A guide to nurturing ValPal leads

When it comes to marketing, generating leads and turning them into new business will understandably be your top priority. But what about the leads that aren't yet ready to convert?

It's estimated by Marketo that 50% of the leads in any system are not yet ready to buy. You could be generating hundreds of ValPal leads each month, but many of these opportunities could be going to waste if you don't have the right processes in place.

That's where lead nurturing comes in. Below, we'll explain how and why you need to nurture your online valuation leads, as well as how we can help you to nurture your leads in an easy and cost-effective manner.

What is lead nurturing?

As mentioned above, and as you'll be very familiar with, not every consumer is always a 'hot lead' ready to make a decision. This means you need to nurture these potential opportunities until the time comes that they are ready to commit.

If you don't, you could risk losing this business to your competition, despite the fact that a consumer has already engaged with your brand.

Put simply, lead nurturing is the process of engaging and building relationships with prospects at every stage of the marketing journey.

It comprises a marketing strategy which targets people who have engaged with your brand already via ongoing email and social media campaigns.

The information you provide when nurturing leads is all-important. You'll need to find a balance between reminding prospects about your brand credentials as well as offering them useful and educational information.

The ultimate aim is to keep their attention so that when they are ready to commit, you have built up a level of trust with the consumer and your brand is still fresh in their mind.

This approach can maximise the Return on Investment from your marketing budget significantly, meaning you are no longer wasting a high percentage of the leads you generate.

Why do agents need to nurture leads?

It could be argued that nurturing leads is more important to the estate agency sector than most other industries. This is because agents are involved in the moving process, which is a more personal consumer journey that doesn't revolve around impulse purchases.

The stats around how long the moving process can take are there for all to see. And our figures show that property sellers spend a lot of time thinking about which agent they are going to instruct to sell their home.

Our research shows that it takes a vendor an average of 130 days to instruct an agent after first requesting an instant online valuation. That's equivalent to over four months and shows exactly why you need to be nurturing leads to get the best results from your valuation tool and overall marketing spend.

When someone requests an instant online valuation from you, this should be the start of the consumer journey. They may spend weeks or even months choosing which agent they want to work with. If you then become anonymous after the initial interaction, your chances of being selected become relatively slim.

Conversely, if you keep these prospects up to date with useful moving information, local market trends and gentle reminders about your services, you will drastically improve your chances of being a frontrunner in the vendor's decision.

What's more, nurturing leads provides you with another opportunity to earn additional revenue by introducing preferred services and generating referral fees. Some prospects may not end up using your services, but still provide you with a referral fee. That's a positive outcome for a lead which would have been completely wasted before.

As we know, effective estate agency is all about developing and maintaining long-term relationships with your clients. Whenever they have a property decision to make at any point in their lives, you want to be the agency they remember and trust. Nurturing leads is the first stage of this process and helps you to maximise the opportunity to develop lifetime client relationships in the future.

Introducing ValPal's 42-day nurture journey

Now you may say this is all well and good, but how are we going to find the time and resource to nurture our valuation leads effectively?

That's why we have designed a 42-day nurture journey for members of The ValPal Network. We want to save you time and provide you with all the tools you need to nurture leads successfully without adding to your workload.

Our 42-day nurture journey provides you with a series of eight emails that you can send to your prospects. The nurture journey is white-labelled with your branding, providing you with an effortless but effective way of getting even better results from your valuation leads.

One of the key benefits for you is that we've already created the optimised content, which provides a balance of marketing, valuation and educational information for prospective vendors.

There are emails relating to the online valuation you provided, as well as emails introducing referred partners and those providing advice such as how to add value to a home or improve its kerb appeal.

In 2019, all agents should be nurturing their leads through effective marketing. Those that don’t are simply wasting money, throwing away opportunities and giving their competitors a head-start.

To find out more about how we can help you to nurture your ValPal leads, get in touch today.