Real Estate Marketing: Use VAs to Save Time and Improve Results

In today’s competitive climate, your real estate business depends on generating quality leads. Utilizing trained virtual assistants for real estate leads can streamline your process and allow you to focus on the high-dollar tasks that grow your business.

Below is a comprehensive list of how a trained virtual assistant can be a huge contribution to your lead generation strategy.

Cold Calling

Cold calling is one of the most effective ways to generate real estate leads today, but it takes a lot of time, effort, and drive. To effectively utilize this, you should be keen on your script and stay positive.

No one wants to get a call from a grumpy person, especially when they didn’t ask to be called in the first place. So play it cool, have a positive disposition, and jump into a conversation to connect based on common areas of interest.

Each call will have a few different components:

Opening Spiel – An enthusiastic, energetic tone will increase your chances of getting the person on the other line to listen and want what you have for them.
Pitch – You don’t have much time. Be upfront, introduce yourself, and let them know what you are calling them about and what’s in it for them.
Follow-Up – This is a crucial part of the call when you identify whether the prospect fits your criteria and is the person you are looking for. It is important to ask the right questions.
Closing Spiel– Leave a lasting impression. They may not convert as early as the first call, but leaving a good impression can make them consider discussing the offer with you again.

Automating your cold calling is a great way to maximize the number of calls being made. A virtual assistant can focus on this task all day, hammering the phone, gauging motivation, gathering information, and sending the leads directly to your inbox.

There are also done-for-you services such as Deal Dialers. With this type of service, a team of trained cold callers will call your entire list and send you the leads in real-time.

Consistent Follow-Up

I’m sure you’ve heard the saying a million times now: “The fortune is in the follow-up.”

There’s a good reason it’s still a highly relevant statement. On average, about seven out of 10 deals close in the follow-up process, and most take between seven and 12 touches to convert.

According to Marketing Donut, only 2% of sales close at the initial meeting and 92% of people are done after the fourth “no.”

So if you are following up consistently at a minimum of five times, you’re already way ahead of your competition. Take advantage of that and start capitalizing on your lead follow-up.

Here’s a simple and quick cheat sheet for how frequently you should be following up with leads.

Warm – Call every 7 days.
Lukewarm– Call every 21 days.
Cold – Call every 30 days.

Continue doing this until the deal is secure—or you have been put on a temporary restraining order.

Scraping for Buyer & Seller Leads

Scraping for leads is a great task to pass off to a virtual assistant: It’s repetitive, simple to follow, and time-consuming. You can have a virtual assistant scrape leads from Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, and Zillow to name a few sources.

Start by giving your virtual assistant the criteria you would like them to search for. They will pull all listings that match your criteria, gather the contact information, and compile and organize all the information into whatever system you use to track leads.

Facebook Lead Ads

If you’re not familiar with Facebook’s Lead Ads, they are a bit different than your typical ad. They don’t require the lead to go to an external landing page and manually fill out your form in order to opt-in.

With Lead Ads, Facebook has made it as simple as possible to collect contact information from a prospect—so simple that it really only takes one click in most cases. This benefits both you as a marketer and the contact as the lead. They have less work to do to opt-in, and you are able to collect more leads more efficiently.

A virtual assistant can set up your ad campaign, launch it, and monitor its performance based on relevant KPIs. Each ad should be designed with these essential components in mind:

Goal
Target audience
Eye-catching image relevant to the ad
Straightforward ad copy
Call to action
Predetermined data to track

Text Message Marketing

Text message marketing has become increasingly popular for generating leads. With an average open rate of around 98%, it’s hard not to be curious. By automating your text messaging campaign with a virtual assistant, you can have warm and hot leads delivered directly to your inbox without having to do any of the heavy lifting.

Here are some best practices that you can apply to your text messaging campaign:

Take the time zone you’re sending to into account. Make sure to send during normal hours.
Make sure you stay very clear in your intent and don’t waste their time. Try to be as concise as you can.
Provide complete contact information, including your complete name, company name and address, phone number, and email address.

Ringless Voicemail (RVM)

Ringless voicemail is another lead generation tactic that has increased in popularity over the past few years. Simply put, it’s the process of leaving a pre-recorded voicemail on someone’s phone without having their phone ring.

To start, you should pre-record your script for your virtual assistant to use. Your VA will set up the campaign, drip out RVMs, take inbound calls, and add the leads to your CRM. They can monitor and report campaign performance, as well.

This strategy can be effective if used in the right way. A few best practices include:

Deliver the script as casually as possible and not as if it’s being read.
Leave detailed information.
Always leave a callback number twice.
Follow up with an email.
Consider people who are on the “do not call” list.

Organic Lead Generation

Generating leads organically is a strategy that should not be overlooked. Best of all, this method is completely free.

Your virtual assistant can generate leads organically in a variety of ways, with strategies including:

Joining relevant real estate groups on LinkedIn and Facebook.
Engaging and sharing posts that link back to your website/page.
Connecting with potential leads via messaging and checking comments for leads.
Searching for real estate deals in BiggerPockets and sending a direct message to the potential client
Using keyword alerts on BiggerPockets like “foreclosures” and “New York,” so you will receive a notification when the keyword is included in a post, podcast, or article.
Posting blog articles with backlinks to your website and a call to action.

Direct Mail Campaigns

There are rumors that direct mail is a dying strategy for real estate leads, but that is simply not true. Direct mail can be effective, but it needs to be done consistently and in volume.

Many people make the mistake of buying a small list, sending out a couple of hundred mailers, not getting any leads, and calling the strategy dead based on that one experience. On average, we have found that there is a 1% response rate regardless of list size and that about one in every 20 responses leads to a deal.

So on average, for every 2,000 mailers that are sent out, about 20 people will respond, and you will get one deal from your efforts. This can certainly have the potential for a good ROI, but again, you must be consistent and do it in volume.

Here are some helpful tips for executing a successful direct mail campaign:

Lay out your products/services as clearly as possible.
Provide detailed information on how to respond to the offer.
Personalize your message.
Create a follow-up plan. You can ask the VA to do follow-ups by calling your leads.

Conclusion

Generating quality real estate leads is not a simple task and can end up costing you time if not done right. Automating your lead generation process will allow you to focus on the income-producing tasks that enable you to scale your business—and a virtual assistant could be your best automation.

Do you use a virtual assistant? How have they helped you?

Tell us about your experiences in the comments.

Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.