Editor's Note: This article was originally published in May of 2014. It was updated in July of 2015 for accuracy.

Lead generation remains a natural focal point for those seeking to develop new business opportunities as a realtor. But, it’s largely the degree to which you successfully engage with your incoming leads that determines whether or not you’re able to convert them into new clients at their moment of intent, and ultimately increase your closings.

In November of 2013, we announced our partnership with Zillow. In short, our mutual goal is to increase the value of your individual leads - by increasing the likelihood of converting each lead into a new business opportunity. And so, we built a specific set of product features to support realtor leads generated with Zillow.

Today, more leads are starting their home search on Zillow than any other site – and you know you should be taking advantage. You also know that advertising yourself as a Zillow Premier Agent could help you grow your real estate business - but you’re not convinced. 

This is a common position to be in as an agent in today’s marketplace; that is, one of uncertainty. Why? Because while you know that Zillow can expose you to leads and sell you as an agent, it’s up to you to maximize the benefit (or ROI) of that exposure. Stated more clearly, there are no guarantees!

Before you dive into the world of Zillow Premier Agent Advertising, you need to learn what you must do to effectively grow your business as a Premier Agent – and this post will teach you exactly that. 

New Product Announcement:

Zurple has launched a highly affordable and extremely effective conversion solution built specifically to work with your Zillow and Trulia leads. It's called Conversations by Zurple, and it's designed to help you turn more of your leads into real client opportunities.

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Our Zurple Agent Success blog, which launched a few months back, is designed to serve as an educational hub for real estate agents around the country. Our content goal is simple: help agents succeed in today’s market.

“I have nothing interesting or valuable to say, so I’m going to waste your time.”

This is the underlying message conveyed to leads and clients on behalf of agents who use today’s real estate CRM systems for ‘automation’.

So far in 2014, we’ve seen many local real estate markets across the country continue to gather steam. At the same time, however, competition between real estate agents for those valuable buyer and seller leads continues to increase. And so, while incomes for agents are generally rising, so too are marketing costs. To keep your head above water and ultimately thrive in today’s real estate marketing environment, your marketing efforts need to be affordable, effective, sustainable, and scalable.  

In this post, I’ll present you with 9 real estate marketing ideas you can adopt today to set yourself up for success in 2014 and beyond.

Generating Seller Leads

Online marketing isn’t a new or novel concept. And it’s certainly not something that’s lost on the majority of real estate agents in today’s market. However, it has taken significantly longer for online marketing to have a BIG impact in real estate than it has in many other industries. Rest assured, the time has come. And the message to realtors who may still be reliant upon increasingly costly and ineffective ‘traditional’ marketing practices is clear: online marketing is now king.

“Sixty-eight percent of buyers Googled their agent, the highest percentage since the survey started tracking this statistic in 2007.” – California Association of Realtors, 2013 Home Buyer Survey

The recently released 2013 California Association of Realtors buyers and sellers reports are chalk full of highly relevant data and trends for real estate agents. But the statistic above is perhaps most piercing to those agents who don’t prioritize real estate branding. If you’re like many of our most successful customers, the focus has traditionally been on direct marketing, lead generation, or referral-based systems. Many see ‘branding’ as wasted marketing dollars with poor ROI. 

In the age of Yelp, Angie’s List, and a plethora of other consumer information and review sites, simply having a nice website, or being a nice person for that matter, just won’t cut it for your business. For real estate agents in particular, this is where having authentic, credible testimonials to help set you apart comes into play.