12 Proven Strategies for Generating More CRE Leads

This guest post is part of a series on the topic of online lead generation for CRE brokers and firms. It is written by Greg Schraff, Managing Director, digetry, LLC – digital strategy and marketing company. The Massimo Group has had much success working with digetry related to their digital strategies.

It’s a fact: the more landing pages you have on your website the more leads you generate.

HubSpot reports a 55% increase in leads when increasing the number of landing pages from 10 to 15.

A landing page is any web page that a visitor can arrive at or “land” on. However, when discussing landing pages within the realm of marketing and advertising, it’s more common to refer to a landing page as being a standalone web page distinct from your main website that has been designed for a single focused objective – and usually that single objective is to capture a lead.

But for the visitor to get to the landing page you need something else first, the thing that compels visitors to click through to the landing page.

That thing is the Offer!

An offer is like a carrot that we dangle in front of visitors to tempt them into giving us their contact information. If the offer is valuable enough to them they’ll happily give us their information in exchange for it.

So, what constitutes a good offer? What compels your website visitors to exchange his or her personal information in return for your offer?

10+ Offer Ideas

It’s best to have a range of offers that appeal to your different customer types so that no matter who hits the site there’s an offer that appeals to them.

Here’s a list of 12 different types of offers:

1. Free Samples: Offer a free sample or a free consultation as a way for your prospects to experience your product or service.
2. Tip or Fact Sheet:  Create a tip sheet that outlines how your prospects can do their job better. For example, you could create a Tips Sheet on “10 Things to Consider Before Selling Your Commercial Property.”
3. How-To Guides:  Create simple guides for your prospects to download that help them do their jobs better. For example, create a guide to preparing for an initial sales meeting.
4. Checklist:  Create a checklist of steps your customers can take to address a need that your product or service addresses. For example, a due diligence checklist for a commercial real estate property.
5. Top 10 Industry Trends:  Document the ten latest trends impacting your industry or marketplace this year. Write a short summary on new industry developments or write what you think will be the ten biggest changes to the industry during next year.
6. Infographics:  Create an infographic to visually represent industry trends, marketplace competition, or other sets of information that your prospect may find useful and valuable.
7. Common Questions: Write down the ten or 20 questions (or more) you most commonly hear from your prospects and then create a tip sheet or guide that answers each question. (Tip: these questions and answers also become excellent topics for your blog posts [link to previous marketing post on blogging]
8. Whitepaper or eBook:  Compile three to five blog posts that discuss similar topics and combine them into a whitepaper or eBook. You can also write a whitepaper or eBook from a previous research study or data set. Or, go to LinkedIn Answers and find every question and answer that relates to your industry. Compile them together in an eBook format.
9. Kits of Material: Once you have a bunch of content and offers, compile some of your related eBooks, guides, tip sheets and blog articles into a compelling Downloadable Kit offer. Another example is to compile your sales material and package this material into a toolkit visitors can download.
10. Case Studies: Show off your leading customers and share their experience with future customers.  Video record their testimonials for even more content and to build credibility. Offer the case studies as free downloads at the conclusion of the video.
11. Videos: Create a video that shows off your product or service features and benefits. At the end of the video, give the lead an option to download a case study.
12. Contests: Create a contest with a prize in order to compel prospects to provide their information in exchange for being entered into the contest.

You’ll want to create offers that appeal to new visitors to the site (those whose contact information you do not currently have) as well as existing qualified leads in your system.

The nature of these offers will differ slightly, depending on your area of CRE focus and your customer or prospect base, but the way offers work is the same no matter what: create content that is relevant and helpful to your prospect – content that they will actually want to download and use – which is the best way to generate qualified leads.