From Clicks to Closing: 4 Best Practices for Lead Nurturing

Lead generation is a pivotal pillar of your real estate business. But how can you get a lead to go from an unknown stranger to a full-on client? With smart, effective lead nurturing. Nurturing your leads is a must to get them to become clients, convert successfully, and nab you more transactions.

Why Lead Nurturing is So Crucial to Your Success

You’ve done it: you made efforts to generate more leads, they’re getting in touch with you, and now you’re ready to keep forging these connections. But do you just shoot off one text message or leave a voicemail and cross your fingers? No!

In reality, you need to take a strategic approach to keeping the ball rolling with these newfound leads. How do you do this? With lead nurturing. Lead nurturing is the key to unlocking crucial momentum in connecting with leads. It also helps:

• Keep you front and center and top of mind for your leads
• Provides opportunities to educate your leads, reinforcing your authority and expertise
• Gives leads an easier way to reach out to you directly, consistently
• Build trust in you as a go-to real estate resource

In short, lead nurturing is the key to getting the leads you generate to turn into full-on clients.

4 Best Practices for Effective and Impactful Lead Nurturing

Now that you’re clear on how important it is to nurture your leads, you can start putting into motion. But first, here are 4 best practices to align your approach for more effective lead nurturing.

#1. Know Your Audience

Arguably, the most important best practice for lead nurturing is knowing about the leads you’re reaching out to and categorizing them appropriately. When you reach out to a first-time homebuyer lead, it’s not going to be the same conversations as when you talk to empty-nesters ready to downsize.

This is just one example, so take a look at your CRM and group your leads by characteristics like:

• Cold leads
• Warm leads
• Ready to buy
• First-timers
• Lead sources

This will help you shape your content and outreach plan so it’s relevant and timely, which will help nudge each grouping of leads along appropriately.

#2. Nurture Across a Variety of Channels

Next, you’ll want to look at all the areas you can contact these leads. This is where the lead nurturing starts. Open up your CRM’s email tool, which is where you can build an email nurture campaign for the leads’ categories. You’ll also want to consider texting, phone calls, social media outreach, and direct mail.

Each of these channels drives impact in your interactions when used wisely. Think: right message, right place, right time. Don’t inundate your leads with daily emails, endless phone calls, and late-night texts. You want to be strategic in your approach and customize the approach to each of the lead categories.

For example, you may email cold leads every other week, and call or text them twice a month since they’re not eager or active, but you still want to stay present in their sphere. Let’s say you have leads you sourced from Facebook or Instagram. They may need to be emailed more educational content about who you are, what you do, and reasons they can feel confident in working with you.

These are just a couple of examples of how you can adjust lead nurturing to resonate with your audience.

#3. Use Personalized Content

Seeing a common theme in these best practices? Here’s a hint: no lead nurturing approach is a one-size-fits-all. When you’re ready to draft up emails for your nurture campaigns, send off texts, and make phone calls, you want to personalize your messaging as much as possible.

Use first names where you can. Mention where you got their information. Reference ZIP codes, the city the lead is interested in, or highlight key features in town. These may seem like small steps to take, but the details can make all the difference in establishing credibility, building trust, and motivating leads to actually work with you.

And hey, it’s a much better look than canned, templated responses.

#4. Be Consistent in Your Approach

Rounding out our four best practices is consistency. Being consistent in your lead nurturing efforts is an absolute necessity to staying top of mind with your leads, which will help them be more likely to reach out to you and actually become your client. It also helps them trust your presence, gives you plenty of touchpoints to showcase your local market expertise, and helps them feel they’re making a sound decision to partner with a real estate agent.

Feeling confident about lead nurturing? To get more leads in your local area, set up your RealEstateAgents.com profile today to connect with them!