Some real estate agents and brokers complain about high advertising costs on listing portals.
But a recent Inman survey highlights the fact that listing portals aren’t useful only for agents willing to fork over cash for leads.
They’re actually one of the primary sources of unpaid leads for real estate agents, the survey found.
Only Facebook was cited by agent respondents more often than listing portals as a regular source of unpaid leads, with search engines ranking third, according to the survey.
Would agents and brokers receive more unpaid leads overall if listing portals didn’t exist? Perhaps.
But the fact is listing portals do exist, and the survey’s results suggests agents might benefit from adapting their lead generation strategy to that reality.
The best way that agents can milk listing portals for organic leads is to accumulate as many reviews and sales records on their profiles.
The strategy could pay off more than ever now that Zillow has introduced an agent-search tool that lets consumers filter agents based on transaction data and reviews.
Full-bodied profiles can also help agents advertising on Zillow get more mileage out of their marketing dollars by making them stand out from other agent advertisers.
Some consumers who see impressive profiles might call or email an agent directly. But they also might click from an agent’s profile to the agent’s website.
That happens fairly often, as it turns out.
Listing portals are one of biggest sources of leads captured by agent websites, ranking only behind search engines, according to the survey.
