Pros & Cons of buying leads from Zillow
Many agents will tell you how much they love Zillow and make money off it. Some agents are spending thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars per month on Zillow leads and end up having massive success with it.
On the other hand, some agents will tell you they can’t stand Zillow. They’ve tried it, invested money, and ended up making losses. These agents think it’s a terrible investment.
In this blog, we’re going to look at the pros and cons of Zillow. Let’s start with some of the cons.
Drawbacks of Zillow
- Premier Agent Profile & Reviews
One negative thing about Zillow is that a lot of agent success has to do with their profiles and reputation. If you’re a brand new real estate agent, you might not have that big stack of five-star reviews. This means that you might get beat on searches by other agents who have established big ratings. Your advertising dollars won’t go as far as someone who has, say, 75 reviews on their Zillow profiles.
Look at it more like an online dating site. Someone will be looking for people within their area. The search will bring up a couple of profiles for them to browse. If they’re impressed by your pictures, they’ll click on your profile. However, this is not an guarantee that they’ll contact you. If your profile fails to impress them, they move on to the next person.
This is one thing to really consider. If you’re going to be on Zillow and spend on it, make sure you build a solid and remarkable agent profile. Make sure you have five-star reviews and atleast a couple of recent sales.
What makes a great Zillow profile? Let’s have a look at some of the vital aspects you need to include in the profile.
- Past sales: This helps boost your credibility. Clients are more likely to work with an agent with 500 proven past sales on their profile than an agent who hasn’t taken their time to fill this section. This is a track record that is easy for the clients to see and it can speak for you.
- Reviews: You need to solicit reviews from people you’ve worked with before actively. One hundred four and five-star reviews will considerably enhance your profile. Don’t stop at that. Thank each reviewer to demonstrate your commitment to engaging with clients.
- High-quality video: Investing in a professional video for your profile is crucial in so many ways. It strengthens your image as a real estate agent and a Zillow Premier expert.
Build your profile up over time, and it’ll pay off. You don’t want to spend your money on a profile that’s not enticing to prospective clients.
Financial Losses
Zillow is a two-way traffic situation; many people make money, and many other people lose money. As a new real estate agent, what happens is that many agents don’t follow up on time. If a lead comes to you and you fail to follow up, they’ll take their business to somebody else. Real estate sales is a completive industry.
How Zillow works now is that they connect to a local real estate agent or team advertising in the zip code. If the call goes unanswered, it’s dropped, and they go to the next person online. This is how you miss easy opportunity.
Here are some tips to boost your follow up game
- Zillow Live transfers- The Zillow Live Leads feature connects potential buyers and sellers with agents in the same market directly over the phone. This can help agents convert leads but you must know what questions to ask.
- Email and text auto-response plan- Some Zillow leads will reach out to you via email and text. Sometimes, however, you might be held up in another meeting or call. The good news is that you can use automated emails and text options. This way, your leads will know that you’re held up at the moment, and you’ll reach out to them as soon as you can. It shows you value them.
You can also pay for virtual assistant services to take care of your follow up and communication. This ensures that there’s always someone to answer the emails and texts. However I would not do this until you are operating a scale and have multiple closing per month. Because here’s a price to pay for it.
If you don’t have good speed to lead, it’d be recommended that you don’t invest in Zillow. The leads are expensive, and you’ll lose a lot of money if you don’t handle them the right way.
High Cost
Zillow leads are costly. They are some of the most premium and big-dollar leads in the real estate game right now. Some markets are commanding hundreds of dollars per lead, this can add up to thousands or tens of thousands per month for these leads.
While there’s no ceiling to the levels you can achieve with Zillow, there’s definitely a floor. You have to pay the price for this no mater if the leads turn into sales or not, and it’s costly.
In most cases they will be $50, $75, and $100 per lead. Yes, this is for each lead. They’re not customers where you’d spend about $125 per closing. These are leads who’ll pick up the phone and say they might want to speak to a real estate agent.
You might end up spending a lot of money depending on the market. If you buy enough of them, you’ll convert, and if you do the math and convert these leads at a high level you will probably make a profit.
However, these might still not get you the kind of results you want. It all depends on the expected lead volume for what you can afford to invest each month.
As a new agent, Zillow might not be the best idea, especially when you don’t have a huge marketing budget.
Benefits of Zillow
Now, enough with the negative. Let’s look at some of the positive things about Zillow leads.
As a new real estate agent, you can use Zillow like kindle wood to the fire in your real estate career. When starting, you might try to use all types of prospecting methods without really catching traction. This can kill your spirits as you’ll always be wondering how to make it work. You might start to feel frustrated.
With Zillow, you can kickstart your career by gaining good client experiences. Eventually, you can start getting inbound referrals from these clients.
Here are some other factors that might help kickstart a new agent’s career or increase seasoned agents’ ROI.
Alternative to Cold Calling
Many agents don’t like making cold calls, even if it’s one of the most profitable activities you can do in your real estate career. Experienced and successful real estate agents are all for cold calling. That’s how they make a lot of money in the game.
However, some agents are dead against cold calling and want to have a sort of supplemental lead source. With Zillow leads, you don’t have to cold call and reach out to people pitching them your services. The conversation becomes much easier because the leads reach out to you.
Often, it’s a live transfer where a Zillow representative on the other line calls the agent and says they have a buyer online who is interested in the property. Of course, there’s a way to handle such a conversation, you need to practice and make it flow. Over time you will get better at these calls and turn more into a buyer client , not wasted effort.
Also, you don’t have to be guessing about your performance when you’re on Zillow. You’re always going to know how many impressions your profile is getting every month. The network on the platform is so vast and well-established that you can track your ads’ performance. Not many platforms offer that.
Zillow leads are warm inbound leads. They are people that are serious about buying or selling real estate. You don’t have to cold-call.
Fast Closings
Any real estate agent, especially new ones, want fast closings. Many agents buy a lot of different lead sources and have a lot of leads coming in. This includes lead sources such as Facebook, IDX platform, and Zillow leads.
Of all lead sources, Zillow leads are usually on a faster buying timeline. Many people who reach out to Zillow intend to buy a property in the next 60-90 days. This is a speedy turnaround time for a Real Estate lead.
Some other lead sources may take a lot more time and nurturing to take the prospect to the finish line. For example, it might take 3-9 months to get down the sales funnel with a single client when using Facebook leads.
Also, the internet age has really changed how agents get leads and market properties for sale. In the past, agents would use methods such as yard signs to advertise. This limited their pool of clients to only those within the locality. However, with tools like Zillow, agents can now connect with out of state buyers.
Zillow leads are the best for agents who want some quick cash flow. Just be careful because they are very expensive in our opinion.
Lead Quality
You can buy leads online from many different companies and lead providers. You can even run your own ads and create your own leads. However, why would you choose to go to Zillow? Simply because Zillow leads tend to be higher-quality leads.
For example, with Facebook leads, a lead might contact you and say how they were just looking at pictures online, found yours appealing, and clicked. While you can still nurture the relationship, and they’ll hopefully send you future business or maybe even buy, it’s not the same thing as someone that’s on a specific real estate IDX website searching for homes on sale. This person is more likely to pull the trigger and close on a property.
Also, you can never underestimate the fact the Zillow is the most visited Real estate site in the US by a mile. Being the leading real estate site, neglecting to build your brand’s presence on the platform is negative news. Your leads are literally looking for you on the site.
Zillow leads usually end up being very good and high-quality leads. It’s could be worth the investment if you have the skills to convert the leads at a high level and the lead cost are not too high in your area.
Besides the above-highlighted benefits, Zillow also allows you to manage your brand on the platform. Zillow agents get a mobile app where they can manage their profiles and contacts.
Key Takeaways
Zillow is one of the best platforms for agents looking to give their careers a headstart as well as those who want to boost their earnings. For starters, it’s a great place to get clients even when you don’t have a customer database. The leads there are literally looking for you to do business. On the other hand, there’s a price to pay for it, and it’s not cheap.