www.eLeadMarketing.com to find more information about our company:
The Relocation Professionals.
I'd like to mention before I start that I do have have 12+ years of internet marketing/advertising experience. I've been an Adwords Business Professional since 2002, and have a Yahoo! Search Marketing Ambassador account for quite a few years now. I have been working in the Real Estate Marketing field since 2001, and the company I work for ( The Relocation Professionals ) is a marketing firm in Encinitas, California with an excellent BBB membership and has been in business since 2002.
If I earned a dollar every time someone has said "a lead, is a lead" I would be a multi-millinaire. The problem with this statement is that someone who says this, unfortunately does not understand leads correctly. Just like in any business, there are "good leads" and there are "bad leads". There are also "old leads", "new leads", "qualified leads", "guestbook leads" etc...
What I would like to do, is take roughly 10 minutes and describe the difference between leads. Because when it comes to leads... unfortunately a lot of Realtors do not know the difference.
First off, we need to break up a lead into different parts. Because there actually a lot of variables that define a "lead". I like to break a lead up into four parts:
Exclusive, Fresh, Scrubbed, and Matched. When I talk to Realtors all across the country this is the most simplistic way I can describe how all leads are different. Once you get the simple concept... the rest falls in line.
Exclusive
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This one is very easy... Exclusive means you are the only real estate agent that will be receiving this lead. There are many programs out there that they just happen to send a lead to 3 - 10 different real estate agents. So in essence you are fighting over the same lead. Leads are hard enough to close by themselves, so do you really want to compete with other agents? Of course not...
you need exclusive leads. You need to be their exclusive relocation specialist, who preferably has contacted you first. "Contacted you first" this goes right into the second part.
Fresh
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Just like shopping for produce... you do not want old leads, as they go bad. If you are receiving a lead that is 4 days, 6 days, 10 days, or older... your paying for bad leads. A lot of people searching about relocating to new cities or finding information on the city they live in tend to contact a couple of websites. The point of having fresh leads, is to be the first person to contact these people. If you are receiving leads that are 4 days or older... its definitely a bad lead. In all honesty, if the leads is over just a few days old... it's a pretty bad lead.
Scrubbed
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There are actually a few lead generation programs who think just an Email Address is a valid lead. Or someone typing in fake information in a guestbook a valid lead. Everyone needs to know... these are bad leads!
You need first name/last name, address, city, state, zip, valid phone number, (secondary is nice!), email, and preferably comments. If you are receiving "Mickey Mouse" from "Loony Tunes" and "555-555-555" this is a bad lead. If you receive a lead that is "uncontactable"... its a bad lead. Leads really do have to be viewed by a human eye, and then preferably double checked by software. And better yet... to be matched to a third party database. I do love segways...
Matched
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New technology (which is appears most lead generation programs hate) have really helped out the Real Estate Lead business over the last few years.
If you are receiving leads that are not verified by a third party system... more times than not,
it will be a bad lead. There are several ways to verify someones contact information is valid, and it's very important. Someone can easily input fake information that looks very real. But all they are doing (and the company your paying) is wasting your time and money.
If you want more information about leads etc... kindly call us at
(800) 900-2807, or you can reply below and I would love to strike up a threaded conversation with you! Thank you for your time and I hope your day is going great.
