How to build a real estate sales funnel that gets sales

Learning how to build a real estate sales funnel is one of the most important things you can do to make sure you’re properly communicating with potential leads.

If you have no idea what a real estate sales funnel is, check out What’s a Real Estate Sales Funnel?

Otherwise, read on as we help you figure out how to build a real estate sales funnel that can be amazingly prosperous.

Figure out who you want to target when you build a real estate sales funnel

The key to success in marketing is knowing your audience. Once you do, you can build a real estate sales funnel targeted to that specific audience.

Suppose you decide to target renters, for instance. Why not? It should be a profitable target group of buyers in 2020.

Where do they live? Everywhere. They live in condo and apartment communities and single- family homes.

One way to narrow down the target pool is by location. Choose a ZIP code or neighborhood (or several) with which you’re familiar — areas you are so familiar with that you can talk and write about them effortlessly.

Get to know them

Create a client profile of the folks who live there, including age, income, familial status and any other factors you deem important. Because you are familiar with the neighborhoods in which they live, and you have a rough idea of rents in the area, you should have a ballpark figure of their income level.

You can get other information to fill in the blanks at Census.gov. Type the name of your chosen city into the search box of your favorite search engine, like this: “Chula Vista California Quick Facts site:census.gov.”

Now that you have a profile of these potential clients, use the information to determine their pain points (they don’t think they can afford to buy a home, they need more room for a growing family, etc.) and where they most likely hang out online.

Get them to the rim

It’s time to figure out how you’ll get your target client to the rim of your funnel, aka lead generation. Right now, these people are nameless, faceless renters, absentee landlords, Spanish- speakers, golfers or whichever group you’ve decided you want to work with.

Use lures to draw them to your website. These can include anything from a free e-book or published book, list of down payment assistance programs, checklists, market report, buying/selling guides, home evaluation, etc.

Then, drive the traffic to a spiffy landing page with amazing visuals, convincing testimonials and a brilliant call to action. In other words, make it so they can’t resist coughing up their contact information to get their hands on what you have to offer.

If your listings will be your lures, drive the traffic to a property-specific landing page with the bells and whistles mentioned above.

They jumped – now what?

By supplying you with their contact information, your leads took the leap and now hang out in the top portion of your real estate sales funnel. They are now prospects and your job is to convert them into clients.

It’s time to build trust and two of the most effective ways are also two of the most inexpensive: content and social media engagement.

Content marketing becomes even easier when it’s automated, via an email newsletter drip campaign. Once the newsletter is created and the automation is set up, the rest of the process is easy – send them out monthly to remain top-of-mind.

But, don’t rule out snail mail. Since 70 percent of Americans say that snail mail is more personal than email (according to the DMA), it’s the ideal vehicle for building personal relationships.

Finally, social media engagement is an inexpensive and effective way to reach out and touch these prospects. Engage with your followers, run contests and quizzes, post interesting, hyper-local, helpful or fun information.

Naturally, whichever method or combination of methods you choose, it/they need to be delivered consistently. Don’t give up – just because these prospects aren’t ready to transact now, doesn’t mean they won’t be in the future.

Another way to view the real estate sales funnel is by labeling the parts according to the activity required of you:

Generate leads
Nurture prospects
Convert to clients

Continually filling the top of the funnel is critical, along with ongoing nurturing and converting efforts.

Hopefully you have a robust CRM to help keep track of where each of your leads happens to be in the sales process. Even a simple labeling of them as warm, hot and cold will suffice and keep your marketing efforts on track.