When it comes to making a purchasing decision, consumers go through a process – coined by inbound marketing company, Hubspot, as “The Buyer’s Journey.” 

In this article – we’re going to take a look at each stage of the buyer’s journey, discuss how it impacts the home buying process and your real estate leads and provide ideas on how you can use each phase as a guide to help you maximize your effectiveness in generating and converting new buyer leads online.

This journey is made up of three stages:

1. Awareness Stage
2. Consideration Stage
3. Decision Stage

Finding a great mortgage broker is one of the most critical steps for buyers looking to purchase a new home. Unfortunately, it can be hard for buyers to detect whether the lender they are working with is good or bad pick until they've gotten to a point where it's hard to turn back. That's why you need to build trust and establish credibility early on, so that clients feel comfortable with you from the beginning of the process. So what can you, as a mortgage broker, do to reassure your clients that you're a safe bet?

Follow these 7 Mortgage Broker success tips:

1. Always do your homework and offer multiple loan options
2. Make sure you respond to emails and phone calls in a timely manner
3. Never skip over the details of loan products, fees or services
4. Avoid rushing your clients
5. Provide proof of your success
6. Never push for a loan that's outside your client's comfort zone
7. Always be an open book and be prepared to field client questions

If you’ve been in the business for a while, you’re probably well aware that there are some key benefits to working with real estate seller leads.

Craigslist can be a great vehicle for listing promotion and lead generation. In order to take advantage of the benefits, you need to make sure you're following best practices and avoiding Craigslist posting faux pas. For the best possible results with your Craigslist real estate marketing, avoid these 5 common mistakes.

In today's Agent Insights post, Melissa Zavala - a Real Estate Broker / Owner in Escondido, California - offers agent advice about specific scenarios where real estate professionals should speak on the phone rather than communicate via text message or email.

Here's Melissa:

Dealing with a tense work environment is no fun for anyone. As a real estate broker, you need to know how to act as a mediator (aka human fire extinguisher) so you can quickly put out anger flames when a dispute flares up in your office.

As with most things, there are lots of different ways to handle disputes - some much more effective than others. In order to make sure you can maintain a healthy, peaceful workplace - it's important that you know the best way to tackle conflict when it comes your way. Follow these guidelines to learn how to quickly remedy disputes in a way that will be agreeable to all parties involved.

Most of the time, I focus my posts on sharing tech and consumer trends, apps that'll make your life easier and new real estate marketing strategies that'll help you generate qualified leads - but not today.

Today's blog post is all about the funniest (and most embarrassing) real estate stories and real estate bloopers I could find on the world wide web. I scoured sites and forums and found five stories that had me laughing out loud. Names have been removed to protect the embarrassed. Enjoy!

Are you using Facebook to promote your real estate business? If not, you should really consider it. Why you ask? Because it's affordable, effective and provides small businesses a great way to build exposure with highly relevant leads. Not sold? Here are a few more reasons why Facebook is worth your time.

Editor's note: Originally published May 2015, updated August 2015 for accuracy and relevance.

I think we can all agree that sometimes when you hop in the car, you need to blare your favorite jams and rock out. But if you're looking for a more thought-provoking drive, listen to a podcast. There are several free real estate podcasts that provide fantastic business advice that will get your wheels turning. Tune in to expand your mind and grow your business. 

In today's Agent Insights post, Ashley Cox - a Real Estate Agent in Dallas, Texas - talks about how to effectively sell your services and attract new real estate seller leads and clients in an overcrowded market.

Here's Ashley: