Generating real estate leads in the real world

Everyone's trying to figure out the next big thing when it comes to generating real estate leads, but what if we told you the secret to success might come from looking backwards?

Recently, the admin of a Facebook real estate group that I belong to shared a message he received from a guy who works for a digital marketing company who does, among other things, social media marketing for agents.

In a nutshell, the message bemoaned how impossible it has become for him to place ads for his real estate clients because of “how adversely that process has been impacted by recent changes in Facebook’s policies with respect to creating custom audiences.”

In case you haven’t heard, Facebook has removed some of the more popular audience-targeting filters, such as age and gender. Additionally, the search-by-ZIP code feature has been changed to include a 15-mile radius around any particular ZIP code.

As a result, Facebook ads, once a way to laser target an audience, have become almost useless, according to many marketers and agents. Later in the aforementioned Facebook thread, the admin said that another digital marketer says, since the Facebook changes, he’s given up working with real estate agents completely.

So, what alternatives are agents considering when it comes to generating real estate leads? We asked, and now we share.

Profitability - social media for real estate agents

Going back to the real world

Many of the agents we’ve spoken with or read about on Facebook are embracing real-world (as opposed to digital) alternatives to Facebook advertising as a means of generating real estate leads.

The traditional, some say “old-school,” marketing methods are gaining renewed interest. As one agent said “Old school always works.”

And, he has a point. Many of the old ways of marketing yourself, your business and your listings, if performed consistently, pay off over time.

Direct mail marketing is the one that seems to be the most popular right now. “I’ve gotten into EDDM mailings,” claims an agent in the real estate Facebook group.

If you’re new to the direct mail marketing world, EDDM stands for “Every Door Direct Mail,” a service of the U.S. Postal Service. You’ll find an explainer and tips for using EDDM at USPS.com.

How effective is direct mail for generating real estate leads in 2020?

Real estate direct mail

“When you’re paying more for ads that BY DEFINITION have to be LESS effective, that is an unsustainable phenomenon,” says one agent on Facebook. He’s referring to Facebook ads and toying with switching to direct mail.

This is 2020, though, and naturally agents are skeptical about the effectiveness of real-world real estate marketing in the digital age. Is direct mail a sustainable “phenomenon?”

Let’s take a look at some of the stats:

Response rates to direct mail sent to prospects is nearly 5 percent. Email, social media and paid search each offer a 1 percent response rate while online display ads garner 0.30 percent. (ANA/DMA)
Nearly 53 percent of survey participants said they read postcards received in the mail. (US Postal Service)
While it’s not ok for social media advertisers to laser target an audience, it’s apparently fine with direct mail. After all, “out of 4.8 million households that get 45> pieces of mail per week, 59% are college graduates, 15% have some college or tech school, and 18% are high school graduates.” (Inkit.com)

What types of mailers are real estate agents sending?

According to one agent in the real estate Facebook group, SendOutCards are the best. “I’ve had more people – particularly past clients – call me in response to those cards than anything else I have ever done, and that’s in 30 years of sending out all manner of stuff of that nature,” he said.

We don’t know much about them other than their website is dreadfully slow (hope their cards aren’t that slow) but you can learn more about their real estate products here and view testimonials from other agents here.

Then, there are the many direct mail products available to agents who are working on generating real estate leads at Prospects Plus!, an industry favorite for more than 20 years. Create hyper-targeted mailing lists with the company’s demographic tracking tools and data management systems.

Their most popular products include the Just Listed/Sold postcards and their agent newsletters. FitSmallBusiness.com, by the way, chose Prospects Plus! as the best overall in their list of Best Real Estate Direct Mail Services.

While there are loads of other direct mail marketing companies, we’ll wrap up the discussion with one other that we’ve heard agents mention: OvernightPrints.com. If you’re the DIY type or an agent who wants customization options, check out what they have to offer.

“The moment we were forced to spend by ZIP code as our only adjustable metric, we stopped [advertising on Facebook] entirely,” claims one agent on Facebook.

If you’re among the growing group of real estate agents who are reducing or eliminating their spend on Facebook advertising, try getting out of the digital and into the real world. It may be the shot in the arm your business needs.