Turning Your Website Into A Lead Generation Machine

Whether, you know it or not yet, your website has the power to be the most effective and powerful marketing tool that you have available to you as a real estate agent. But sadly, most real estate agents don’t know how to use their website to get clients, to grow their business that has to change quickly because the real estate industry is changing drastically more than ever before. And these online ways of searching for homes that are clients have been using, they have been using them for a really long time and more than ever before, since COVID hit, people are staying home. People are searching for homes online and real estate agents online, more than they ever have. There are less in-person interactions and there are those interactions that you’ve used to be done in person are, are happening more and more online. And the thing is, is like, don’t keep waiting for things to kind of get back to quote-unquote normal because a that who knows what, you know, I’m not saying we won’t ever get back to normal, normal, but we may not get back to what we used to do because people may have changed fundamentally that the way that they think about doing things, right? So for example, many large companies are moving to working completely from home. They never would have done that if it was that they weren’t forced to another like, okay, this is working. So we’re just not going to reopen our offices. And we’re going to save all this money and rent. And they’re proclaiming that this is kind of the new way of doing business. So a real estate agents, we need to adapt and evolve as well as the world adapts and evolves to this new way of doing things. We also have two. And so these old School antiquated salesy tactics that were all taught to do as real estate agents, calling your sphere door, knocking, doing open houses, those opportunities to get clients that we’ve all been told to do have been dying for a really long time. And COVID just kinda put the nail in the coffin on those kinds of things. And I see real estate agents turning more and more to social media and buying online leads is kind of their option. And those, those are great options, but you need to have a strategy to take that one interaction, right? You need to have a strategy to take that one swipe as people are going through your social media feed or that one, you know, showing For with an online lead, you need to have a strategy to take those interactions into something more or your just kind of wasting your time. And so starting back in during the last recession in 2008, I use my website to generate my rate of successful real estate business. And over the years, I learned how to use my website to generate over a million dollars per year in my real estate business. It was the number one marketing tool I use to generate leads, not only for myself but also for the agents at my brokerage and any other marketing I did as you guys. Well now, if you’ve listened to this podcast more than once, right? I also had a newsletter. I also did other things, but always any other marketing I did the sole purpose, the underlying purpose of that was to drive people to my website because if I knew I got, I could get them there, I knew I could let my Website do its job for me. And in turn, those leads and clients would want to work with me. So let me be really clear. It’s not that I had a website at all right. I had the right website and it was built to be a lead-generating machine for them, for me, but a website alone. Can’t do what I’m describing. Its not only having the tool, it’s knowing how to use the tool to get the results you want. So it’s not that I just had a website is how I use my website as the cog in my marketing machine and how, you know, I turn my website truly into the hardest working lead generator in my business because frankly, I hated and still hate doing lead generation. And so I stopped doing lead generation and I had my Website do it for me instead. And there was no way I could have accomplished what I accomplished in my real estate career without putting my website to work. It was truly my best salesperson. Better than me being a salesperson. It was way better because it could do the talking for me. And so this episode is the first in a series I’m doing all month long about how to put your most powerful and most effective marketing tool to work for you, your website. And I can’t teach you everything you need to know about how to generate leads and get clients using your own website in four episodes. Of course not. But my intention with this month-long series is to start changing the way you think about your website and just start changing what you expect out of your website. And then instead of thinking of your website, it’s something that doesn’t really do much, but look pretty when somebody Googles you that Instead, that you think about your website as a tool and most powerful tool at your disposal to attract clients and build your real estate business. And so on today’s podcast, we’re going to tell you what are the three most important jobs that your website must be doing for you? If you want to start generating your own leads, using digital marketing and online marketing practices and modern marketing. And I’m going to tell you how you can kind of look at your own website so that you know whether or not you need to make changes to it. And for some of you listening, you probably might not even have a website. So I want you to, especially to be listening because we don’t have a website in your real estate business. And I’m going to define for you here shortly. What that truly means because I see a lot of real estate agents have these kinds of one page that they got with joining a brokerage. That’s not what we’re talking about here, but it’s okay because no matter what, even if you don’t have a website, that’s okay, this episode will help you decide which Website template is best for you to choose from. Or if you’re brave enough to create your own website from scratch, you’ll be hearing the different pieces of what, of how to build your website and making the parts that your website must have on there so that you can spend the time and money on a website that actually gets you results, right? What are your website is just one Oh one marketing tool, right? And it was a real estate agent. Our marketing needs to get us results. Why spend time or money, especially time, because we’re so limited on it, right? Especially these days. So why spend time creating anything in your real estate business? If it doesn’t get your results. So often I see real estate agents creating websites, kind of just sit there and look pretty and nobody’s going to them. They’re not getting leads for them. They are not getting revenue out of it. And so that is a huge waste of time and money. They might look pretty. They’re not working for you. And for you agents listening that already have a website, you can use this episode to kind of look back at your own website and say, is this website really doing its job for me? Or do I need to make some tweaks to it so that I start getting results from it. There’s no reason to have a website or any marketing to spend any time or money doing it unless you get results. And so in that might be the longest intro to M any episode yet here on earth on the Confessions of a Top Producing Real Estate Agent Podcast. So let’s get started and let’s play that intro music. And then I’ll see you on the other side where we’ll talk about the three most important jobs your website must do and how to know whether your website’s doing them. Welcome to this episode of Confessions of a Top Producing Real Estate Agent I’m your host Jennifer Myers Listen. Then as I share exactly what I did to go from not being able to sell a house for years to become one of the top 1% of agents in the US even opening my own brokerage full of agents, help me serve all the clients that were coming my way. I taught those agents the same strategies I used to become a top producing agent. Now through this Podcast and agent crowd School dot com, I’m sharing those same modern marketing and business strategies with you. Most of which I learned from looking outside of the real estate industry, no fluff, no theory, no outdated sales techniques or paying for leads, or just the exact steps to get you the real estate business you’ve always wanted. And the life outside your business, you’ve always wanted to let’s make it happen and dive into today’s episode. before I dive in today, I wanted to say thank you for being here and thank you for listening. My goal and intention in doing this podcast are to help real estate agents think differently about their real estate business. I talk to real estate agents every day who say things like I am so excited to be a real estate agent. And, and, but I hate all the ways that I’m being told to get clients. Like, I love it, the idea of helping clients, but I hate the idea of having to be salesy, to generate business, to, to actually get to the part where I can help clients. And you know, it’s like they want to be real estate agents, but the getting clients part is standing in the way. And I totally get that because I was the same exact way in the beginning of my real estate career. It was the reason that I almost didn’t become a real estate agent and the first place. And it was also the reason I almost quit being a real estate agent early on in my, early on in my career because some But because I just couldn’t figure out how to get clients. And so, I didn’t have a business and therefore I had no income. Right. But I knew if I could figure out a way to get comfortable getting clients. I know that I would be, Real a really good real estate agent because I knew that I cared about people and I wanted the best for people. And I would communicate with people. Then I would do all the things, but I just needed some clients, but I didn’t want to do it in a way that felt like kind of gross, right? Like kinda just like a little slimy or uncomfortable for both myself and the people on the other side. And so something is time. We just kept saying like, there’s gotta be another way. There’s gotta be another way. There are lots. How to be another way to get clients. It doesn’t feel crappy to me. It doesn’t feel crappy to the people that I’m trying to convince to become my client. Right. And it didn’t want to feel like I was convincing. I wanted to just to feel like it was like naturally happening and that they wanted to work with me and they were coming to me. And so that was my goal. So I searched high and low for a better way. Right. And I discovered how other entrepreneurs, like not real estate agents, we’re using their website to grow their businesses. And this was back in 2008 when I discovered this. And the idea of this is right when the idea of bloggers and online entrepreneurs were starting to take off and it was like a thing, right? So I started applying those same techniques that I learned from successful online bloggers, you know, people who’d like, you all know from back then who have books now. And they’re like, you know, people used to be on magazines and things like that. And I started, I started studying those techniques and I started applying them to my real estate business. And once I started applying those techniques to my real estate business, which really meant applying them to my website, right. Because these people were bloggers, right. My business took off. And from that moment on, I never had to door knock. I never had to pay for leads. I never had to call my sphere. I never had to drop out pumpkin’s off at people’s houses during Halloween, which I can still remember to this day having to do in the beginning and being like, I don’t even know who to drop them off to. I don’t even know, like I was dropping them off to strangers, the houses. Like it didn’t make any sense. It just did not make any sense. And so I think so give him a SAS with constantly learning and applying these techniques that I was learning. And as they evolved over the years, right. I just, I just kinda kept learning an over the years with like that kind of online world and digital marketing world would evolve. And then I would evolve the way I would do things on I’m in my real estate business and not with my website and my business kept growing and growing. And one of the, like my favorite thing was when I still to this day, I love being able to get calls. I get calls, you know, all those calls you get when people are trying to sell you leads. And they’re saying like, Oh, you know, could you use some new, so I’m more of a buyer leads. We have a buyer leads that we can tell you and all that stuff, right? Like the Zillow people call, like everybody wants to sell you leads or sell you ad. So you get called so many calls M and one of my favorite things was being able to say like, I actually really appreciate your call. Like it was always respectful, but I truly do not have time to take on any more leads. And the, the answer, the way that people would view on the other line, it was respond is like, wow, I never hear that. And I say, yeah, I use my Website to us to create my own leads and they’re like specialists. And so I’m, I’m not telling you that just to boast, I’m telling you this because it was so they were so surprised that that was happening. And what’s surprising to me is that most real estate agents aren’t doing this because truly its like the best way to attract clients and get clients who want to work with you and kind of have this natural selection and having them reach out to you when they’re ready to, to buy or sell a house. Yes. So it was just really, it just, just gave me the sense of confidence and the sense of like knowing that I was able to create my own leads and clients and not rely on anyone or anything. It just gave me this confidence that I needed to really truly be able to be myself and my real estate business. And it helped take away that anxiety of, of having to be reliant on something or someone else to create the business and the life that I wanted for myself. I was able to kind of leave situations that weren’t healthy or you know, just create exactly what I wanted in my life, which is kind of the reason I became a real estate agent and in, in the first place, because I wanted more for my life. I wanted more freedom, more flexibility, you know, all of the things, more money, the ability to kind of have a say in my compensation and how hard I worked, all that kinda thing. Right. I felt like I was truly able to do that when it, when it came to what I learned and how I applied it to my real estate. And so I don’t know, I just, I truly believe that when you can become completely self-reliant and creating what you want in your life, like you start to realize that anything is possible. And I also want you to know that that type of like my life and that type of real estate business is truly, I believe truly possible for every single one of you listening. And for me, I chose to use my website to, to create that for myself. I chose to use online marketing as my way of doing this for myself and I continue to use it to this day. And so I’m telling you all of this because I want you to know that this type of business truly is possible. Even if technology scares you, like you can ask anybody who knows me. Technology is like really not my strong suit. My husband makes fun of me cause he’s like scared of spreadsheets and I’m scared of computers. And he’s like, I don’t understand how you’re scared of computers because you haven’t like you have an online business. And I’m like, I know I don’t even, I don’t even understand it either. Yeah. So I can barely log into my own website. And I created a million dollar per year, real estate business using my website. So if I can do that and I literally can’t even like, keep my login straight, then I’m telling you, you can do this too. So it does not take tech wizards. It does take some patients. It does do it. You will come in and out of frustration, but with consistency you can create completely organic traffic to your website. Like you don’t have to pay per clicks or a Facebook ads or any of that. A to show up at the top search on Google or any of that. But with the right strategy, you can show up on the top of search engines and get clients and have people find you and have people want to work with you. So I’m telling you all of this because I want you to start thinking, I want to go to like, be the example two, to prove to you that this is possible. And I want you to start thinking. Cause where it started for me was that I thought of my website as a way to generate leads. I thought of my website as the most powerful tool available to me in my business. And I spent all of my time and energy making it work for me. And so my hope is that not only in today’s episode, but the next couple of episodes that we’re doing, what I’m doing is focusing on a website just starts to change the way that you think about what’s possible for you in your business. When it comes to how to use your website, your website cannot be something that just sits there and looks pretty waiting for people to come to it. That like you feel like good about because you like, you know, when somebody Googles you, you look like you have an online presence. That’s not the point of having a website. You know, I talked to so many agents who say, yeah, I have a website. And I’m like, okay, well do you use your website to generate leads for you? And they say that they have never gotten a lead from it. And I think that is, I’m so sad. And, and I, my goal was to kind of help real estate agents realized that it doesn’t have to be that way. And so the thing is though, I’m not at all a surprise when I hear that from real estate agents that they have a website, but they haven’t been told how to use it to get clients because nobody is teaching this kind of stuff to real estate agents. And it makes sense because there’s no benefit to people, certain people that shall remain nameless, teaching real estate agents, how to be self reliant. For example, like Zillow is a multi-billion dollar business. Why? Because they sell leads to real estate agents and that’s how they generate their income. But the reason that’s even possible is because of the majority of the real estate agents don’t know how to create their own leads online. They don’t know how to capture that multi-billion dollar business of buyers and sellers being online. And although I think Zillow is an amazing company, I think there are innovative and I, and I think they have changed the real estate industry for the better. And I want to watch them continue to do so. I do think it sad that the main reason Zilla was worth so much is because real estate agents need to pay them to get clients. And so that means that real estate agents are being given fish, which is great. Like it helps them eat, but they’re never learning how to fish for themselves. And so, you know that saying, give a man a fish, what is it giving a man, a fish he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and he can eat for a lifetime buying leads, paying referral fees to companies who like send you leads. I think that is very supportive of it. I want to be clear. I think it’s great if you’re a new to an area, but these are all marketing tools. These are all ways to get clients. So I’m not saying you shouldn’t use them. I’m just saying that they should serve a purpose for a period of time. And that my goal with telling you all of this is that My, I hope that you can wean off of those at some point and not have to rely on them forever because that’s really expensive and it never teaches you how, like, what if they, I don’t know what if something happens. You’re like completely self-reliant on this one company too, for your entire life livelihood. I just, I think that’s putting all your eggs in one basket. And so like I always say at agent grad school, I teach you how to fish, right? I’m not going to give you a fish. This isn’t like an overnight thing, but I teach you how to fish so that you can rely on yourself. And so I want to be super clear about this. I’m not saying you should never pay for leads. I’m not saying Zillow is terrible. I’m not seeing any of that. I just don’t want you to rely on them forever or so. Yeah. Today’s episode is all about the three main jobs that your website must be doing for you. If you want to use it to generate leads, which I hope that you will because it’s a very, very, very lucrative way to grow your real estate business. So this is how you know, so how you do that, you have a website that can generate you. Leads is how, you know, if the tool that right, like your website, is a tool, is how to know if the tool’s able to do the job so to speak. And so just one quick thing quickly before we start going into making sure that these three things are happening on your website. I want to be really clear about the definition of what a website is. It is not a one-page kind of bio thing that, that you got when you join your brokerage. Even though I think there are reasons, the good reasons for those that it’s not the kind of Website that I’m talking about. And that doesn’t really count in the definition of like a true website. That’s a web page. And I think that they are helpful for various reasons, but that is not what I’m talking about here today. And it’s not going to be what I’m talking about in this Website series. That was not an example of a website that can generate you leads. But I still think you should have one ’cause the more times your name shows up online, the better, the more kind of the internet knows that you’re Real. So the, the, that leads me to do something I call Website autonomy. You want to be sure that you are creating a website that you can bring anywhere with you. If you have to move companies one day, you won’t lose your Website. I also have recently seen a lot of like databases or CRMs, the customer relationship management systems that include a website nowadays. And I think it’s a real slippery slope, because what if you don’t want to use that CRM one day or that database one day, right? You don’t want to be tied to anything. And so your website needs to be completely autonomous and connected only to you and you alone and nothing else. Not your broker, not your CRM, not anything. So you want to have to be the one to host it. Well, you would use something like GoDaddy. You want to ideally be able to like log in it and get in the back if anything were to happen. And so you really want to take the reins there and have complete Website autonomy and not be reliant on anybody. Now it doesn’t mean you can’t hire people to help you. That’s different, right? That’s still you kind of calling the shots and having the logins and everything that you need to have complete autonomy. And if you need to move businesses or move locations are whatever it is that you are doing your website, you can go with you anywhere you go. Okay. So now that that’s a kind of out in the open, these are the three jobs that your website should be doing for you and how to know whether or not your website is doing them. So the first is that your website needs to compel. You’re a casual visitors to get cozy and stay awhile. In other words, your website needs to let your visitors to know that they’re in the right place, that you have what they need. Like they have a problem, you have a solution and it must immediately tell them how you are different than every other real estate agent that they met. And so how do you do that? Well, it really comes down to what your homepage looks like and what it says. So one example is I see most real estate agent websites, like the call to action or the main kind of thing that’s on there on the homepage is a search for homes. Now that’s what most real estate agent websites do, including the ones that none of us agents can compete with, like Zillow and Redfin, right? That your clients and your leads are going to Zillow and Redfin and rightly so two search for homes. And so making your website about your, about searching for homes really doesn’t do anything. It doesn’t add value. It doesn’t really tell them they’re in the right place. It doesn’t really give you a unique selling proposition as to why somebody should stay on your website. If all it is what’s my home worth, which they can get elsewhere and that they should just search for homes. They can get that elsewhere as well. And so you need to make it about them. Yes, your website should be about them and it should be about how you solve the problems that they have. So for example, rather than your home page saying something like search for homes are what’s your hope to find out what your home’s worth a good example would be, how to make it about them would be in how to stand out and how to make sure that they are feeling like are in the right place, is to do something totally different than what everybody else is doing. And so, for example, you might say something like at the helm you want without breaking the bank, right? That you won’t see that in and on Zillow, you, you, you won’t see that on Redfin. You won’t see that on many real estate agent websites. And so I don’t know about you, but that would appeal to me because I know what’s up kinda everybody everywhere else. But if, if I landed on a real estate agents website that said, get the home you want without breaking the, I think I’d want to know more because I’d feel like that person was in it for me. And that subliminally sends me a message that I can get the homework I want, and I don’t have to break my bones. And I’m interested in that right now. That’s just one example of how you compel your work visitors, casual visitors to get cozy and stay a while and click around and want to get to know you at all a little bit more. Now, Jobs number two, your, that your website needs to do for you, or is it needs to have a way to capture your visitor’s name and email addresses. I would argue that has to be on every page of your Website, but at the very least it needs to be on your homepage. And it must be designed to can kind of compel again, your business to want to leave their name and email address because in exchange you give them something a value, because one of the biggest goals, other than, you know, and in your business and getting clients, there is kind of the sub goal that your real estate website needs to have. And that is to grow your email list. Now I’m not going to go into why that’s important in this episode, I’ve done many episodes about growing your email list and why your e-mail list is proportional to the number of houses that you’re going to do. It fell in a year. But I don’t know. And the overall goal of your website, helping you get more clients, the goal of your website needs to be to grow your email or not, right? Yeah. A list I like truly cannot emphasize this enough. And why is that important? That is because I don’t know. And it leads us to the third job at your website, which is that your website is your best came in touch tool. So, so the reason that you need to grow your email list is because you cannot expect for some reason, real estate agents always focused on who is kind of hot to trot, who wants to go see a house right now. But if you’re a focused on that kind of business, no matter whether or not, no matter what, if your focused on people that are just kind of ready to go right now, and you are losing a month, one of the business because of the, the majority of people that you’re, that are going to come in contact with you, they are not ready to buy or sell a house right now. And so if you can get their name and email address, then you can keep in touch with them, which is the third, most important job of your website is that it’s your best keep in touch tool. So your website needs to be the home base of your entire real estate business and your head on all of your marketing campaigns. It’s the place that you need to keep bringing people back over and over again. And this is the place that you should be sending your new leads until they’re ready to become clients. It’s the place that you should be sending your current clients to kind of keep them engaged and lower their anxiety. And it’s also the place that you would be. You should be spending your past clients. Umm, and it should be the place that you’re sending your social media followers to as well. And, and why is it that you’re trying to get everybody here because if they are there, then you and your website through your website can answer the most important question that all of your marketing needs to answer. Say it with me. I know you guys already know this. Why should somebody choose you among all other options? And why should they buy or sell a home at all or direct people to your Website over and over again, no matter what stage and the process that they’re in it, no matter where they come from and where they hear about you or where they saw something for you, you can drive traffic to your, your website? You have multiple opportunities to answer that question and you have their attention, right? I got on a social media post, Oh you do is you’d get their attention for one second and then there or somewhere else. But if you get them to go from your social media posts to your website, then you have their attention and you can answer that question. Why should they choose you? And they might not choose you at that minute ’cause they might not be ready to buy herself. But if you keep doing that over and over and over again, when it’s time to buy yourself, they will choose you. Or so again, you know, you, you don’t necessarily want every social media post to lead back to your website. That’s not what I’m saying, but you do want to lead your social media followers and you do want to lead people, you know, every now and then people to your website so that you can have a larger conversation with them because you know, like let’s think about it. I was saying that your website is your biggest, keep in touch ball, touch tool, and let’s compare it to your other cumin touch options with every one of your like leads and clients. What else is there? You could drive around delivering cookies. You could write notes, you could send birthday cards, right? You could call people every few months to check in for no reason you could have lunches with people. I don’t even know if you could do that anymore, but are these things getting you the business that you want and are these things creating an invite? Like the way that you want people to see you, right? Like, I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to keep calling everybody. And I know every few months kind of say nothing and then like, they know why I’m calling their car. I’m calling because they, I want, want, I want business. Right? So I don’t make those calls because they feel awkward to me. And so if you’re not going to waste time driving around delivering cookies, which again, I’ve done, I had stopped doing very quickly. If you know, even sending birthday card cards, it’s kind of awkward. Like if it’s barely people, you know, you know, you’ve got to just find a way to keep in touch. That feels like people are interested that they want to go there, there that they can. And then they’ve made the choice to go there and keep in touch with you. Yeah. There’s just a, not many very good keep-in-touch options. And by the way, all of those options are not scalable. They, they, they take more time. The more clients that you get. And so as your business grows, you’re only spending more time doing those things versus, you know, having online ways of driving traffic to your website and then talking to people on your website and convincing them why they should choose you when they’re ready. That’s very scalable. And so, you know, it’s just, it’s time to start thinking about creating a modern real estate business and websites have been generating a lot of people, a lot of money for a really long time. It’s time for real estate agents to know how to use their reps, their websites, to generate sales as well. And you should not, hopefully, that you’re getting, you’re getting this takeaway that your website can not just sit there and look pretty. That’s useless. You should be building the right site so that you can generate leads and clients and keep in touch with people until they’re ready to work with you. So generate leads and clients and keep in touch with people and compel people to want to hang out there because of the way that you talk to them and what you offer them and the value you provide on your website. So this is just one of the many things that I teach how to do in agents. Grad School. So if you want help with this kind of stuff then join the waitlist, a and agent Grad School dot com forward slash waitlist. And we are not open for enrollment right now. So M joined that waitlist, and you’ll be notified when we open again. And we give you a website template that has this all built out. And I’ll you have to do is really Phil in the blanks. Yes. So you have to use it a little creativity and do you have to use your brain and you’ll have to kind of find like your way of saying things, but at least you don’t have to design it from scratch. You don’t have to pick the color palette. You don’t have to decide what goes, where, and at the very least we can compare our template to whatever other options that you’re thinking about or use our template to kinda as a guide to create your own whenever you want. It’s just a resource for you to use when you’re in a student, in agent grad school. And actually, if you want to even see what one of our templates looks like the AgentGradSchool.com design is one of our six templates that we offer as a student. So you can go to agent Grad school dot, come look around and I’ve done a few extra customizations, but it’s one of the six templates that we offer our students for free when they become a student. So, alright, so let’s make a deal. All right. Now you have to start thinking of your website as the most powerful marketing tool that you have available to you. And you can not just let it sit there and look pretty and hope that people go there or hope that you know, you’re going to look good. When people Google you are, you actually have to build it in a way that can generate leads and it can go to work for you to do its three most important jobs, compel your prospects to be there, capture leads, and keep in touch with not only your leads but also your current clients and your past clients so that they will want to use you and come to you when they’re ready to buy or sell. Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode. Remember change happens when you take action. So apply what you learn today to your own real estate business. If this episode has helped you subscribe, leave a review and share it with all your real estate agent friends, and as always, if you want even more great resources to create the real estate business you’ve always wanted and have the life you want outside of your business to head over to agent Grad School dot com and sign up for the free weekly trainings, you’ll get free classes and discounts and other goodies that only go out to real estate agents on that email list. See you next week right here on Confessions of a Top Producing Real Estate Agent the Agent Grad School Podcast.