The Right Online Lead Platform for Real Estate Agents

By Tammy Northcutt

Tammy Northcutt is the Operating Principal of Keller Williams Realty Preferred in Orland Park and CEO of The Wexler Group Team.

Online lead generation is more popular than ever, with both agents and consumers spending more of their time online. That’s exactly why having some kind of online presence has become so important for your real estate business. It’s where you capture attention and bring leads to you, instead of always going out to source them yourself.

The question most agents get stuck on isn’t whether to do it. It’s the question of which platform to choose. So let’s walk through the three major online lead sources and how to figure out which one fits you.

Facebook is still one of the best and one of the cheapest. If you’re new to social media or marketing, this is where we’d tell you to start. The entry point is low. Here at KW, we’ve partnered with Facebook, and you can run a $10 ad and come back with leads, which is honestly amazing for the budget. You can program your content well in advance and have it running simultaneously, so there are ways to make this work even if you’re not someone who wants to be on camera.

If you don’t have your own listings yet, you can ask other agents to let you market theirs. It’s a great way to attract buyers, and you’ll often pick up your own listings in the process. There’s always a way to start.

Then there’s SEO and pay-per-click, which you can run yourself or hand off. You can create the ads on your own, or you can bring in a company that does it for you. Doing it yourself costs less but takes more of your time, so the right choice comes down to where you are with time versus money right now.

Paid lead companies are the third option, and they come with a tradeoff. Lead aggregators like Zillow, and there are several, can be a real resource, but there’s a heavy cost attached, which is why a lot of agents steer away from them. If it’s an add-on, or you’re a bigger team, or this is going to be one of your main levers, it can absolutely make sense.

But if you don’t have a marketing budget established yet, this isn’t where we’d suggest you begin. Aggregators take a while to get going, just like everything else.

But there are parts most agents miss, and it’s the most important thing we can tell you. At KW, we use the terms learning months and earning months. When you start something new, you’re in the learning months. The algorithm hasn’t taken off yet, you haven’t fully honed the skill, and the benefit hasn’t shown up. And this is exactly where people quit, often right before the earning months arrive. So when you feel ready to give up, that’s the moment to give it another few months, even six. It will turn around.

Consistency is what gets you results with anything you do, and running something for a couple of months and declaring it doesn’t work just isn’t realistic.

That’s why the budget conversation matters more than the platform choice. Plan your budget out in advance and make sure it’s enough to carry you through the learning months and into the earning months. At a minimum, we’d say budget for six months. Even better, plan for 12 to 18 months, even at a low spend, because again, this is all about consistency. If you can fund a consistent ad campaign over time, you’ll attract an abundance of business.

If you have any questions about online presence, marketing, social media, or anything at all, please reach out. We’d love to help, whether you’re with us or not.

We also run workshops every month built around exactly this kind of thing, so if you just need a little support to get going, that’s what they’re there for. Call or text us at 708-906-6377, email us at tammy@our1thing.com, or visit growth.our1thing.com.