Happy Agent Co. — Real Estate Podcast for Women hosted by Lindsay Dreyer, Real Estate Coach

Zero Cost, Big Results: 8 Free Lead Generation Tactics for Real Estate Agents

• Lindsay Dreyer • Season 1 • Episode 6

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Are you tired of the pressure to lip-sync your way to leads on social media? In this episode, Lindsay shares her proven system to build a sustainable, referral-based real estate business—without dancing, big budgets, or constant social media posting.

Learn how to work smarter, not harder, with strategies designed to fit your lifestyle and grow your business intentionally.

What You’ll Learn:

  • The 3 biggest mistakes agents make with lead generation—and how to fix them.
  • Lindsay’s 8 no-cost to low-cost lead generation pillars:
    • Leveraging your database (or borrowing someone else’s).
    • Hosting strategic, engaging open houses.
    • Nurturing your sphere and past clients.
    • Hosting educational workshops to position yourself as an expert.
    • Attending fun, authentic social events to network naturally.
    • Building strong vendor referral relationships.
    • Creating and delivering mini-CMA packets to targeted homeowners.
    • Becoming the "mayor" of your farm area.
  • How to climb the "Relationship Pyramid" and move from being unknown to becoming a valued resource.

📖 Featured Resources: The Ultimate Lead Gen Playbook – Download this free guide to simplify your lead generation efforts and start building a sustainable business today!

The Relationship Edge by Jerry Acuff

Real estate is a contact sport—meaningful conversations and authentic relationships are the key to growth. Tune in to discover how to stay consistent, simplify your strategies, and create a thriving business that works for you.

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Speaker 1:

Hello, there we are jumping into one of my favorite topics of all time lead generation. I absolutely love lead gen. As a marketing major and early adopter of websites and search engine marketing, I absolutely love talking about this. So picture this you have a business with leads flowing in. You do not need a massive budget. We are talking no to low cost and you never have to be on social media. There's no dancing, there's no lip syncing. There is actually zero social media. If you're intrigued, keep listening, because today I am going to talk about my proven system to build a sustainable real estate business based on genuine relationships and no too low cost strategies. I personally built a multiple six-figure real estate business, built a multiple six-figure real estate business on these strategies alone, and I know it will work for you too.

Speaker 1:

Why do agents struggle with lead generation? It really comes down to a few things. The first is that you are following the trends and you are not doing what comes naturally to you or what you enjoy. There are so many agents that are relying too much on paid advertising, paid leads, social media. That doesn't work and they just need to stop. They really need to focus on the tried and true ways of getting clients in their pipeline. The second thing is that agents are consistent in their follow-up. They do not consistently nurture leads over time and typically a lead is not transacting or buying or selling for 8 to 12 months from their first contact. So it is really important that you have a system in place to nurture those leads. The third thing is that real estate agents just get overwhelmed, which is rightly so. You are a firefighter. You are dealing with a lot of things that are thrown at you, but that is a huge reason why agents are not able to consistently lead generate.

Speaker 1:

So today I am going to dive into my eight pillars of lead generation, and this is as it's outlined in my free resource, the Ultimate Lead Gen Playbook. So if you have not downloaded this, get to the show notes immediately and download the Ultimate Lead Gen Playbook. It is free. It is designed to help you simplify and streamline your lead generation efforts and, again, these are no cost to low cost and it helps you build a sustainable real estate business. I'm not trying to get you to spend money, because you absolutely do not have to. And again, there is no dancing or slip sinking on social media involved. For those of you who are maybe a first time listener.

Speaker 1:

Quick introduction I'm Lindsay Dreyer. I am a real estate coach, I am a brokerage owner and I have been in the real estate industry for over 20 years. I am also a mom of three littles, so I do not have a ton of time or energy to be wasted here, friend, and that is my reason for being is I want to help you have a life. I want you to use smart real estate strategies so you are able to not only make money but also have freedom and have a life. And that leads me to the eight pillars of lead generation that helped me build a multiple six-figure business and a multiple seven-figure real estate brokerage.

Speaker 1:

Let's dive in. Pillar number one is your database, or your team or brokerages database. These are what I would consider your cold leads. Now, these are very important Once someone gets into your pipeline. We don't just disappear them if they haven't purchased a property within a month or two. So the key to this pillar is that there are consistent follow-ups and that you're automating your tasks and staying on top of your nurture. You can use a combination of automation as well as personal touches. I like to use the 10 leads per day and then call call text. So it is completely up to you.

Speaker 1:

You might be asking I don't have a database. Here's a really great idea for you Go borrow someone else's. I know at our brokerage we have 12,000 leads in what we call the pond and agents have the opportunity to work those at any point and really nobody is taking advantage of that. So I have a feeling your brokerage might have a pond, a team at your brokerage might have a pond, an agent at your brokerage might have a pond and you can strike a deal with them. They might let you work it for free. They might let you work it for a referral fee on any deals that come from that. Get creative. You can use other people's lists and other people's leads. So get on it. It's a really easy way.

Speaker 1:

Pillar number two are open houses. So why am I so pumped about open houses? I think they are one of the best ways to get face-to-face and have a face-to-face conversation with potential clients. I worked in new construction for almost four years and every day was an open house, so I really crafted a great strategy and a really good process on working open houses, building rapport and following up my advice. Host at least one weekly and then make sure that you have a really good process in place. I have something called the open method and that is get organized, promote it, engage those leads when they're at the open and then make sure that you're nurturing them. So that is open houses. I think that they can be such a great lead source free lead source, especially if you are working them intentionally. Free lead source, especially if you are working them intentionally.

Speaker 1:

Pillar number three are your sphere and past clients. Now, I know a lot of people don't understand why their sphere or past clients aren't sending them referrals. And it really comes down to delivering an excellent experience and staying top of mind with these people. They hopefully already know you, like you and trust you, and it really comes down to just being that real estate agent that they think of out of the maybe 12 agents that they know. I really like to just nurture these relationships. So this means getting some face time in reaching out when you see something that's going on in their life, maybe taking them to coffee or organizing a dinner date where you invite a bunch of friends together. But nurturing your relationships with your sphere and past clients is crucial and, again, it comes down to delivering an excellent experience and staying top of mind.

Speaker 1:

Pillar number four are educational workshops. I love hosting these because it positions you as an expert and you're able to engage these potential leads in an interactive environment. These workshops can be on any topic your people would find interesting. So these could be first-time homebuyer workshops, but these could also be preparing for retirement workshops. It could be any type of workshop that allows you to position yourself as someone who's helpful and an authority on real estate, wealth building, anything tangentially related to real estate. It's also a really great opportunity to partner with lenders, financial planners, insurance brokers, literally any one of those vendors, and then it allows you to cross promote. So you're promoting to your people, they're promoting to their people and it can really create this beautiful cross-pollination effect where you are both helping each other out. I am a huge fan of collaboration, so anything you can do to collaborate is such an awesome way to have a win-win with your vendor partners.

Speaker 1:

Moving on to number five, we have social events. I know COVID kind of got us out of the pattern of hosting or attending social events, but networking in the wild is such a great way to broaden your sphere and strengthen relationships. When I was really hitting social events hard. I was making a goal of attending two social functions weekly and this was usually very fun. They were things that I really liked doing pottery class, improv comedy, kickball. At one point Now I feel like pickleball and book club. So it can change with the season of life that you're in.

Speaker 1:

What makes sense If you are a parent of young children and maybe you're home with them, mommy groups or parent groups are such a great way to get out there and just do social things. So get creative, make it fit into your life and be something that you can commit to consistently and have something that you can commit to consistently and have something that you want to do. It also should be fun and you should enjoy it so it is not like a chore. So make sure that those social events are something you actually want to do. When you're at those social events, be your authentic self. We are not going up to people handing out our business cards. We are naturally having relationships and building relationships with people. Yes, you should talk about what you do for a living, because we don't like secret agents around here, but it is not about being pushy, it is about being helpful. So if you are listening for a real estate need and someone says something like they need a contractor, they're working on a renovation, or maybe they got a new job or they're expanding their family and they're thinking about moving, that is a lovely way to segue into a real estate conversation and it does not have to be a pushy one.

Speaker 1:

Let's move to number six vendor referrals. I think these are also some of the most important relationships you can nurture. Just like you're nurturing your sphere or past clients. Vendors are also on that list. So your mortgage lenders, home inspectors, insurance people, contractors literally anyone in your ecosystem that comes in contact with people who are potentially buying and selling. This means having meaningful relationships with these people. Schedule weekly coffee meetings, have those educational workshops, making sure you're having face time, because these people know hundreds of real estate agents and you want to be the one that is at the top of that list when a potential client who's unrepresented comes across their email box or their desk. So vendor referrals can be a powerful way to get more business, but you need to make sure that those vendors know you, like you and trust you and you are staying top of mind. You and you are staying top of mind.

Speaker 1:

Number seven are mini CMA packets. I really love these and I would typically send these to targeted homeowners either in my farm or if they were expired listings that I really wanted to get. You can drop these off. If you have email addresses, you can email them. You can also just send them snail mail. So however you want to get those out, I keep these pretty simple using a tool either like CloudCMA Sometimes it could just be like a printout of the Zillow estimate or the Redfin estimate. However you want to package these is totally up to you Whatever is easiest and make sure that you're going to actually stick to it on a consistent basis. But I have absolutely gotten listings from this. I also have done handwritten notes, so anything to get listings or just target potential homeowners on a consistent basis can be really helpful. So CMA packets highly recommend them.

Speaker 1:

The last thing is farming or being the mayor of your farm, and this is all about establishing yourself as the go-to agent in a specific area. This does not mean committing to expensive direct mail postcard campaigns monthly, although if that is in your budget and as part of a broader strategy, it can absolutely work. I mean be out there in your neighborhood or your farm. Go to local events. You could potentially even sponsor them if that's in your budget. Create hyperlocal content to connect with your community Really anything you can do to just be the mayor, get involved, volunteer, get on committees, host cleanup days Literally anything that would be in your wheelhouse to become the mayor of that specific neighborhood. So there you have it. Those are my eight no-cost to low-cost pillars of lead generation. We have work your own leads or someone else's leads, work their database. We have open houses, working your sphere or past clients. Really it's not working them, but it's nurturing those relationships hosting educational workshops in particular, partnering or collaborating with vendors, social events, attending them, networking naturally not being creepy and weird vendor referrals, staying top of mind, nurturing those vendor relationships, doing CMA packets. And then farming slash be the mayor of your specific area.

Speaker 1:

Now let's dive into a little bit of the relationships of real estate. I know a lot of people say you just have to build a relationship. But what does that even mean? If you want to really get a deep dive into what relationship building actually is and how you do it, I love the book the Relationship Edge by Jerry Acuff. He gets into a formula on how to build meaningful connections with people, and that meaningful connection can often lead to referrals. So highly recommend reading this book.

Speaker 1:

But really the biggest takeaway for me was that there are key categories of people that you build relationships with, people that you meet for the first time, people that don't really know you that well, and people who you haven't communicated with in a long time. And he has this concept called the relationship pyramid, which, if you can imagine the pyramid we're going to start by the at the bottom, and it basically build relationships by moving up the pyramid levels. So the first one is that they don't know you by name. So they know of you, but they don't know your name, and that it's like we don't want to be in that category, but everyone has to start somewhere right. Then we move up to the next level, which is they know your name. The next level is that they like you. The next level is that they're friendly with you. So they see you, they say hi, they're, you know, like I would say that, your acquaintances at this point. The next one is that they respect you.

Speaker 1:

So, especially as a real estate agent, they respect you, they respect you as a person, they think that you're an upstanding human and then top the tippy top of the pyramid and this is where we ultimately want to get with people is that they value a relationship with you, that when they spend time with you it's valuable. So whether they get non-tangible benefits, it's valuable. So whether they get non-tangible benefits, like they just make you feel better after spending time with them, or get really great information. I know for my husband. Everyone thinks he's like he always has really interesting stories and like literally knows everything. So I feel like people value a relationship with them because he makes people smarter. I think people value a relationship with me because I tend to be pretty real and, I would say, fairly fun to hang out. So everyone values a relationship with you for a specific reason.

Speaker 1:

So climbing this pyramid absolutely involves conscious effort and you actually can't skip steps, according to Jerry. So he has the three steps to building relationships and it's what you think. So you have to have the right mindset. It's what you ask, asking the right question, and then what are you doing? There are actions that you take, so you're doing the right thing. So highly recommend getting into this.

Speaker 1:

But if you have ever wondered how do you actually build relationships. This book will really help you out and it is a bonus. I dive into it a little bit deeper in the Ultimate Lead Gen Playbook free PDF. So if you want to get into this even more, download the free Ultimate Lead Gen Playbook. My hope is that this episode has been helpful to maybe help you rethink your pillars of lead generation and give you some ideas on no to low cost ways to help build your real estate business.

Speaker 1:

It is so important to get out there and have conversations. Real estate is a contact sport. We have to have conversations to sell homes. There are no shortcuts, as much as we wish that there were, but the key to having a sustainable real estate business is to have a really good plan that you're excited to execute, because that will help you stay consistent over time, because you will start to see the benefits of all of your hard work that you've put in. So again wrapping up, please check the show notes for the link to download the Ultimate Lead Gen Playbook. It is completely free and I know that it will help you get organized, especially if you are struggling right now with having enough business and maybe don't have the budget to invest in high dollar lead generation tactics.

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Lindsay Dreyer

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