For a real estate investing business, the quality and quantity of the leads that you generate can determine how well you’re able to hit your financial goals.
There’s a balance to be found, though, where you’re generating enough QUALITY leads to keep you busy talking to the right kind of people without wasting a ton of time and energy running down dead ends.
To help you get there, we’re going to break down exactly what lead generation is, what the future looks like, and 8 proven ways to generate high-quality leads for your business.
But, first, if you’re new to the industry…
What is Lead Generation For Real Estate Investors?
Lead generation (or lead gen) for real estate investors revolves around finding motivated buyers and sellers through a combination of good data management, marketing, and sales.
The strategy you use can be anything from social media marketing and advertising, to display advertising, skip tracing and cold calling, direct mail marketing, or even all of those working in sync.
By creating a systematic and consistent flow of leads, you’re able to grow your real estate business more predictably year-over-year and get more deals done with less effort and higher profit margins.
The Future of Lead Generation For Real Estate Investors
Just a few short decades ago, generating leads for a real estate business was significantly harder.
With the advancement in technology, though, it’s never been easier to generate high-quality leads than it is right now.
You have a ton of different marketing channels at your fingertips, from organic search and social media, to Craigslist, Facebook Ads, Google Ads, YouTube ads, skip tracing, you name it.
So if you want your business to stand the test of time, you’ll have to sift through the different marketing channels you can use today to figure out which ones are going to work best for YOUR business.
We’re going to break down 7 proven lead generation tactics and strategies you can use and show you WHY they’re so effective.
7 Proven Lead Generation For Real Estate Investors Tactics
Right now, 2 things are true:
- It’s never been easier to generate leads than it is today.
- There’s never been more competition than there is today.
That means you want to learn how to consistently generate leads using multiple different methods and then market to your leads as effectively as possible so you aren’t letting deals slip through the cracks.
Below are 7 of the best ways we’ve found to consistently generate high-quality real estate leads.
#1: Handwritten Direct Mail
One of THE best and most consistent ways to generate leads for your business is direct mail.
Direct mail generates some of the highest response rates — especially when you’re using the right process and following up with your leads.
For commercial real estate investors, where relationships are everything, direct mail is still one of the best ways to kickstart those relationships and keep from having to cold call everyone.
If you’ve never used direct mail before or you’re looking for a few quick tips to get you started, check out the video below:
Now, the key to a successful direct mail campaign revolves around 3 things: the quality of your list, the message you’re using, and the quality of the mailers you send.
You want those mailers to stand out in the mailbox and be as personalized as possible.
A big part of that is making them handwritten so they don’t come off as a mass-produced piece of commercial mail that’s easy to toss into the trash.
In our experience, there’s a few mailers that have performed better than everything else we’ve tried.
#1 – The Americana Sequence
A good mailer makes it hard to get thrown away.
That’s where the Americana series of mailers shines — they’re a collectible series of direct mail pieces that make your leads want to hang them on the fridge.
On top of that, they’re a full sequence that’s set to follow up with your leads on a consistent basis so you’re converting more of your marketing efforts into new prospects and deals.
Plus, they’re extremely affordable.
#2 – The Comic Card Sequence
Following the lines of collectibility, where The Americana Series leans into nostalgia, The Comic Card Series is built to stand out & grab attention and make it hard for your leads to toss these in the trash.
Each card comes with a specific message that sets the stage for you to generate inbound calls.
Then, on the back of the card is a “handwritten”, personalized message that’s custom-tailored to your lead to help drive even more responses.
These sequences combine the best of what works with direct mail and make it easy for you to get up and running as quickly (and as effortlessly) as possible.
#3 – The Greeting Letter
The third type of direct mailers we’ve seen great results from is the Greeting Letter.
This one is incredibly effective for commercial real estate deals where your goal is to get that first call generated so you can start the relationship off on the right foot.
Like The Americana and The Comic Card sequence, The Greeting Letter is bright and flashy, immediately grabbing attention, and then the personalized “handwritten” message on the back helps deliver the message that you’re interested in working together.
And while these 3 sequences are incredibly effective, there’s another strategy you can use called “double dipping” to get even more out of your list.
Check it out in the video below:
#2: Driving For Dollars
Another great way to generate fresh leads that aren’t being actively targeted by other investors is to hop into your vehicle and start beating the streets.
Driving for dollars and making a list of the properties in your area that you want to invest in never goes out of style or out of date.
When you see a property you’re interested in, you can either add the information to a list, pull the owner’s contact info from a list pulling service and then send them direct mail campaigns.
Or you can just hop back out of your vehicle, go up to the door, knock, introduce yourself, and let them know that you’re interested in buying their property.
To make this strategy even more effective, you can leave behind a personalized, handwritten door hanger letting them know you stopped by and how to contact you if they want to chat.
For more on this strategy, check out the video below:
#3: Cold Calling
Since lead generation is a numbers game, one of the best ways to get your numbers up is cold calling.
Now, a lot of investors shy away from doing it — which means it can become one of your biggest competitive advantages if you do it, especially doing it the right way.
By that, we mean using proven cold calling scripts and staying organized with a CRM like REsimpli.
Check out the video below to see what a good script looks like:
When you start calling a bunch of people, you’ll want to make sure you’re tracking who you’ve contacted, what they said, and what your next steps are so you don’t let potential deals slip through the cracks.
To see what that looks like in action, check out the video below:
#4: List Pulling
For direct mail marketing, door knocking, and cold calling, one of the best things you can do is make sure you’re starting with a list of quality prospects BEFORE you put any energy in.
Pulling lists from services like PropStream is a great way to make sure your data is clean, up to date, and contains the right leads so the rest of your marketing has a chance to work as effectively as possible.
With it, you can build massive lists of motivated sellers like absentee owners who have equity in the property, vacant properties, foreclosures and bankruptcies, and so much more.
Lists like those make your marketing so, so much easier.
#5: SEO & Content Marketing
If you’re planning on being in business over the long-term, you’ll want to make sure your online presence and SEO are taken care of, too.
Inbound leads from Google’s search results are some of the highest-converting leads you’ll ever generate.
To do that, though, you’ll need a website and online marketing platform that’s designed to help you rank higher in those search results pages.
Right now, Carrot is one of the best platforms for helping you establish and develop your online presence.
For more on building your online presence, check out the Ballpoint Marketing guide on how to generate online seller leads.
#6: Online Ads & Email Marketing
Once you’ve established your website and SEO presence, the next step is using online ads like Facebook, Google, and YouTube to drive even more seller leads to it.
But you don’t want to just drive the traffic to your website and hope for the best.
Instead, you want to make sure you’re collecting their email and phone number and then following up with them using email and SMS marketing.
The key here again, though, is making sure you’re using the right message to help turn your follow up campaigns into responses and new prospects.
Which, if you’re not a copywriter or marketing expert, we recommend outsourcing to the experts so you can focus on responding to leads and moving deals forward — instead of wondering what to write.
In our experience, OmniDrip provides some of the highest-converting email and SMS messages that we’ve ever used. They’re affordable, too.
If you want to give them a shot and experience the type of results you can get, make sure you use the discount code “CCCF” to save 5%.
#7: Build Your Local Network
Now, if you want to do more real estate deals every year, you’ll need to get out and start networking with other people who may have access to those deals.
Establish relationships with people like real estate agents and brokers, attorneys, contractors, and even your local mailman who can give you an “in” on distressed properties in the area.
It never hurts to shake hands and introduce yourself to people, letting them know what you do and figuring out how you can help each other. Especially if your goal is to grow your business.
BONUS: Never Miss Another Call Again
With all of the inbound leads you’re generating, you will either need to sit around watching the phone ring all day or leave it up to the professionals to handle those calls for you.
With services like Call Porter, you can hand off answering those calls to professionally trained real estate assistants who specialize in making sure the calls you get convert into new appointments on your calendar.
All without you having to be actively involved.
If you’re serious about growing your business (and you’re using the lead gen strategies in this guide), you’ll want to consider outsourcing the task of answering all those calls to the professionals.
To hear what it sounds like, click this link and listen to a couple of the sample call recordings.
Final Thoughts On Lead Generation For Real Estate Investors
Generating leads for your real estate investing business doesn’t have to be difficult.
But it does need to be systematized and consistent if you want it to work.
With the right approach and the strategies we’ve broken down in this guide, if you implement them into your regular marketing routine, you WILL generate more leads every year.