Real estate agents/brokers? What kind of lead generation/marketing services do you need?

[inglesa_loquita]

OK, firstly, I promise this is NOT one of those annoying, sneaky advertisements! As you can see I'm using my personal profile with absolutely NO links to the new business that I'm in the process of setting up.

I just need some help, and I'd be grateful for every bit of advice you can give me.

I will be offering all kinds of online marketing services for realtors who want to bring in lots of new leads and I want to be sure that I deliver exactly the services people want!

So, what tasks do you do to find buyers that sucks up so much of your time and so much of your energy, that you'd be happy to pay someone to do them for you?

- Chatting for hours with people on Facebook and/or Twitter.
- Writing up brochures, letters or postcards to post out to try and drum up new business.
- Making telephone calls.
- Writing and answering emails to prospective buyers who sent messages to you.
- LinkedIn networking.
- Blogging.
- Website 'stuff' - like working out what your keywords should be and making Google and the search engines happy.

Please comment, and thank you!

[taismith]

- Chatting with strangers online leads to nothing. The web is a place where people go to get information while remaining anonymous. I wouldn't pay for this.

- I do this on my own because I like to control every aspect without having to pay someone per edit - more tech savvy agents do the same. Only older, computer illiterate, or lazy agents pay.

- Unless you're a licensed assistant I'm paying per hour or set salary, I wouldn't pay a stranger to make calls for me. Poaching starts this way, so I deal with my own calls.

- It's a part of our business to respond to these. They could be agent-less buyers.

- LinkedIn is like a professional Facebook - no one really uses it.

- It's nice to look at but it will never be the reason a buyer chooses you as their agent.

- When websites are set up for us (we pay for branding, website startup etc), they already come with SEO and all that good stuff.


In short, I think this isn't going to be a very profitable business for you. Most of the things you listed are done by agents already. Our business IS dealing with people, so why would we pay someone else to do it? And chatting online and all that stuff gets us nowhere. We never put much time into that because most people aren't serious or they hide behind the web and aren't ready to pull the trigger on properties. If so, they'd actually give their full names and MEET us in person. As for brochures etc, we usually already have templates and plop on new writing and pictures and we're done. Also, none of this is really lead generation and isn't worth a dime as it has no results and it gives us no actual list of people to start with. ACTUAL lead generation already gives you a list (from god knows where). Also, these aren't marketing services. Marketing services in our industry relates to branding, ads in the newspaper, bus stops etc. What you're offering is what we can pay high schoolers to do for "internships" (aka free).