Lead Generation, how did I find you?

I know most would think it is a slow day when I am discussing Lead Generation on the Historic Home blog, but in reality, don't you want to know how I was able to contact you? You had a need, someone told me about you or you went online to the Internet and you posted X on Y site and I received Z lead. Hey, how'd they do that?

Well.....here is a great article to pull back the curtain and show you a bit about how Real Estate professionals generate leads:

Is one lead generation program better than the other? How do I get started? And what was our advice in general?  While various players tout different software programs or software-as-a-service (think online CRM tools), several experts seem to concur that a great website and managing one’s online presence is just as good if not better.

For a more traditional software approach, Chicago Agent Magazine is a great resource for tips, tools, and tricks from active practitioners. This article suggests a few lead generation tools, “The Best in Tech for Real Estate” dated July 2013 (scroll down to section “Best Lead Generation Software”). Other options to consider can be found at Texas A & M’s Real Estate Center’s Real Estate Software Directory. While the online tools mentioned in the above article don’t appear, you can find some software options under the section called “Contact Management“. Play around with some of the other categories to find software and tools for advertising, farming management, etc.

However, not everyone is on the software bandwagon:

Be your own AdWords manager. Learning the in and outs of paid search is a tough road, but a very rewarding one. Very similar to renting a home versus owning a home. One requires payment with not equity in the end, whereas the other requires payment, hard work, but equity in the end.

If you decide software isn’t the solution, here are some ideas on alternative methods for lead generation. It seems almost as if there is a consensus amongst the experts on using alternative methods (other than traditional software or pay-per-click tools). As per NAR’s 2012 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, 90% of home buyers use the Internet in their home search process, and 96% of buyers under the age of 44 use the Internet in the home search process, so buyers are definitely online. (Ha, we know where you live and what your searching on out there)...The articles below give a good lay-of-the-land and offer some good ideas as to how to connect with these buyers when they are online.

What does this mean Liz? It means that if you type in +Avondale, +Riverside, +Ortega, +San Marco, +Jacksonville, along with +Home or +Realtor, odds are I or one of my counterparts are going to be contacting you to discuss your +Real Estate needs. +Google is out collecting your data and every place you search, and some of the technology out there will also convert voice mails to text and allow for data search on this data. This means you can get an answer in minutes or hours as compared to what it used to be in days or weeks. But, hey, we want it now anyway! Call me to learn about the value of your house.

Liz