Making sales is the lifeline of any business. So, why gather leads if you can’t make them buy what you are selling?

Now that your online campaign has started generating leads, it is important to understand the type of leads you are getting.

But you can only do this if you know how to measure the quality of your leads.

Fortunately, this article will teach you just that!

Ready?

Quality, not quantity…

Here’s a common misconception most real estate agents buy into: “The more the leads I can generate, the higher the possibility of making sales.”

While this might not be totally wrong, agents should know that generating the wrong types of leads, is as good as pouring water into a leaky bucket. So, the primary aim should be getting more ‘quality’ leads, rather than just any lead.

To understand this concept better, look at the process of lead generation as a sales funnel.

Right at the top of the funnel, are your raw leads – individuals who just got to know about your product or the services you offer. At this stage, communication is still very much one-sided. Although they have left behind some sort of contact information, they have not indicated an interest in buying what you have to offer.

At the end of the funnel, these leads are converted to paying customers.

Now, what’s the relation between your sales funnel and the quality of your raw leads?

The function of the sales funnel is to filter a wide range of leads into paying customers- right? Ultimately, if you are inputting low-quality leads, they get filtered off- and you would end up making minimal sales.

In other words, the more ‘quality leads’ you get, the more sales you can drive. For example high-quality real estate buyers in Canada are the ones that have already checked their mortgage affordability and know they would pass the CMHC mortgage stress test.

How can you determine a ‘quality lead’?

Unlike other markets, whether you target lead generation in Canada or any other part of the world, it is common to take up to five months to close a deal with a lead. That is definitely too long to determine the value of a lead.

Therefore, you must develop an immediate metric that can help you identify non-quality leads to save you time and effort.

What should be your metric?

You should determine whether you are getting quality leads by how much you spend to gain an ‘interested’ lead. Note the keyword- ‘interested’.

A major difference between a lead and a lead with high intent is that the latter would always drop contact information. This means, an interested lead would not just click your Google Ad, but would also drop an email on your landing page.

The amount it takes for a real estate agent to get this kind of lead is called Cost Per Lead (CPL). To get your CPL, divide the total amount spent on your campaign by the number of leads you successfully gathered.

Generally, a high CPL relates to having quality leads, while a low CPL could be questionable.

Why?

In the marketing world, specificity means more money. Likewise, if you are targeting quality leads, your campaign has to be as specific as possible. This means you would make use of targeted, high-competition keywords, which would ultimately result in a higher CPC (Cost Per Click). For instance, if you are searching for ‘real estate leads in Canada‘, your specificity would make your CPL higher compared to if you are looking for a general real estate lead. Knowing your target audience and creating a marketing campaign specific to them will earn you higher quality leads.

So, if you have a low CPL, there is a high chance that your leads are of low-quality.

Conclusion

In the lead generation world, it is common to see agents throw money carelessly to get more leads. Especially in campaigns that do not align with their target audience. But now you know better. Instead,

· Understand your target audience

· Pick keywords that are very specific; even if they cost more.

· Get more quality leads!

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