Craigslist Real Estate Lead Generation Reality Check

Ok I am not going to talk about some theory or guesswork just cold hard facts. When you are marketing your Real Estate business on Craigslist you should be focused on 1 thing and 1 thing only, LEAD GENERATION. That’s it.

I don’t give a damn what some GURU said or how his “student” made a ton of money by posting an ad on Craigslist and getting a deal put together within that same week. The fact is even if get a deal put together with a Craigslist lead fast they are far and few in between. And that’s the truth.

Just like an open house or initial showing of a property to a prospect chances of them buying that property are slim. It takes multiple showings, strategic follow ups and killer sales techniques to get the deals done. Having a well oiled lead gen funnel, killer follow up campaign and a golden tongue will give you the results you are seeking. That’s the reality of things.

So many agents want to post 1 ad on Craigslist 1 time, sit by the phone with their fingers crossed and wait for the money to start rolling in without even considering any other factors that are relevant to getting deals done via Craigslist leads or any other leads for that matter. For those of you who this sounds all to familiar too I suggest you WAKE UP and come back to reality.

Having the right road map, using the correct tools, setting up systems and staying focused & consistent is the only sure fire way I know of to get tons of FREE leads that will convert into closed deals from Craigslist.

Its not hard, its not time consuming and its not expensive to do. All it takes the for someone to sit you down and show you how to do it, what you need to do it and support you along the way when you have questions.

I am considering holding a special online workshop in the next couple of weeks where I will share with you all I know about how to get quality leads for free from Craigslist, what tools to use in your Craigslist lead gen , how to implement simple systems for Craigslist lead gen and follow up and what you need to do to convert those leads into cold hard commission checks.

Let me know what you thought about today’s post and whether or not you would be interested in attending the special online workshop about Craigslist lead getting below.

Craigslist Real Estate lead generation secrets revealed pt 3-Student CL ad Case study

Getting Craigslist real estate leads doesn't have to be hard. In this video I breakdown and analyze a student's craigslist ads who is applying what I have been teaching. Join me for the next few minutes as I show you the correct way to get real estate leads with your craigslist ads and what to avoid that will prevent you from getting craigslist real estate leads for your business. Thanks again to Faby Gonzalez for allowing us to share her ads with everyone in today's video about Craigslist Real Estate Lead generation.

Bullseye!

Have you ever heard that “you can’t be everything to everyone?” Do you understand what this little saying really means? Well by the end of today’s post you’ll understand exactly what it means and how you can use what they mean to increase the amount of business you are currently doing.

Lots of Real Estate Agents, Realtors, Brokers and just about every one else that falls into the RE professional category uses what is commonly know as the shotgun approach. The shotgun approach is an analogy for a wide spread approach to business. The large majority of RE pros take this approach with their businesses, not the wisest choice in my opinion.

Ok let me play devils advocate for a moment. We all know that if you throw enough shit at a wall something is bound to stick right? So when a Agent goes out and uses the shotgun technique they may call, flyer, door knock ect an area regardless of the types of property found in this area. Of course if you spend enough time in an area and get in front of enough people you are bound to come up with something.

Lets switch gears here and look at things from a different prospective. Now lets say you are targeting a certain style property in a specific area of your town. This can be a certain property type in a certain zip code or community. Now that you know who you are going after you can craft your marketing message accordingly to maximize your chances of getting business from these people. This is called target marketing.

Target marketing is nothing new but it is not used as much as it should be especially in RE. Traditionally RE offices and some brokers teach the numbers game, you’ve heard of this right? Knock on X amount of doors and you will get X amount of business or call X amount of people and you will get X amount of to work with you, sound familiar now? This is one way of getting business and in my opinion it is a very labor-intensive way of getting business.

Personally I would rather have a clearly defined target market I am going after that I can then solicit with specific material designed and crafted for their needs. This technique of target marketing allows you to contact less people while being able to get more business with less work. So lets say the area and property type you are going after has 25 people who fit your target market. Now instead of randomly contacting 200 people in hopes of drumming up business you only have to contact 25.

The beauty of this approach is when you are contacting the people in your target market your not saying “hello I am the local Realtor Come do Business with me.” With target marketing  you already know what your markets challenge is and have the solution waiting for them. With this strategy your conversation goes something like this. “Hello Mr/Mrs Smith I understand that blank right now and I can help you out big time by doing blank”.

Give this strategy a shot and see what types of results you are able to achieve. My guess is once you use this strategy in your business you won’t want to go back to your old ways.  Make sure you subscribe comment and rate my blog post and be sure to leave me a Google voice message telling me about your experience with target marketing.

3 Craigslist Real Estate lead generation rules everyone should follow

“Rules for Criaglist? WTF they already have rules.” I can hear all of you now. Stop your crying its not what you think. Listen up.

As many of you already know Craigslist has some new rules you have to follow. One huge one is all accounts that are posting in Homes for Sale need to be phone verified. This put a cramp in allot of peoples posting including mine. However like a boss I adapted. Now its your turn.

Craigslist made things hard on a lot of people when they started this damn phone verification process. I had over 20 accounts that turned into garbage over night when those hippies over at Craigslist got a wild hair in their butts and switched things up on all of us.  I’ve never lost to a hippie and I’m not starting now. Check it out.

After experiencing the pain of being taken from posting over 50 ads per day, which by the way was generating on average 10 leads per day, to only be able to post a handful, which only got me like 2 or 3 leads per week, I had to figure this thing out. That’s exactly what I did. I put all of my attention into figuring out how to get around Craigslists new rules especially their phone verification system. This is what I found to work for me.

OK so now that I think about it these rules are more for keeping your accounts phone verified status just that, verified. The biggest challenge I had was once I had a verified account I would do something and it would get unverified for one reason or another. Dealing with the phone verification that craigslist set up was a blessing in disguise. The 3 rules I uncovered not only let me continue to post my ads like I had been, without getting my account reset.

I bet your dying to find out exactly what I found out right? Maybe you have even dealt with the same BS I was dealing with before I discovered these 3 rules I now follow religiously.

Here we go…

Rule #1-Only post to 1 city and 1 category like “Homes For Sale in Your City”. Don’t try to post ads in another city from the same CL account you use for local posting.

Rule #2- Do not post the same ad from different accounts. I’ve been able to post the same ad by switching the headline up however I do not recommend doing this as it’s a huge risk that could shut you down fast.

Rule #3-Last but not least do not break rules 1 or 2.

That’s really it. As long as you are not posting the same ad from the same account multiple times a day or attempting to post ads in multiple cities from the same account you should be good. Another tip you should follow is post your ads according to a schedule you create based on your cities hot times to make sure everything goes smooth for you. Follow these 3 rules and your Craigslist Real Estate lead generation should be a breeze. Until next time. Thanks for reading.

O yea by the way Click Here to get on the early bird list for my Craigslist workshop 

I bet you didn't know about this....

I made a video a couple of days ago. It was about Youtube facts. Lots of great feedback on that video so here is the actual document I used when reciting the facts. Enjoy this awesome stuff and make sure to share this with your facebook friends by clicking the "like" button in the upper left above this post. Don't forget to subscribe to this blog or our youtube channel to stay up to date with all the latest and greatest online Real Estate lead generation and marketing strategies.

Craigslist Lead Generation

 

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7 Steps To Craigslist Success-Video

Check out this new video I made explaining what exactly you have to do in order to be successful at generating Real Estate Leads using Craigslist. Make sure you watch it all the way through because it has a surprise for you at the end.

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The NEW Google Slap-Beware this could cost you thousands of visitors per month

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