You’ve launched your email, Google Ads, and Facebook campaigns. Now the leads are coming in. It’s exciting and maybe a little bit overwhelming. What’s next, you ask? Lead management, of course. By learning how to manage your leads, you can convert them into clients. There'll be no moves to competing agencies on your watch.

What is lead management?

It’s a process of getting new leads, evaluating them for quality and segmentation, nurturing them, and finally – turning each lead into a sale. Lead management is important because it bridges the gap between marketing and sales. During the lead management process, your marketing team identifies a potential lead (buyer, tenant, seller or landlord), educates them about your listings and services and engages with them. When they’re interested, leads will be passed from marketing onto your estate agents. With digital marketing, a lot of the heavy lifting can be done through automated processes.

Stages of lead management

Acquire your leads

For your agency to be successful, you need to have a constant stream of leads. You never know where a lead may be hiding, so it’s important to target different platforms. You’re well aware of traditional sources like newspapers, radio and television. Throughout this course, we’ve shown you how to connect with tech-savvy clients. Your avenues here include email, Google, social media and your website.

Don’t neglect your old leads. You may find you can resell them a new offering. For example, a client who bought a home could be interested in letting out their home while they travel over holiday periods.

When you’ve got your leads, your next step is to classify them.

Classify your leads

You want to spend time on the leads that are most ‘convertible’. These have provided as much relevant information as possible that can help you make a sale. For example, you will need to ensure you have full names, email addresses, phone numbers, requirements, and more.

If you’ve invested in a lead management software, you can automatically segment them by their age, area, gender and type of interest. By placing them in these categories, you can send highly targeted emails to ensure more success.

Consider this case study to see how your lead management could play out:

Case study:
You’re an agency based in KwaZulu-Natal. You’ve placed a Facebook ad informing people you have exciting listings in the province. Kate (24) sees your advert. She provides her name, email address, her area (Westville) and property type she’s interested in (rental). You can start segmenting your leads and place Kate with all the other leads who are from her area and looking for rental properties. Now, sending Kate the properties that interest her, is easy.

Once you’ve segmented your leads, you’ll now need to engage them.

Nurture your leads

There are many ways to nurture your leads. You can send SMSs with links to your listings. You can email news articles on recent property trends and even provide a rundown on specific areas.

In our case study, Kate is interested in Westville. A smart move would be to send her a beautiful area profile to grow her interest in the area. Let’s say you called Kate and learnt she’s a single mum. You could send her an article on “kid-friendly places in and around Westville”.

By providing Kate with this information, your agency has nurtured her into a strong potential client. Now that Kate has become a warm lead, it’s time to turn her into a client.

Turn your leads into clients

By now, Kate is well aware of the area in general. She knows about the properties available that suit her and her family. By continually engaging with Kate, your agent can turn her “maybe” into a “yes”. This is where the power of remarketing can come into play. As Kate browses on Google and even Facebook, you can continue to show her listings in the area she may be interested in.