5 Mistakes Real Estate Agents Make Online and Easy Solutions to Maximize Growth Potential

If you are eager to level up your real estate career, utilizing the digital space effectively is a must. In the modern real estate industry, business is initiated, conducted, and transacted online. According to the National Association of Realtors, 97% of all homebuyers use the internet in their search for the right property. That is a huge percent of the market share that you can tap into if you are using your real estate web platform in a way to maximize your lead generation and conversion potential.

There are 5 mistakes, however, that real estate agents make time and time again that hinder their ability to reach and convert leads. If you want to really explode your business, you need to avoid these common pitfalls:

1. Prioritizing Pitch Over Value - Forgetting the 80/20 Rule
2. Dropping the Ball on Branding
3. Relying on Manual Follow Up
4. Using a Basic Lead Capture System
5. Providing Static Data

Let's dig deeper into each area to understand why agents make these mistakes and what you can do to avoid them.

Mistake #1: Prioritizing Pitch Over Value - Forgetting the 80/20 Rule

As a real estate agent, your primary focus in your digital marketing strategy should be to provide value to your clients and potential leads. The best way to increase your conversion rate is to show your market expertise and display market leadership. You do this by providing tools and knowledge rather than by pitching yourself and trying to sell them something. No one wants to work with a pushy salesman. Bring clients to you by making yourself invaluable rather than by begging for business.

A good rule of thumb for your real estate agent marketing, whether it be on social media, email campaigns, or other areas is to follow the 80/20 rule. 80% of your social media posts, emails and content should provide value instead of a sales pitch. They should focus on educating and informing your readers. Only 20% (or less) should focus on selling yourself as an agent.

Too many agents fill up the market share with pitchy ads about themselves or their listings and forget that value is what wins clients. If you load your website and marketing strategy up with buyer and seller tools, neighborhood details, niche searches, educational content, dynamic market reports, and an informative blog you will increase your conversion rate by highlighting your market expertise.

Mistake #2: Dropping the Ball on Branding

Your website is your online business card and your digital resume. The vast majority of your online leads will visit your website without ever having met you. Your website, then, is a powerful branding tool - and you want it to work for you by positioning yourself as a market leader.

Many agents don’t understand the importance of combining visual appeal with high functionality when it comes to a successful real estate website. This is the one-two punch that effectively brands you as a leader in your respective market. Your website system needs to provide the tools that modern buyers and sellers are looking for - market reports, home valuation, categorized one-click specialty searches, etc. In addition to this, it needs a luxury aesthetic with high-resolution images, showcased listings, and modern appeal.

Buyers and sellers want an agent that stands at the forefront of the market, with cutting edge technology and the highest level of market expertise. Using your website for effective real estate agent branding to accomplish this is essential to growing your business.

Mistake #3: Relying on Manual Follow Up

Relentless follow up is crucial to success in real estate. But with only so many hours in the day and a seemingly endless amount of tasks in the queue for most agents, too many drop the ball on continuously following up with online leads.

To reach more leads and stand out from the sea of busy agents, you need automated follow up. Today’s real estate technology gives us the power to completely automate once time-consuming tasks like sending out listing recommendation emails or market reports.

Systems can send messages on your behalf to every lead that registers on your site - you don’t have to manually communicate until leads have already been qualified and incubated by an effective artificial intelligence system.

These tools are available in the modern real estate tech field, and if you are missing them you will struggle to compete with agents who do. With these tools working on your behalf, your time is freed up to close more deals.

Mistake #4: Using a Basic Lead Capture System

A common mistake that real estate agents make is giving away too much information too soon. Outdated platforms lack effective lead capture by offering only one option for requiring visitor registration and many are missing key tools that boost successful lead conversion. To ensure maximum lead capture, you need to be using a layered lead capture system with modern verification tools. Whether your website system is not capable of it, or you choose not to employ a layered registration approach, it is a mistake!

A real estate agent’s business is based on growing a lead pipeline. The best way to use your website to do this is to require website visitors to register using valid information - email and/or phone number - before complete usage of the site is permitted. Additionally, your system should force verification of email addresses to ensure that each lead is viable.

Registration requirements, however, need to be employed in the right way. Requiring it too soon is likely to turn off many visitors before they have received enough information to pique their interest. Require it too late and you may have given the lead enough information that they no longer see the value in registering. The best way is to have the abilities afforded by layered registration so that you can choose when to require registration - after viewing a certain number of listings, to access the full address of a listing, etc. You don’t want to leave leads on the table, and layered registration produces the highest yield of viable leads.

Mistake #5: Providing Static Data

Real estate is an exceptionally fluid industry, but many agents only provide static data and searches. This is a big mistake. If the market is not static, the data that you provide definitely should not be.

While most real estate agents have search capabilities on their website, many provide a static search. This is one that is set up manually - by the agent or the visitor - with given search parameters. A static search will return unchanging results of listings that fall within those parameters.

The problem with this, however, is that buyer preferences change all the time. Targeted search areas expand. New communities are considered. Price points can change. Square footage requirements are amended. All of these changes in thinking occur everyday in the minds of real estate clients. But if the search parameters on a static search are not amended, listing recommendations fail to take all of this into account and opportunities are missed. This leads to a huge loss in lead and conversion potential for the agent.

Instead, real estate agents should be using adaptive MLS searches. This important website tool employs an algorithm to track user behavior and automatically adapts search criteria and listing recommendations based on actual user behaviors - in real time - so that visitors always receive the most relevant listings. This greatly enhances your transaction potential with each lead.

You should also be providing dynamic market reporting that adjusts automatically with the market. If buyers are looking for how much homes are selling for in a particular neighborhood, you want to provide the most up to date information so that it is accurate. If you only update your market reports every few months, or once per quarter like many agents do, your data is unreliable in the current market.

Creating market reports manually is one of the most time consuming tasks a real estate agent has. Modern real estate technology, however, can automatically generate real-time reports for each website visitor. If your system is not equipped with this capability, it should be!

Real-time data might be the single most important aspect of providing value to your website visitors. The data you provide must be as dynamic as the market.

To be a successful real estate agent in today’s market it is more important than ever to stand out from the crowd. Too many agents make the same mistakes that keep them from reaching their full potential.

Having a website system with the right technology will help you avoid these missteps and will provide the right framework for maximum growth opportunities. Realty Net Media’s innovative platform is designed to maximize your potential by eliminating these pitfalls for tech-savvy agents that know the importance of staying on the cutting edge of technology to drive your business.