Real estate agents constantly need to find new customers. Yes – selling houses is a big part of the job, but homes are a long-term investment, meaning recent customers are unlikely to be on the house hunt again for several years. As a result, realtors must focus on driving new business through real estate lead generation if they’re to ensure a regular flow of business.

Relationship-building is the backbone of the industry. Without understanding client needs, aspirations, and timelines (while earning their trust), you’ll struggle to be successful. Lead gen goes beyond simply acquiring a large number of contacts – it’s about engaging the right contacts. It’s finding those who are genuinely interested, understanding them, and then offering value throughout their decision-making process. It’s almost like being a matchmaker between people and properties, ensuring the right fit.

The real estate market is always evolving and can be impacted by several factors – economic conditions, Federal Government policies, local and global events and housing supply and demand to name a few. Real estate lead generation helps realtors stay ahead by deciphering trends and shifts in buyer behavior. It’s not just about the present transaction; it’s about anticipating and preparing for what’s coming next in the market.

What’s a real estate lead?

Someone who’s expressed interest in buying, selling or renting property. They might have filled out a form, called an agent or visited an open house.

Real estate leads are potential clients – an opportunity for realtors to understand their needs and guide them through the real estate journey. Agents work to convert these leads into actual transactions by providing information, support and finding properties that match their criteria. Essentially, they’re the starting point for building relationships that could turn into successful real estate deals.

How to generate real estate leads: 14 ideas with proven success

1. Create sales brochures that attract clients and generate intent data

Your sales brochures make no sense as PDFs. To generate leads for real estate, and acquire more listings, make more sales, and learn more about your buyers, you’re going to need digital documents.

This is number one for a reason – not only will more engaging content attract potential clients but intent data generated by the content you send will help hone your outreach..

You can do so much more with online marketing assets. Today, people want video, interactivity, and better content experiences. Let’s look at how digital content assets help realtors.

Create digital brochures that track reader activity
Produce engaging online reports about housing market trends
Add 3D tours and videos for remote buyers
Write an interactive whitepaper addressing (or demystifying!) a particular pain point for buyers/sellers.
Use a feedback strategy and add online polls and quizzes to your content and assess home-buying readiness.
Send a personalized online newsletter to your buyers with the latest market and neighborhood news, your recent sales and listings, or price adjustments
Translate content and marketing material for international buyers and sellers easily

All of these examples are designed to engage, educate and attract potential customers, as well as generate the data you need to learn more about them. The more you know, the more you can effectively market yourself and negotiate with data-assured confidence.

2. Encourage and promote client testimonials, referrals and reviews

Showcase positive client experiences and testimonials everywhere. Word-of-mouth referrals often stand as one of the most significant lead sources for realtors. Digital documents allow realtors to embed super engaging video testimonials inside sales brochures.

Make it easy for clients to review your service by sending direct review links alongside step-by-step instructions inside your content.

Cultivate relationships from your network – previous clients, industry professionals and community groups. Word-of-mouth referrals bring in high-quality leads.

3. Use video for home tours AND authentic seller stories

Showcase homes with 3D spatial tours and walkthrough videos, accompanied by music and narrated with a voiceover. Great for remote buyers or piquing interest in new listings.

Go deeper and get a human-centric angle by using video client stories in your brochures. How cool would it be for sellers to tell people what they love most about their home, why they’re moving, and what the neighbors are like? The neighbors could even do a cameo performance! How about this for authentic marketing?

4. Listing and selling agents can send personalized content, and see hot buyers!

Open house invites can be sent to thousands of buyers with a click, and guests can RSVP from your invite.

If you personalize your digital marketing documents, you can switch out content for different buyer segments from a master document. Say you have 10 new listings, you can use a single master doc that includes all of them, set rules to show certain parts to different buyers, and send it once.

From there, you can track all of the interactions with your listing brochure to see who is hot – and who is not. You can even poll buyers to see if they’re still looking for a home, or if their circumstances have changed – whatever you wish.

We know you’ve got hot buyers in your back pocket – maybe high-net-worth individuals looking for prime property. Entice them your way with personalized marketing material selling your services. Don’t forget to add a video intro and case study testimonials too. We know that personalized content is 84% more engaging than formats like PDFs.

5. Organize open houses that work smarter

Digital sales brochures can catapult your open house attendance – online documents are more engaging than PDFs, and you can add all the interactive features you need.

They also provide real-time content data that tells you which buyers are the most interested, before they set foot inside. You can see who is looking at the brochure, and who is sharing it. Guests can conveniently confirm attendance from the document.

That couple from Ohio you thought weren’t interested? You can see they’ve checked the floor plan 10 times. The wealthy divorcee from New Orleans you thought wasn’t looking in your area – she’s shared the invite with four people. Call her up and see if she needs to be picked up from the airport and give VIP clients a silver spoon service.

6. Create demand for your service with free resources

Provide valuable free digital guides, checklists, or online ebooks on buying/selling buying/selling properties.

Giving away free content is a demand-generation strategy used by marketers to help brands position themselves as helpful, trustworthy, and approachable.

These resources add value and encourage lead engagement and you’ll be noticed for being knowledgeable.

7. Optimize your website for SEO

Use keywords related to your market, include location-specific content and maintain an updated, user-friendly site to improve visibility. Get started with free SEO tools or our simple guide to SEO.

8. Engage prospects through social media

Share listings, success stories and informative content to connect with potential clients on popular social channels amongst your target customers e.g. Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

9. Host virtual events and webinars

Organize webinars or virtual events discussing market trends, home buying/selling processes, or local community insights. Offer valuable information to attract and engage leads.

10. Try email marketing

Develop targeted email campaigns with personalized content. Provide market updates, new listings and relevant information to nurture leads over time.

11. Collaborate with local businesses

Partner with local businesses such as moving companies, interior designers or mortgage brokers. Cross-promote services to expand your reach and gain referrals.

12. Use real estate directories and portals

Popular platforms include Zillow, Realtor.com, Trulia, Redfin, Homes.com and Apartments.com.

Listing properties on these directories helps realtors reach a wider audience, increase visibility, and connect with potential buyers searching for properties in specific areas.

13. Invest in paid advertising

Targeted advertising on Google Ads, Facebook Ads and LinkedIn Ads can have a big impact on traffic to your website, as well as brand recognition. Define your audience and allocate budgets effectively for maximum reach and impact.

14. Use chatbots on your website

Chatbots engage website visitors and capture leads. These AI-powered tools can answer inquiries, schedule appointments and collect contact information – even while you’re sleeping!

Turtl for real estate lead generation

This is the exciting part because we know we can make lead generation easier and more effective for realtors. Let’s jump in to see why.

Build interactive sales material that provides intent data

Every house hunter has different requirements, tastes and deal breakers when it comes to their dream property. It’s an extremely personal decision, so a highly personalized approach to lead gen is absolutely essential.

Turtl Docs are designed to attract engagement, which captures crucial intent data. This data helps realtors not only see warm leads but also which content they’re engaging with most. Which houses are they showing an interest in? What location? What topics matter most to them?

Intent data helps realtors identify their best prospects, informs lead-scoring models, and triggers follow-up actions to start turning cold leads into warm ones.

Automate personalized long-form content at scale

Intent data will not only help shape direct sales conversions, but Turtl Analytics can use these interactions to create reader-led content journeys. And here’s the icing on the cake for busy realtors: These journeys can be automated via events triggered in Turtl, helping deliver personalized content that resonates – at scale.

So if you’re up to your neck in showing houses or in the depths of contract negotiations, you can rest assured that leads are being managed, scored and nurtured in the background until you can move them further down the funnel. (Or even better, they reach out to you!)

Create real estate lead magnets

Use your knowledge of the real estate market by offering valuable gated content (such as an online market report) in exchange for contact information. Lead data can then be analyzed and segmented into personalized email campaigns, which can deliver additional content to turn these prospects into warm leads. And yes, you’re going to need to use gated content to generate real estate leads.

You can gate your content at any stage in Turtl Docs while using features such as integrated chatbots alongside it to send leads directly to your CRM or marketing automation system.

Use digital leaflets to find sellers

A smart acquisition tactic is to send out digital brochures with examples of homes sold in their area – and a bit about what you can offer. Analyze the results to determine who in a street (for example) is thinking about selling.

Real estate lead gen without guesswork

Turtl provides AI-driven content benchmarks and recommendations on how to continuously improve the performance of your content to help you understand how your content is performing against your team, organization or industry. We are a long-term partner determined to give you the best insight, value and results.

Lead gen documents that perform

Turtl + Mind

Using Turtl Analytics, Mind identified where in its content readers were most engaged and then embedded lead capture forms to generate more sign-ups. Mind demonstrated for the first time direct ROI from social media platforms.

Click to read Mind + Turtl | Case Study