Closing techniques for online sales for real estate business [EN]
‘Lead Generation’ is an online marketing strategy that many modern real estate businesses adopted. To give a big picture for ones who don’t know this strategy, let’s imagine that you stroll in the mall and find a salesperson trying to approach you only to get personal information: name, address, mobile number, etc.
Lead Generation works in a similar way, the only difference is it happens on the internet via Google, Facebook and a Landing Page. When people click on an advertisement and learn about the project, they tend to leave their personal information in order to get exclusive promotions.
Digital marketers call the personal information you get as ‘Leads’ or the prospects who have the purchasing power to buy your products or services in the future.
Real estate marketers found it’s very hard to acquire leads and even harder to close the deal via digital campaigns… but it’s not impossible.
Today, Namtoei-Thiradet Pimsarn (Digital Account Manager) and Nut-Nutthaphon Saythanprom (Senior Digital Consult) reveal the secret recipe of how to effectively close sales on the digital platform.
Is it true that today real estate businesses have spent half of their budget to Lead Generation?
Namtoei: Real estate businesses nowadays have spent much of their budget to Lead Generation as most of accounts we handle want us to create a landing page for every online campaign we have launched. This is the trend of the era indeed.
Nut: Offline media, such as out of home media (OOH), is unmeasurable as we never know exactly how many people see this campaign or what is the best location for effectiveness, but things are totally different for online marketing like Lead Generation. Lead Generation enables marketers to explore the delicate details of each campaign, such as effective media channel, best method or result and spend their budget wisely.
Google VS Facebook: Which one is better for acquiring online sales?
Namtoei: Both are the ideal channel to acquire leads and normally we use both but in different portions.
However, we prioritise conversion over selecting the channel; how to acquire the quality leads who are capable to buy our client’s products. We have seen that many digital agencies aim to acquire leads with the lowest Cost Per Lead (CPL) but failed to close sales at the end because they caught only low-quality leads. So, we focus on high-quality leads, which is costly but easier to convert into sales.
How to do that?
Namtoei: Some agencies put an auto-fill form on their Lead Generation programme, customers click on the advertisement and just click submit to the auto-filled form, but we found this method does not work. For us, customers are required to fill in every detail by themselves: names, telephone number, e-mail, budget, room pattern,etc. and this filters out the real prospects.
Moreover, we target the audiences manually using a team of experts who are knowledgeable in real estate business and do better jobs than the automation system.
Nut: We implement Performance Marketing and prioritise the customer’s objectives. No businesses aim for awareness, they aim for conversion so we utilise advanced technologies to hit their ROI, track their purchasing pathway and measure the effectiveness at the end of each campaign.
Differences between online and offline shoppers?
Namtoei: I would say the level of engagement. Online shoppers have higher purchasing power and they are a real prospect otherwise, they would not search for you. But, for offline shoppers, we have no information about them unless we ask from a salesperson.
What’s next after we acquire a lead?
Nut: Contact them back as soon as possible and convince them to come the showroom, because these leads are potential and deeply interested in our projects. However, if they hesitate to make a purchase and neglect us for a few months, we can send time-limited promotions via e-mail or SMS to gently remind them or hold an offline marketing event and invite them to join.
How we can serve as a digital agency on this stage?
Namtoei: Strictly speaking, we should stop after sending them leads but for real estate businesses, it’s totally different because it takes a long time to make a decision. So, we jump in to help them close sales by tracking the calls on HeroBase and analyse why customers won’t buy…is it because of a promotion, location or loaning? If we found customers are refused the bank loan, we would review our targeting method again to increase the conversion rate in the next campaign.
Other agencies would finish their job after handing over leads to clients but we aim for conversion so we take all the information to improve their campaign.
Nut: We are trusted by leading real estate businesses, such as housing, home office, and condominium businesses pricing between 1-2 million baht to 100 million baht, to manage their online marketing. So, we are knowledgeable about how to reach this market.
Heroleads suggests you consider 2 factors before choosing any agencies: first, they are an online expert and second, they are knowledgeable in the real estate industry. Winning online marketing awards and being trusted by leading real estate businesses in Thailand would guarantee agency capabilities.
