3 Places Today’s Buyers Are Getting Their Real Estate Information

As a busy agent, you don't just need leads — you need can't fail lead gen strategies. But do you know where to look?

According to  the National Association of REALTORS® 2015 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, there are three main places buyers are getting their real estate information. By making sure local buyers can find you in these three places, you're guaranteed to get more business this spring.

1. Online websites (89%) and mobile or tablet and mobile applications (57%)

We hope it doesn't surprise you that 89% of buyers say they get information from online websites and 57% are leveraging tablets and mobile applications. Do you have a digital strategy for drawing in buyer leads?

Here's how to optimize your online presence:

• Build a responsive website that incorporates an IDX feed and tells your brand story. Is your website mobile friendly? Google will tell you for free. Show off your niche or local market specialties in blog posts and leverage landing pages (or squeeze pages) to capture leads. Offer seller prospects the ability to check the value of their home — here's an example of what that might look like.
• Get testimonials everywhere — and we mean everywhere. Add them to your website, your real estate search portal profiles, your LinkedIn and Facebook pages and to Yelp or other local review sites. Copy and paste 10 or more existing testimonials as "recommendations" on Realtor.com to make the filter cuts!
• Advertise within consumer's real estate search sites and mobile apps so they see your face and brand as they're looking for new homes.
• Start boosting your social media posts to ensure your marketing messages are hitting interested, local buyers.

2. Yard signs (51%)

Yes, you read that right — we said yard signs. They may seem antiquated but more than half of buyers say they've leveraged information they've received from these brand-builders.

Get in gear with your yard signs:

• Set out property flyers with pertinent information and top-notch listing photos. Snapseed is a terrific app for photo editing.
• Direct the buyer to a specific phone number, email or a short URL where they can get more details on the home. Here's a free mobile listing builder you can use to get started
• Prep yourself for leads! Set up an automated workflow within your CRM so you respond to each lead immediately, even if you're busy with a client or in a meeting. According to a study by Kellogg and MIT, the odds of contacting a lead are 100x greater if called within 5 minutes versus 30 minutes.

3. Open houses (48%)

Now that nearly half of today's buyers say they're getting important information at open houses, do really want to send a junior agent in your place?

How to dominate an open house:

• Request that each buyer sign in on an iPad or laptop before touring the house so you can load their data directly into your CRM. Two great open house tools for this are Open Home Pro or Bright Open™, which is free with Market Snapshot®.
• If you sense hesitance when asking for a buyer's contact information, break out a customized local report about homes like the one you're standing in, and mention that you'd like to send them some follow-up info about the local market and trends that you're seeing.
• After the open house, use your CRM to put these buyers on an automated outreach plan that reminds you to follow up personally. Another good exercise is to try sending out individual videos as follow-up. Video click through rates are unbelievable. Just turn the phone on you, record the video message and send!

Getting started

There you have it — buyers are getting their best information from the internet (of course), but also from yard signs and open houses. It's time to dial up your digital footprint and return to the basics.

What are your best tips for being where the buyers are? Share them in the comments!

To view the original article, visit the Tech Savvy Agent blog.