their properties to manage or sell.

 

21. REGULAR NEWSLETTERS TO SELLERS

 

Property owners love being informed of property news. Whether it’s an opportunity for improving their rental profits, staying on top of new regulations or possibly purchasing new properties, information is key. 

Send regular news blasts to your mail lists, giving them local and national news.

Staying in the eye of potential leads builds familiarity and keeps your brand on the top of their minds. As a result, when it comes to them selling their property, you’re in with a higher chance of being their selected estate agent.

 

22. A PICTURE SPEAKS A THOUSAND WORDS

 

When leads are looking for their agent, they’ll pay attention to how well your current stock is being advertised. If current properties you’re selling aren’t presented very well, it doesn’t paint a good picture.

Sellers will want to see their property advertised to the best standard and photography makes up a big part of that. 

Images would need to factor in lighting, angles and bring out the best features of the property.

The use of drones to take aerial and high angle shots is a fancy feature that may attract leads as well.

 

23. USE THE BEST PROPERTY PORTALS

 

Property buyers flock property portals to look at which properties are available.

Showing leads which portals you use, especially the larger ones, indicates you’re exercising as many avenues as possible to sell properties quickly at high prices. 

Many estate agents stick the Zoopla, Rightmove, Prime Location etc logos on their homepage, indicating how they sell properties, helping to build credibility and confidence.

 

24. REGULATORY AFFILIATIONS TO IMPRESS SELLERS

 

Estate & letting agents can’t operate without certain regulatory affiliations in place, such as a deposit protection scheme.

However that still doesn’t prevent some rogue agents operating in the market. Many of these types of agents have risky processes in place, low customer service levels and gaps in their safety measures.

Portraying to lead what regulatory bodies you’re associated with is a key feature that can add value to your estate agency marketing strategy. 

Leads will be far more willing to partner with an agency that is certified with the best regulatory bodies.

Similarly to showing the property portal logos, many estate agents show on their website which regulatory bodies they are registered with.

 

25. REMARKETING OLD LEADS

 

For some people, buying and selling a property is a rare occasion that they only go through 2-3 times in their life.

For others, it’s a regular occurrence and forms part of how they earn a living.

Retarget people who you have already sold properties for. These types of people may have since grown and become players in buying low and selling high. 

If you did a good job for them in the past, this may be a way in for further sales.

 

26. DISCOUNTS TO ENTICE LEADS

 

No matter what business you’re in, discounts for sure attract business. 

A % knocked off your agency fees can entice leads to use your business. Your promotions, whether on your site, social media or paid ads should showcase your deals

 

27. ADDING LEAFLETING TO YOUR AGENCY’S MARKETING

 

Pushing leaflets through the doors of your local neighbourhood is an old school method of marketing your estate agency.

The benefits are it enables you to target local people, which is ideal if you’re a local agency.

For national level agents, this probably isn’t an ideal option.

Leafleting isn’t cheap either. There’s a cost to designing the leaflets, printing and then distributing. 

In addition many may find this annoying as they throw your material straight into the bin. 

Making matters worse is some distribution services will bundle your leaflets with other businesses at one time. So instead of a potential lead just getting your leaflet, they’ll also at the same time get the local pizza place, cleaners and gardeners leaflets.

28. BOOST YOUR ESTATE AGENCY’S MARKETING BY USING DATABASES

 

Using databases to contact potential leads is common across multiple industries.

As leads enter their details on your site, their contact information should be added to databases for future follow ups.

Many seller or landlord leads at the time of visiting your site, may have just been exploring fees & services.

Following up over the course of the next few months will help your agency stay at the top of the leads minds, making them more receptive to selling or letting their property through your agency.

Contact databases can be purchased. However consideration needs to be placed on the quality of the contact information; Is it up to date?

In addition, how many times has the database been sold to other agencies & companies, meaning the contacts may have been already bombarded with information from other agencies.

You should also consider if the database is GDPR compliant. If it contains personal information where individuals have not consented to be contacted, you could be breaching data privacy laws.

 

 

HOW MUCH SHOULD YOU SPEND PER LEAD?

 

Cost per lead is an essential metric to measure when generating estate agent leads.

However even more important, is your conversion rate tracking.

You could get 1,000 leads for £1 each, but if there are 0 conversions, what’s the point?

Or you could get 10 leads for £200 each, then if 20% convert, you’ve made a heavy profit.

Our advice when looking for estate agent leads, is trial and scale.

With so many marketing channels out there, it can be difficult to pin one down to focus your efforts on.

The best bet it is to trial a few options, whether it be Google ads, Facebook ads, Solus emails etc.

Once the campaigns are set up, see which works for your estate agency. Once you’ve identified your most successful, scale up!

 

WHAT TO DO WITH THE LEADS?

So you’re getting leads in, now what?

If you’re an estate agent, you’ll know more about converting leads than we do! – But we’ll pass over what we’ve learnt so far when on our lead generation platform Rentround.

Speed

We’ve found the most successful agents that use our leads always contact the lead as quickly as possible. Sometimes the landlord is still on their laptop searching for an estate or letting agent. 

Getting to the lead as quickly as possible gives you the competitive advantage against other agents the lead may be interested in.

Follow up

Some of the leads you get may not have their rental property yet, or may not be looking to sell until a few months.

Having a process where you touch base with leads after a few months is a good way to generate more sales and managed properties.

So although when you first talked to the lead they weren’t quite ready to hire an agent and were ‘window shopping’, following up at the right time will help lead conversions

Promotions

Who doesn’t love a promotion? Often property sellers & landlords would be considering multiple agents. A bit knocked off the seller fee or free period of property management might just sway them to your agency.

Dead leads

Some leads just won’t work out, they may have just selected another agent or don’t quite fancy your agency. However don’t just throw the lead in the bin. 

Set up an automated channel of contact. Add the lead to a subscriber list so they get to see regular communications from you explaining how fabulous you are.

You never know, their chosen agent may not do a good job or they might get another property to sell/rent out in the future. 

This will have a low % success rate. But if it’s an automated set up, it doesn’t take much effort.

 

IN CONCLUSION

 

It’s tough out there. With Covid-19, the stamp duty holiday, interest rates, BREXIT etc, there’s a lot of uncertainty in the market.

While estate & letting agents navigate the property industry, there’s a lot that can be done to maximize leads and improve conversion rates.

There are easy methods and then there are more complex methods. Likewise, some ways to market your agency are cheap while others need a lot of investment.

No doubt the effort into marketing does yield results and improves revenues. It’s a balance between targeting the right areas.

Our final word… Try our leads at a 50% discount for a month, use code rentround13 during sign up. There’s no obligation and you can cancel anytime. It’s for sure one of the quickest, low cost ways to add another weapon on your agency’s marketing efforts.

 

Estate agent marketing FAQ

How much should I spend on my estate agencies marketing?

The amount you spend should be dictated by the return on investment. With any marketing activity, start off small and track conversions. You will hopefully find one source of leads at a better cost than others, with a better conversion rate. When you find your best route to get leads for your estate agency, scale up to an appropriate amount

Do I have to have the lowest estate agency fees to get conversions?

Having low estate agency fees helps for sure, but fees aren't the only way to improve conversions. How long do you take to sell a property, do you always get the asking price? These are questions sellers would be interested in, alongside how much you charge.

How much are seller leads from Rentround?

We charge £49.99 per month for our seller leads. There is no lock in or commission taken from deals you make from our leads.

Does Rentround offer a trial for seller leads

Sure, use code rentround13 during sign up and you'll get 50% off your first month with us with no obligation.

Which marketing type is the best?

We're a very biased bunch at Rentround, so we say us! Many of our agents take up the monthly subscription and get 10-15 leads a month. If agents want more, they can then discuss a cost per lead model and get hundreds of leads from us a month instead. There's no setup costs! This saves agents the hassle of creating and managing their own Facebook or Google ads.

Which agents are currently on Rentround?

We have hundreds of agents using our service, we have big names such as Northwood, Leaders, Romans, Ewemove, Howsy and many more.

Does Rentround offer wider estate agent marketing services?

Yes! We manage Google & Facebook ads to start with. We also provide content services, providing blogs for your own site. In addition we can provide a backlink service to improve your agency's own Google ranking, contact Raj (founder of Rentround) to learn more: [email protected]