Return on investment, or ROI, is one of the most important business metrics you can look at as an estate agent when it comes to your lead generation channels. 

How do you calculate your lead generation ROI? Watch our video or keep reading our blog for everything you need to know about the ROI for estate agents.

What Is ROI?

To put it simply, your basic ROI formula is ROI = Revenue/Spend.

This is a straightforward formula, and it can be applied to determining your ROI outside of your lead generation channels to other niche aspects and even to your business as a whole. Despite its simplicity, this is a calculation that can trip people up.

Start by calculating the revenue you get from your sales & lettings transactions. The typical revenue funnel goes from the total number of valuation enquiries your business receives (from both online and offline sources) down to the number of instructions won and then the number of completions your team achieves from those instructions.  

Usually, mistakes happen when an estate agent fails to consider all the costs that go into lead generation as they calculate their spend. Some of the costs to consider include:

• Web hosting
• Tech support
• Website maintenance
• Change requests and updates
• Digital marketing
• SEO
• Social media management
• Paid search
• Email marketing
• Brochures
• Sale boards
• Window displays
• Door drops
• Customer support
• Software
• And a variety of fixed costs

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The Process of Improving Lead Generation ROI

Our goal is to continuously improve ROI for estate agents by targeting the low-hanging fruit, tapping into new sources of leads, and digitally transforming your business.

Step one, and part of the low-hanging fruit is increasing traffic. If we double the traffic you receive, we can double, say, the number of valuation requests you get. After that, we work on improving your conversion rate—turning a higher percentage of those visitors into clients.

How we improve conversion depends on where your online lead generation is lacking. A common problem is the poor design of websites, email campaigns, and other channels. We make them more user-friendly, and the conversion rate increases.

Another area where estate agents often struggle is search engine optimisation or SEO. Because the algorithms search engines use are constantly changing, agents struggle to stay on top of them, and the best practices they planned at the start of the year are outdated by the time they employ them.

While all of this can be difficult for estate agents to manage on their own, we consider this to be the easier stuff. Where it gets more complicated is designing the overall digital marketing strategy.

Elements of this strategy include:

• Driving local brand awareness & trust in your brand
• Curating paid media opportunities
• Cultivating a following of high-quality users
• Creating engaging email marketing campaigns
• Setting up intuitive email marketing automation
• Producing engaging video content

Out of these elements, the hottest at the moment is most definitely video content. It’s efficient, popular, and drives conversions like nothing else.

To drive home how vital it is—YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world. It cannot be ignored. A landing page that includes video converts 100% more than one without.

Thirdly and more importantly, digital transformation is key for driving ROI and is happening in every progressive business around the world. Improving your business ROI means more leads and ultimately more revenue - don’t get left behind!

Digital transformation could mean a number of things, but here are a few simple examples:

• Personalised, timely email notifications for customers after they’ve enquired on your website
• Smart My Account features making it easier for users to get updates of their sale / let, get in touch with your staff or receive timely property alerts
• Tools to help you sell & close deals faster: smart virtual viewings, chatbots, smart key exchange etc.
• 2-way sync of your CRM and website, website feeds & other integrations - will save your staff time from manually updating your database and spend more time closing deals and attending customers instead