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Real Estate Lead Generator Revealed - The Q&A Blog

by Brandon Cornett

In this real-world case study, I'll explain how I produce a steady stream of inquiries through my blog at the Home Buying Institute. Then I'll show you how to use this strategy as a real estate lead generator on your own website or blog.

Every agent needs to have a system in place for producing real estate leads on a regular basis. Sure, some of your business will come from referrals. But to reach new levels of success, you should also have a real estate lead generator in place on your website. I recently experimented with a new system for producing inquiries that I think you should consider for your own website.

I publish a consumer-education website called the Home Buying Institute. That website also has a blog attached to it, and for years I have been changing the format of that blog from one thing to another. Recently, I changed the blog's format yet again, but this time I found something I'm going to stick with. I turned the blog into a question-and-answer tool that makes it really easy for visitors to interact.

I simply added a small box to the sidebar area of the blog, where visitors can type their home buying questions. They click the "send" button, and the question comes to me by email. At first, I asked for their name and email address in addition to their question. So the whole thing functioned as a real estate lead generator of sorts. But I do not actually follow up with leads produced through this particular website, because (A) I'm not a real estate agent; (B) the people are located all over the country; and (C) it's an information website, and not a business development website. So I changed the form so that it only asks for their question, but not their contact info.

But you can use this same technique as a lead generator on your own website, and that's exactly what I'm going to show you.

Turning Questions Into Real Estate Leads

Here are the technical details of how I constructed the home buying Q&A tool for the blog. It's pretty simple, and the whole process took less than two hours to implement.

First, I changed the name, logo and tagline of this blog to make it the "Home Buying Q&A" blog.
Next, I added a form to the sidebar area, right up at the top. This is where people can type their questions.
In the first version, I also had a form field asking for their first name and email address. You must do this if you want it to function as a real estate lead generator. In the current version, I have removed the name and email address fields, because I don't need them. But you certainly will.
4. When somebody types a question and clicks the "send" button, they are taken to a "thank you" page that tells them to check back within 48 hours ... that we post all responses onto the blog. The thank-you page is also a good opportunity to present a special offer of some kind, or a newsletter signup box.

That's it. Like I said, pretty straightforward. But if you were to use this as a lead generator on your real estate blog, there would actually be several things happening at once...

First of all, you are expanding your web presence with every question you answer. If you integrate this through a blog like I have done, each question and answer will be an individual blog post. Answer two questions a week for a year, and you'd have more than 100 pages of new website content each year!

You are also turning your blog into a real estate lead generator by having the form on there. In my experience, people are more inclined to type a message into a Q&A or "ask the expert" form than to send a plain old email message. It capitalizes on the reader's initial impulse.

Last but not least, you are building your reputation as a knowledgeable and helpful real estate agent who really understands the local market.

Lead Generator Ingredients

So what's the recipe for this lead generation system? Well, we have covered some of the technical steps above. But there are a few other things you'll need that we haven't mentioned yet -- namely, web traffic. Here's a complete list of ingredients:

A real estate blog
A steady amount of traffic to your blog
An easy-to-use form where people can ask questions
A form field that also asks for their name (optional) and email address (a must)
A "form-to-email" script that will send the question to your inbox
The willingness to help people on a regular basis

A Word About Conversion Rates

How well will this real estate lead generator work for you? I have no idea. Given my traffic levels on the Home Buying Institute website, I started getting two or three questions a day soon after implementation. Your results may be better or worse than that.

Regardless of how many inquiries you produce with this technique, I can tell you with certainty that most of them will not become clients. That's the law of averages that applies to marketing in general, and lead generation in particular. But if you got one or two additional clients per month through this system ... wouldn't that be worth the effort?

About the author - Brandon Cornett has written an e-book that outlines ten of the most effective techniques for generating real estate leads online. You may download this book in PDF format by visiting http://www.armingyourfarming.com/products/lead-generation.php