07.9.2025 PropStream
Thousands of new real estate agents enter the market every year, ready to find clients and close sales. As competition rises, ensuring efficient marketing efforts is crucial to make the highest return on your time.
Keep reading to learn three major marketing mistakes real estate agents often struggle with—and what you can do to fix them.
Table of Contents
- Mistake #1: Delaying Communication With Clients and Leads
- Mistake #2: Not Tracking or Analyzing Your Marketing Efforts
- Mistake #3: Not Targeting Your Lead Generation Efforts
Key Takeaways:
Communication delays are a common mistake among agents. Respond swiftly to client inquiries and consider using digital tools for automated responses. This ensures reliability and attracts clients who value quick communication.
Brokers often overlook tracking marketing performance. To combat this, consistently monitor KPIs like conversion rates, lead sources, website traffic, and social media metrics to optimize and prioritize effective strategies.
An undefined lead generation strategy results in ineffective marketing and is a common mistake among real estate pros. Instead, formulate a targeted plan, including an online presence, local networking, client follow-ups, and tools like PropStream for finding quality leads.
Mistake #1: Delaying Communication With Clients and Leads
If you ask a room full of experienced real estate agents what the biggest mistake new agents make is, chances are they’ll say, “Not answering their phones!”
It may seem more convenient to take your time with follow-up, but you must respond quickly when a lead or client reaches out to avoid losing their business. If you neglect quick follow-up, the client may reach out to a competitor instead, especially if they need help urgently.
This is a common struggle among real estate agents and brokers. One study found it takes up to three days for 50% of real estate brokerages to respond to leads—and a shocking 41% don’t respond at all.
Solution: Respond as Quickly as Possible (Use Digital Tools)
If possible, responding to a lead within five minutes is a good rule of thumb.
This means answering your phone when they call is the best solution since it allows you to capitalize on their immediate interest. It also shows people they can rely on you to respond promptly if they work with you, making you an appealing choice for clients eager to jump on opportunities ASAP.
Pro Tip: Of course, you can’t be available 24/7. Try using digital tools that can send automated email or text responses, offering to schedule a time to talk when you’re available.
Mistake #2: Not Tracking or Analyzing Your Marketing Efforts
You're not alone if you ignore marketing metrics. Only 46% of brokers track their marketing return on investment (ROI), and around 63% of agents do the same.
As an agent, neglecting your marketing analytics is a huge mistake. Paying attention to the correct numbers is the only way to understand your ROI and maximize your marketing time and dollars.
Solution: Track the Right Numbers
Do you use a tool (like Google Analytics) to track your website traffic? Do you pay attention to your social media and email marketing analytics? If not, now is the time to start.
Here are the numbers—also known as key performance indicators (KPIs)—you may want to start tracking:
- Conversion rates across all channels
- Website lead generation sources (organic, social, referrals, or paid advertising)
- Unique website visitors and page views
- Social media post impressions, likes, comments, and shares
- Email opens and click-through rates
- ROI for ad spend (on any platform)
- Listing views, time on market, and sale-to-list price ratio
Pro Tip: Consider using specific phone numbers for physical marketing materials for each type. VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) services allow you to use different numbers for for-sale signs, brochures, business cards, and more to track how leads learn about you offline.
Solution: Analyze Your Numbers and Adjust Accordingly
Look at your analytics at least once or twice a month to see how various marketing efforts perform.
If you see one is consistently ineffective, avoid the temptation to try to “fix it.” Instead, consider putting more effort into your top-performing marketing methods.
Mistake #3: Not Targeting Your Lead Generation Efforts
Over 36% of marketing professionals struggle to generate leads due to the lack of a concrete strategy.
Not having a lead generation strategy leads to unfocused—and ineffective—marketing. At best, you may spend unnecessary hours sifting through low-quality leads to find your next client. At worst, you’ll waste money on pre-made lead lists that result in zero business.
Solution: Create a Plan to Target Specific Leads
Finding out what lead-generation tactics work best for you may take some trial and error. But in general, you may find that the best real estate marketing plan consists of a mixture of methods, including:
A solid online presence. This includes your website and social media platforms. Consider posting regularly in both places and write content with your target audience in mind.
Networking: Find local events that attract your ideal client, whether that’s first-time homebuyers, investors, luxury property buyers, and owners, or a different type.
Follow-ups: It’s a good idea to stay in touch with past clients. After all, 65% of sellers found their agent through a referral in 2023. Sending an occasional email or text can help you remain on past clients’ minds.
Lead generation software: Use real estate data software to find off-market properties and motivated sellers in your area. Generating targeted lead lists is far more effective than buying generic lists of owners who usually aren’t ready to sell.
Not sure where to find quality real estate data? Two words: PropStream It!
Use PropStream’s Quick Lists and 120+ search filters to find property owners with specific motivations to sell, such as pre-foreclosure, divorce, vacancy, bankruptcy, and pre-probate.
Once you find motivated sellers in your area, you can save them to a marketing list and follow up with them later. You can then use PropStream’s skip tracing service to get leads’ contact information and market directly to them within the platform!
Ready to create your list of high-quality leads? Try a free 7-day trial of PropStream!
