How to Generate Leads from Your Blogs
Though we have nothing against paying for lead generation, we do recognize that it’s not a sustainable marketing tactic since your pipeline dries up once you turn off the faucet.
Blogs are a little different because they can continue to generate leads for you in perpetuity without needing consistent payment.
A lot of agents have struggled to crack the code on making blogs a valuable asset for their businesses, so we decided to write this blog.
Continue reading to learn how to leverage blogs you own as low-cost lead generation tools that can last you several years.
150+ Blog Ideas for Real Estate Agents
[Download Now]
Write Blogs that Are Appealing
Before you start to leverage your blogs to generate leads, you need to make sure they’re appealing to the type of consumer you want to attract.
All of your blogs should have content that solve issues, answer questions, or provide some type of benefit.
Because you are targeting those interested in buying or selling, this content might provide information about buyer or seller processes, the local housing market, or community news.
If you want to cater towards homeowners, your blog can provide home maintenance tips and tricks or lifestyle guides for crafts and cooking.
As you revisit old blogs and plan new ones, it’s important to remember that you want your blogs to appeal to potential leads and your database while positioning you as a local real estate expert.
Set Up a Lead Capture Mechanism
A lead capture mechanism is the incentive and form that collects a lead’s contact information.
The best example of a lead capture mechanism is the pop-up that limits people from viewing more photos of a listing. The incentive is to view more photos, and the form appears when they’ve reached their photo limit.
Another popular mechanism is offering a free lead magnet in exchange for contact information.
Lead magnets are free items or services that are given away for the sake of collecting contact details (generating leads).
In this digital age, lead magnets are often information packaged in a guide, eBook, or checklist.
Given the nature of blogs, the best lead capture mechanism to add to them is the lead magnet giveaway. You’ll want to make sure the lead magnet you offer relates to the blog.
For Example: If your blog post is “5 Mistakes First-Time Home Buyers Make,” your lead magnet could be a “Complete First-Time Home Buyers Guide.”
When presenting your lead magnet, you should:
Use a Call to Action to get the Lead Magnet
Add links to the Lead Magnet throughout your blog
Include an image of the Lead Magnet in your blog
You can also add a pop-up form to present the lead magnet if your website has that feature.
Integrate Your Lead Capture Form
This is the nuts and bolts of generating your leads. The form part of the lead capture mechanism needs to deposit your leads somewhere (ideally a CRM).
Most agent websites offer a CRM and email marketing function as part of the package.
If your website does have this option, then most of your work is done for you. All you have to do is make sure the lead capture form adds leads to your CRM the way you want it.
If your website doesn’t double as a CRM or email marketing platform, you will need to figure out how to integrate your lead capture form with your CRM. Otherwise you will have to do all of it manually which could result in lost leads.
Please give us a call if you’re having difficulties integrating your forms with your CRM, and we can get you set up!
Drive Traffic to Your Blogs
Pushing traffic to your blogs plays a huge role in leveraging them to create leads since your blogs are rendered useless if no one can see them.
Though it seems like a daunting task, driving traffic to your blogs is a lot easier than you think, and it doesn’t have to cost you money if you take the right approach.
Here are some traffic sources for your blog:
Social Media Posts and Pages
Social Media Direct Message
Email Newsletter
Email Marketing Messages
Your Email Signature
Text Messages
Direct Mail and Door Hangers
Facebook Ads
It’s important that you incorporate a mix of these sources (2-3), so you’re not relying on just one.
Email and social media will be your BEST source of traffic as long as you are persistent in your efforts.
This means emailing your database consistently and posting to your social media pages frequently.
If you’re persistent in promoting your blogs through those two channels, you won’t have to rely on Facebook ads to drive traffic.
And in case you forgot, email and social media are free traffic sources!
Give Your Blog High Visibility on Your Site
The reason visibility is important is similar to why driving traffic to your blogs is important.
If people have trouble finding your blogs or moving from one blog to the next, your blogs won’t generate leads.
Though your traffic sources will link directly to specific blogs, the page that shows all your blogs should be easily accessible from your home page.
This will ensure that potential leads who visit your website independent of your blog promotions can find your blogs as they browse your website.
Make your blog more visible by adding links or images of your blog posts to your homepage in addition to adding it near the top/front of your website navigation menu.
On that same note, you should add links to your blog throughout your other website pages, so visitors have more than one way of reaching your blog.
150+ Blog Ideas for Real Estate Agents
[Download Now]
Don’t Stop at Lead Generation!!!
We’ve given you the secret to generating leads from your blogs, but we don’t want to overlook the importance of nurturing leads.
Nurturing is the process of warming up your leads by sending intentional content to build trust and brand recognition with them over time. It usually consists of automated emails, personal texts, phone calls, direct mail, or a combination!
Depending on how close your lead is to wanting to buy or sell, the nurturing process can last several months to a year.
Even though nurturing is super important to successful marketing efforts, we’ve seen a lot of agents drop leads if they’re not ready to move within a couple months.
These are often agents who rely on paid lead generation to fuel the bulk of their business. Like we said at the start of this blog, paid lead generation is helpful but not sustainable.
That being said, please nurture your leads by sending them content that is appealing and positions you as a real estate expert. That content can even be more blogs!
The Forge Philosophy
At Forge Marketing Group, we care about providing our clients with sustainable, holistic, and client-owned marketing solutions to help them grow their real estate businesses.
We’ve worked with too many real estate agents who have been burned by “lead generation” companies, so we make it our priority to offer everything those businesses can’t.
Interested in working with Forge? Click here to request pricing and more information.