Your Quick-Fire Guide to Real Estate Prospecting

If you need more leads, it’s time to put a real estate prospecting strategy in place.

Whether you’re a newly licensed real estate agent looking for your first sale or you want to build your client base and increase your commission, you’ll always need new contacts. This guide takes you through:

• What prospecting is
• The best places to prospect for real estate leads online and in person
• Getting leads from paid platforms like Zillow Premier Agent 
• Using Magical to save time on your prospecting strategies 

Let’s find you some more real estate leads! 

What is real estate prospecting? 

Real estate prospecting is finding the contact details of people who might need a realtor and adding them to your phonebook.

Once you can contact potential clients, you can use your other marketing strategies (such as your website, mailing list, social media, events, and printed marketing materials) to make sure that you’re the first realtor they think of when they need to buy or sell a house. 

A really important concept here is the lead generation or marketing funnel. This is the idea that you should personalize your marketing depending on how close a lead is to becoming a client. 

At the top of your future-client funnel (the TOFU), you should have a lot of contacts who are further away from deciding to work with you. They still need a lot of convincing, and you can expect to lose many of them as they decide to work with another realtor or change their minds about moving. 

On the other hand, your bottom of the funnel (BOFU) leads are almost ready to commit to working with you. You probably won’t have as many of these leads, but they’re much more valuable because they know what they want, know what you provide, and are much more likely to become your client. 

Lead prospecting is finding more contacts to add to the top of the funnel. Then, you can start moving them down by showing them why you’re the best agent for the job. 

So what are examples of prospecting in real estate? 

You can prospect anywhere you can make a connection with a potential client and record their details to contact them later. 

If you’re looking for specific examples of prospecting in real estate, we’ve got you covered.

What are 3 prospecting techniques for realtors? 

These days, most realtors do their lead prospecting in three places:

• Online by scraping websites like LinkedIn for contact details, with landing pages on their website, or by advertising on platforms like Yelp.com and Google
• On dedicated real estate platforms like Zillow or your local MLS
• In person by attending events, doorknocking, using prospecting letters, and holding open houses

How to prospect in real estate online

These days, there are plenty of places to find real estate contacts online. 

Use social media

If you have a profile on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Instagram, you can get real estate leads from social media. Offer something of value to your followers, start a conversation and, when they’re engaged, get their contact details and store them in your mailing list. 

LinkedIn is a great place to find contacts because its users already expect to network. The search function also makes it easy to find contacts in your local area.

Facebook can also be a useful tool for realtors because many people ask questions about the local property market in Facebook groups. If you join these groups and throw your hat into the ring when someone is looking to buy or sell, you’ll be able to find leads who are ready to start moving down the funnel.

Add landing pages to your website

Your website can be a great place to generate leads if you have a strong landing page. These pages encourage the visitor to sign up for a trial, join a mailing list, or download a document. When they sign up, they fill in a form with their details, which you can then add to your contact list. 

Realtors have plenty of options here: 

• Add your MLS listings to your website—people will enter their phone number or email when they’re interested in finding out more about a property
• Start a newsletter about the local property market
• Create a guide or an e-book that people sign up to download. A first-time buyer’s guide, tips for staging a home, or a guide to local amenities for people who want to move to the area are all useful topics

Use PPC advertising to generate real estate leads

Once you have a landing page on your website, you can use Google Ads to drive more potential clients to your contact form. You can choose the keywords that your ad appears for so you know it’s being shown to people who are interested in finding a new realtor.

Speaking of online advertising, you can also use your Yelp business listing to get more leads. If you spend some of your marketing budget on upgrading your listing, you can add a call to action button to your Yelp page. This button sends clients straight to your landing page or lets them email you with their questions. This is another fantastic way to add qualified leads to your marketing funnel. 

How to get real estate leads from online platforms

Chances are, your brokerage gives you access to at least one MLS with properties in the area covered by your real estate license. As well as using the MLS to advertise the properties they have for sale, many realtors also use it as a real estate lead generation tool. 

There are several ways to do this: 

• Search for properties for sale by owner (FSBO). These sellers might be frustrated by the process of selling their own homes and might be ready for a realtor to help. 
• Search for expired listings where the sellers might be ready to relist their property. Surveys have found that 37% of people choose a new agent when they’re ready to try to sell their home again. 
• Search for listings that will expire soon—for example, properties that have been on the market for 75 days of a 90-day listing. A lot of realtors go after expired listings on the MLS. Contacting the seller before the current listing runs out might mean that you get in there first so you’ve already started a conversation if their home goes unsold.

It’s also worth considering paid platforms like Zillow Premier Agent. This program lets Zillow—the most-visited real estate search site in the US—connect you with more potential buyers. When you sign up, your listings will rank ahead of your competition and Zillow will send you the names and contact details of people who are interested in buying in your area. 

Depending on your area, Zillow Premier Agent comes to at least $60 per lead. 

How to get real estate leads in person

Personal connections matter, even in a digital world, and face-to-face lead generation should still be a cornerstone of your strategy.

Almost half of people choose a real estate agent referred to them by a friend, neighbor, or family member. And since 73% of people work with the first realtor they meet, it’s doubly important to put yourself out there. 

Attend local events

You might be able to meet potential new leads by:

• Attending events held by your local chamber of commerce
• Going to charity events or fundraisers 
• Visiting local fairs
• Spending time at exhibitions and conferences
• Dropping into local businesses and asking to leave your card

You never know when a conversation is going to start the ball rolling and eventually lead to a sale. 

Host events of your own

Although it involves more planning and effort, hosting your own real estate event is more likely to generate leads you can use. After all, people who take the time to go to a talk or class about real estate are probably interested in buying or selling a house. 

You can also host open houses at your listings to meet more people who are curious about the property market. It’s another classic way to let people get to know you, and the personal touch means that you’re far more likely to be able to convert these leads. 

Go door to door

Doorknocking is seen as a rite of passage for realtors. If you have a listing on a certain street, introducing yourself to other homeowners in the neighborhood can be a great way to expand your client list. If you find out about the local comps, new property developments, or local news before you hit the streets, people will remember you as a realtor who’s genuinely interested in the area. 

And if going door to door isn't possible, you always have the option of the prospecting letter in real estate. Depending on the market, you could send prospecting letters to everyone on your mailing list, your past clients, a certain neighborhood, or people with an active FSBO listing on your MLS. 

There’s evidence that up to 90% of people open their direct mail (compared to only 20-30% of marketing emails), so there’s plenty of reason to invest in this old-fashioned lead generation strategy. 

Manage your leads with Magical

Once you have your TOFU leads, the next step is to keep in touch and start to move them down the marketing funnel. 

This is where we come in. 🪄 

Magical’s personalized templates save you time and effort when you have to write marketing messages at scale. Write and save your template in Magical’s Chrome extension and conjure it wherever you contact your leads. Then simply teleport your contact’s information from your mailing list to personalize the message and hit send. 

Realtors can set template messages for: 

• A follow-up after a meeting or phone call
• An introductory message to send when someone accepts your connection request on LinkedIn
• An invitation to an open house 
• And—one day soon—an appointment reminder for the day you arrange a showing for your new client

Some realtors spend up to four hours every day prospecting for new leads and nurturing the ones they have. 

By using Magical to save time on some of those mundane tasks, you’re left with more time to show and sell houses. And, by making it easier to send personalized messages to your leads, you can build a rapport more quickly and increase the chance of a lead becoming your new client. 

‍Add our free extension to Chrome today and start prospecting for leads, the Magical way.