How an Upstart Web-Based Lead Capture Management System

Is Changing Everything We Know about Online Lead Generation

Once upon a time in real estate, there was no such thing as an Internet lead. You got leads in all the quaint old ways: from referrals and your sphere of influence, from snail mail campaigns and newspaper classified ads, and from various and sundry forms of personal marketing. Consumers would then call you on the phone or walk into your office, in response to your marketing efforts, and thus you would initiate a business relationship with them.

At some point in the late 1990s, everything started to change as real estate professionals gingerly embraced the World Wide Web. Top selling agents, who wanted to believe the Web was where their future leads would be, started buying sites.

The early adapters were right, of course.

Now that nearly 90 percent of all consumers start their home search online, the virtual world and the real estate world have entered into co-dependency. Realtors can no more live without Web-based leads now than they could have lived without real estate classified sections just 10 years ago. And Web site developers have grown far beyond the simple 6-page or 12-page sites agents bought back in the day, while developers continue to evolve new technological wonders that cause agents to drool.

But here we are, more than a decade later, and Realtors seem to be searching still for the missing link of online lead generation. Agents & brokers continue to quest for that elusive lead capture site, that exquisite lead generating tool that will make everything else obsolete. The quest for the holy grail of lead generation has been ongoing.

We have news for you; the grail has been found.

And we want to share it with you. So please sit back, relax and let us tell you exactly what we’ve found, how it works, and why this changes everything — again.

The answer is an alternative to the standard branded agent site. But it’s also more than just a stealth site, which is simply a non-branded site that lets visitors search for listings, for home values, or perhaps for community information long before they’re ready to speak with an agent. Those visitors, who wouldn’t ordinarily give you the time of day if they landed on your branded site, are willing to fill out forms on a stealth site only because they think the site is “software” — that is, virtually untouched by an agent’s hand.

The answer is something we found quite by accident. It was created by a small, upstart Los Angeles-based company, Tiger Lead Solutions, that’s beginning to alter our expectations. The Tiger system, in place in a rapidly growing handful of markets across the USA, begins by asking the broker or team leader:

“How many leads do you want per agent per day for your team?”

Based on your answer to that question, the company calculates the cost per month to generate those leads. And it manipulates your budget each month to deliver precisely the quantity of leads you want. So you know from the get-go not only what you'll spend, but approximately what you'll get, including:

• Number of leads per month

• Number of closes per month

• Monthly sales volume based on those closes

• Monthly gross buyer side commissions

• Additional commissions generated on the listing side

• Gross monthly profit from using the service

Therefore, no more spending gobs of money in hopes of generating a solid Return-On-Investment in PPC or SEO. And no more spending lots of precious time creating blogs and online newsletters just to get you to the top of Google. So your search engine concerns essentially are history.

Now, with the Tiger Lead System, Web-based lead generation is a sure thing. You know your ROI before the program begins. And you can increase or decrease the number of leads you receive each month (or each week) as you go. Which means your monthly budget can vary according to your moment-to-moment lead generation needs.

You see, Tiger has solved a universal challenge for real estate professionals who want real Internet success, who truly want to dominate Web leads in their markets. The company has developed a total online solution that unifies Internet marketing into a single lead capture system. Yet, with all its power, Tiger is deceptively simple.

The company’s product relies on a unique combination of being a stealth site, having a great IDX solution, employing powerful lead capture and lead management techniques, and using the very best PPC and search engine strategies. Come again? So what is Tiger exactly? Well, in one sentence…

Tiger is a stealth IDX site, driven by search engine PPC advertising that captures as many viable leads as you want, and provides a back office to work those leads.

Make sense? Probably not yet, so let us simply point you toward one typical example: www.Search4PA.com. This is the personal Tiger site of Barry Kushner, President of Giants of the Web and a Realtor in Philadelphia. (Actually, it’s a pointer domain name that’s aimed at a Tiger subdomain, but that’s a slightly complex story for another day.) Anyway, go ahead and click on it. We’ll wait.

As you can see, the consumer is hit immediately with two powerful messages:

1. The site is comprehensive, because you’re told how many total listings you’ll be able to view, in each county and, within counties, in each town or township.

2. The listings information is timely, since it’s updated as of the day & time shown at the top right of the screen.

The buyer also sees one example of a typical listing — with lots of large photos — down the left side. No wonder a site like this generates numerous leads! What buyer wouldn’t want to register to see all those listings?

Now, just to put you in an Internet buyer’s shoes, please go ahead and register. Click a county, choose a town, a price range, property type, beds & baths, etc. That will take you to the registration page, where you’ll be asked to provide your name and contact information. Please do so, since no one except Barry will see it. (Just type “I’m an agent” in the Comments box, so he’ll know not to call you and ask when you’re planning to move to Philly.) This way, you’ll be able to see how the listings appear on the next screen, and how easy it is to view full MLS data, including all photos and virtual tours, for each listing. (Note: You’re looking at Tiger’s IDX version of the Trend MLS. It actually looks better than Trend itself.)

The Tiger programmers understand that one critical key to generating leads is to reduce the number of clicks needed to view listings. The more the consumer is asked to click to see the next screen, the greater the chance you’ll lose the consumer’s interest. That’s one reason why so many sites, even with excellent IDX functions, fail dismally to capture their fair share of leads.

Now, you may ask, “What kinds of buyers does this site appeal to?”

Typically, it appeals to buyers who may be just starting their home search, who may not be ready to speak with an agent just yet, who want the luxury of being able to view virtually every listing within the MLS with a single site registration.

And, you may wonder, how many buyer leads does a site like this generate? As we’ve said, it generates as many leads as you want for each agent on your team every day. For example, if you want three leads per agent per day for your team, that’s what Tiger will deliver. The system is like a faucet. If you want more leads at any time during the month, just ask the vendor to open the faucet so it flows swiftly, maybe even gushes. If you want fewer leads, Tiger will close the faucet so the leads trickle rather than flow.

As effective as the Tiger system is at generating leads, its back office is even more impressive. When a lead registers on your Tiger stealth site, you receive an email within moments. Then you can go into your back office and watch the buyer conduct their search. You get to see each search they run, and each listing they view. And you can see this in real time.

So you know at a glance with Tiger leads their price range, the neighborhoods that interest them, and which listings appeal to them. And since buyers can bookmark their favorite listings, you already know what they probably want to see when they go house hunting with you.

Plus, from the moment that buyers first search until they buy a home, you can track them within your back office. No buyer can fall through the cracks this way. And the broker or team leader can track everything the agents are doing with their leads, because they can see everyone’s back office activities.

The value in using a lead capture management system that gives you this much information about a buyer before you even speak with them is tremendous. Plus, since Tiger has implemented its newest back office tool, MLS Tiger Alerts, it’s gotten even better. Rather than barrage buyers with drip email campaigns, Tiger wants to tie the home buyer to the Realtor by emailing them listing alerts based on their own search criteria. As an agent, you won’t have to go into your MLS and spend time scheduling searches for buyers or setting up automated searches. Now, when buyers register on your Tiger search site, their search is automatically saved and they will receive daily or weekly email alerts for any search — which creates more loyalty toward you and more interaction between you and your buyers. Talk about a means to relationship building!

The Tiger Alerts look great in buyers’ email inboxes — much better than the listings emails that buyers get from most MLS systems. That’s because listings descriptions and photos are contained within the email — not just in a link from the email. So the buyer gets to decide which emailed listings they want to click on for full data. And you get to know which Alerts any given buyer opened, clicked on, and perhaps bookmarked. Wow! Is this a great informational tool or what?

At this point, you’re either thinking, “I’m sold! What’s it cost?” or else, “What are these people smoking? No online lead tool can possibly be this good!”

As to cost, Tiger is going to be more expensive than anything you’ve ever spent money on to market your services and generate leads online. But boy-oh-boy, is it worth it. After a few weeks, you’ll have more high quality leads than you’ve probably obtained from any single source ever.

And you’ll know within those first few weeks if the Tiger lead system is everything you’ve been led to believe. If you’re not completely sold, you can cancel with 90 days’ notice. And you can ramp it up gradually, so your costs those first few months are kept to reasonable limits — until your first few closings happen. Plus, you’ll probably want to bring on a lender and perhaps a title company to help defray the costs of PPC advertising for your Tiger stealth site. After all, they’ll benefit too. Tiger will even charge your mortgage partner separately, and provide that partner with all the same leads you get.

Certainly, Tiger isn’t ideal for every real estate professional. We believe it will tend to work best within a small to medium size office or team. No individual agent can possibly handle the quantity of leads the system is capable of generating, so it’s best to either have a team or else form a team (even a loose coalition of agents within — or outside of — your office) just to handle the volume. In relatively small offices, a broker may want to license the system and charge the agents a referral fee for each closed transaction produced down the line.

To learn more about Tiger, please fill in the simple form below and email it back to us. Or call Barry Kushner at 800-890-9095 (East Coast) or Bill Stranger at 877-868-8899 (West Coast). One of the Giants consultants will call to go over the details, answer your questions, and show you a “live” Tiger back office.

The next step would be to let Tiger conduct a PPC test in your market.

For a cost of no more than $400, they’ll generate as many leads as they possibly can during the one-week test period. And every lead they generate is yours to work as you see fit. The test will determine how many leads per month they can generate in your market, the geographic distribution of those leads, and the all-important cost per lead. Even if you decide, once the PPC test is concluded, not to proceed further, you’ve generated several dozen leads for $400 or less. And what would be the harm in that?

So, if you truly want to dominate the online leads in your market, you owe it to yourself to fully investigate real estate’s holy grail. And may your cup runneth over.