Get More Seller Leads by Making This One Change

You already know that sellers are the bedrock of your business. Sure, you need buyers to generate the sales that pay your bills, but it’s not buyer willingness that kicks off the entire real estate cycle; it’s seller availability. Without sellers creating that inventory, your biz is toast.

Which is why you need a constant and reliable stream of seller leads. Only with homes coming through the door, ready to go on the market, can you generate a reliable source of income. The trouble is, even if you’re willing to spend out on real estate marketing, you may be putting that money in the wrong places. Uh oh.

If you’ve been wondering how to get more seller leads for a while, we have good news for you: All you need to do is change your mindset so that you’re directing your energy toward sources of abundance rather than frustration and dithering. So what is the mindset change, you’re wondering?

Good question, and the answer is actually a pretty simple pivot. All you need to do is change where you’re targeting your ads, and that starts with changing your opinion of which destination is most lucrative. Let’s walk through the change step by step.

1. Understand Which Platforms DON’T Work, and Why

Many real estate agents unquestioningly put much of their time, energy and marketing capital toward sites such as Zillow. However, as we’ve talked about before, Zillow is not always the best target. The people who frequent its listings and blog posts are typically browsers, considering their options for the future. They’re usually not people who are ready to buy.

Plus, a huge percentage of them are buyers. Potential buyers, and even folks who have no intention of selling their homes, love to visit sites such as Zillow to dream. They do some research and price-shop on new homes, but many of them are simply aspirational. Those aren’t your clients.

When potential sellers do visit Zillow, they’re usually doing so in a much less decided state of mind as well. They’re looking for:

• Information about how much they can sell their house for in the future
• Stats regarding home appreciation, comparable home values and other metrics that help them decide whether or not to sell
• A feel for new neighborhoods in which they might want to live

They are often not looking for real estate agents at the moment. Other online platforms with a Zillow-esque feel — such as Trulia, Redfin, Homesnap, NeighborhoodScout or Realtor.com, for example — share the same drawbacks. Yes, they do attract people who are looking to sell their houses, but many of them are browsers, still in that meditative phase. They have not yet reached the bottom of the funnel, and consequently, they do not make good leads for real estate agents – no matter what the platforms themselves might claim when selling you ad spots.

2. Understand Which Platforms DO Work, and Why

In order to understand which platforms work, ask yourself this: When you’re actively looking to sell, purchase or otherwise transact, where do you head first?

If you said Google, then congratulations: You live in the modern world. This answer is correct a vast majority of the time. It is closely followed by Facebook, and other platforms that people trust, simply by dint of the fact that they have had good luck finding the information they’ve needed there in past.

That is where you want to target your ads, because that is where people head when they’re truly ready to sell. People are not going to search “real estate agents near me” on Zillow nearly as often as they are going to on good ol’ trusty Google. This is even truer when it comes to mobile, where specialty apps are far less user-friendly than the mega search engine or Facebook.

3. Cultivate a Mindset Change With Intention

We understand the roadblocks to making this mindset change. The first major impediment is the “everyone is doing it” factor. If you stop advertising on Zillow, for instance, are your competitors going to outstrip you by taking advantage of the niche you’re leaving behind? If you leave Realtor.com to other brokers, will you be sorry later?

The fix here is also simple: Ask yourself how well they’re actually doing on these platforms. If your own experience is anything to go by (and it is), then their results are lukewarm at best. They can have them, while you focus your attention on a platform like Google, which returns $2 for every $1 spent. We guarantee that’s better than you’re doing on Zillow and its cousins.

The second major impediment is the “but it’s so specific!” factor. We humans tend to believe that the more niche a service, the better it will be at catering to our needs. For real estate agents, this translates to a belief that any site dedicated to real estate must, therefore, be better than other platforms at generating real estate leads. Not so; Google’s specificity comes in search, but it’s there. Just because it serves every other need under the sun as well does not mean it doesn’t perform well for real estate too.

Lastly, there’s the “I don’t like change” factor. Any business pivot causes upheaval in your life and workflow for a bit. While that can prove challenging for a few days, weeks or even months, the payoff is worth it, especially when you make that change way ahead of your competitors.

4. Call Lead Horse Marketing

Don’t wait to figure out how to get more seller leads, or for those competitors to figure out this mindset change before you. Grab the opportunity now, while it gives you even more of an edge.

So pick up the phone and call Lead Horse Marketing to start getting more leads for your real estate business starting now.