By Glenn Houck
RISMEDIA, April 2, 2008–Many brokers asked us what they need to do to prepare to purchase Internet-based inquiries in today’s market. But before you start looking at spending money on Internet inquiries in today’s market, make sure that your organization is ready to start converting these leads. They can be a great source of new business, but if handled incorrectly, you’ll just be wasting money. Here are five things to keep in mind:
1) Make sure you have the systems in place to track your results. If you can measure your results, you’ll never know if your money is being wisely spent. The good news is that with Internet leads, you should be able to track your results to a tee. This is very difficult to do with print advertising – and you should make sure that each step and source can be tracked.
2) Determine which of your agents should receive the leads. Internet-based leads aren’t for everyone. Many brokers offer e-training to certain groups of agents and only send the leads to those agents who understand the differences between an Internet lead and other lead types.
3) Try multiple sources. Not every lead source will perform at the same ROI. Since, you’ve built the measurement systems, now you can try different sources and increase volume from the best performing sources and eliminate the ones performing poorly.
4) Do not give the leads directly to your agents, without some sort of filtration. Internet leads have a lower than average conversion rate, and most agents are not able to respond to each lead as quickly as necessary.
5) Make sure each and every lead gets a quick response. Thirty-minute-response time is too slow. Your goal should be under 5 minutes from the time of the lead being generated on the Internet. This is very difficult to implement and even harder to execute on a consistent basis. Your process should never break down. There are reputable firms that can outsource this function, reliably for you.
Glenn Houck is the co-founder, LeadQual, LLC.
LeadQual helps brokers with Paid Search Marketing, SEO and Internet Lead Response, Qualification and Live Transfer. This reduces the cost of getting visitors to broker websites and improves conversion from Internet inquiry to closed home sale.
For more information visit www.LeadQual.com/RealEstate. Contact Glenn Houck at Glenn@LeadQual.com or 203-644-1320.
