How to find real estate buyers: 10 expert tips for agents and teams

For both new and experienced real estate agents, finding qualified buyer leads is crucial to a sustainable real estate business. But success requires a mix of traditional and digital marketing strategies. 

Today we’re exploring proven methods top agents and team leaders use to win potential clients.

10 expert-backed tips for finding buyers

The real estate industry has evolved, and so have lead generation strategies. Whether you're a brand new agent or an established listing agent, these results-driven strategies will help you build a steady pipeline of qualified buyers.

1. Leverage social media platforms

You don't need to be a social media genius to find real estate buyer leads online. What most real estate professionals don’t realize is that the best way to get it done is by weaving content creation into the things you're already doing every day as a buyer's agent.

Take property tours, for instance. Show up 10 minutes early, whip out your phone, and create virtual tours by recording yourself pointing out the good, the bad, and the opportunities in each of your real estate listings.

Here are a few more quick wins for social media:

• Record property walkthroughs during showings
• Answer DMs quickly and respond like you're texting a friend
• Share your honest takes on local market trends
• Show the real day-to-day life in the real estate industry
• Help potential clients, even if they're not buying today

"Don't go too far out of your way," advises Kina De Santis, Founder of Reframe. "There are ways to add content to what you're already doing to make your life easy, because no one has that many hours in a day."

💡Pro tip: Being genuinely helpful pays off. Sometimes that "sorry, I have an agent" lead will send their friend your way tomorrow. You never know!

Here’s Kina on how to keep video content easy:

2. Build a strong online presence

When searching for homes, buyers usually start with lifestyle-focused queries like "downtown loft with rooftop" or specific property types like "patio homes in Pittsburgh."

By creating local content and landing pages that match these search intents, you can attract leads who are in the home buying process organically.

Follow these tips for local SEO:

• Research what ranks in the top 5 results for your target keywords
• Create pages for specific property types in your area
• Target lifestyle-focused searches (waterfront homes, golf communities)
• Share insider knowledge about specific neighborhoods

“One of the biggest things we do to get actual traffic that converts and gets us leads on both the seller and buyer side is we just go after these lifestyle searches or property type searches,” says Brian Hurley, a full-time software engineer at Google.

When he’s not developing software, he’s helping his partner Tarasa Hurley, co-owner at River Point Realty, create one of the most visited agent-owned real estate websites in her market.

"When you have something up that is 'patio homes in Pittsburgh', you better show them patio homes in Pittsburgh," warns Tarasa. "It can't be outside the area, there can't be two-story homes thrown in, it can't just be whatever I have listed. It has to be exactly what the intent is for the search."

Experts like Brian use Google Ad Planner to find local keywords people actually care about.

Here’s how he does it:

3. Balance organic and paid sources

Paid platforms can be a valuable source of high-quality buyer leads. The key is having marketing strategies in place to nurture potential clients and maximize ROI.

"At the end of the day, the more expensive lead sources typically are more bottom-funnel leads. So is it good to have a mix of win-now and wins-later? I think that's a logical thing to do," says Suneet Agarwal, CEO at Big Block Realty North and Best Sac Homes Group.

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Here's Suneet's proven system for converting leads through digital marketing:

• Focus on thorough agent training
• Retarget every lead in your database
• Create milestone-based email drip campaigns
• Use virtual assistants to monitor contact information and activity

Suneet emphasizes ROI over spreading your marketing efforts thin across multiple platforms: "If you're getting leads off Google and you're getting a 5-to-1 on your money, 5-to-1 ROI, before you think about going and trying something else, wouldn't it make more sense to just put more money into that 5-to-1?"

Learn more about Suneet's proven approach in the Mastering Real Estate Lead Generation and Conversion webinar:

4. Create valuable content

Stop trying to be everywhere and start being useful where it matters.

"We keep it simple," says Bryan Koci, Whissel Realty Group Media Manager. "Once a month we film four things: a buyer tip, a seller tip, a market update, and something unique about our team. That's it."

Easy ways to get started:

• Film quick buyer tips during your coffee break
• Share real market updates (not just the fluffy stuff)
• Create guides for your most-asked questions
• Show the behind-the-scenes of buying a new home

The group's three-pillar content strategy is easy, repeatable, and it targets the team’s top audiences: agents, top-of-funnel buyers, mid- to bottom-funnel buyers.

Here’s how Bryan explains the process:

💡Pro tip: Are you starting off on the right foot with your buyer leads? Make a better impression starting with these 50 questions for your real estate buyer questionnaire.

5. Host events

Nothing beats meeting potential buyers face-to-face. And what better way to do that than by hosting events that bring your community together?

Quick tips for a lead-generating event:

• Throw seasonal client appreciation parties (think pumpkin patches in fall, photos with Santa in winter)
• Team up with local coffee shops or breweries for casual meetups
• Share your expertise at first-time homebuyer workshops
• Get involved in local causes your community cares about
• Turn open houses into can't-miss social events

"We do a client appreciation event every November. We do family photos, food, drinks, a bunch of activities for the kids, and we do that every single year. It's been an integral part of our growth," says Jordan Quaresma, Founder of Quaresma Realty Group.

💡Pro tip: Don't just work the room collecting business cards. Have a game plan for following up before the event even starts. Send personal thank-you messages within 24 hours (while you're still fresh in their minds!) and add attendees to your sphere nurture campaigns.

6. Use targeted advertising

Paid advertising can be powerful—and costly.

"Until you're confident you're giving your heart and soul to organic, don't put money behind paid," advises social media expert Zach Foust.

His approach is to master organic content first so you can maximize your return when you’re ready to invest in real estate ads—but that’s not all you can do.

Fine-tune your targeting with these tips:

• Build custom audiences from engaged followers
• Target people who've interacted with your content
• Test different ad formats and messages
• Track performance and optimize accordingly

Zach focused his efforts on remarketing to warm audiences through YouTube ads and the results spoke for themselves—his ads targeting previous viewers crushed the standard YouTube engagement rates.

The way he sees it, you can only get this kind of results when each piece of your real estate marketing is working to lift the other up.

"As you put out more organic content, you're going to get better at content and if people have already seen you from an organic standpoint, your paid ads perform better."

Here’s how Zach explains it:

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7. Take advantage of remarketing

Ready to warm up those leads? Remarketing helps you stay top-of-mind with people who have already shown interest in your real estate brand.

Here are some effective strategies recommended by our experts:

• Create custom audiences from your database
• Retarget listing page viewers with relevant ads
• Follow up across multiple channels (calls, texts, emails)
• Share valuable content with past website visitors
• Take online connections offline through events and gifting

"A lot of people in real estate are just doing basic retargeting with IDX ads," explains Grant Wise. "Remarketing categorically is calls, texts, emails, advertising that you re-feed to the contact."

💡Pro tip: Use your CRM to track how people interact with your content. As Julia O'Buckley from The Laughton Team puts it, "We've built a database of 300,000 contacts. Being able to remarket to those leads keeps our pipeline full year-round."

8. Send real estate mailers and postcards

The key to winning with direct mail is combining old-school postcards with modern tracking and analytics.

Here are some proven direct mail strategies to try:

• Mix EDDM (Every Door Direct Mail) for broad reach with targeted mailers for your sphere
• Use QR codes to track engagement and identify warm leads
• Connect mailer data to your CRM for automated follow-up
• Send personalized quarterly radius mailers for new listings and top clients
• Test different mailer types (postcards vs. magazines) for different audiences

Don't just blast neighborhoods with generic postcards. Send the good stuff—market updates, neighborhood guides, brownies, even engraved wine glasses—things that recipients will actually keep.

“When I start sending all these postcards out and they see my name 15 times with different sales—honestly, I walk in there and they're just like, ‘Okay, I'm ready to list,’ because they've seen my name so many times in the community, they just don't even really interview anymore,” says Adnan Dedic, a leading agent in Southwest Florida.

💡Pro tip: When following up on QR code scans, keep it natural. Instead of "I saw you scanned our postcard," try "Just checking if you know anyone interested in the listings we shared last week."

9. Maximize open houses

Open houses aren't just about showcasing properties—they're goldmines for meeting qualified buyers face-to-face.

These tips can help you generate more leads from your open houses:

• Schedule strategically (think after work hours and weekends)
• Create Instagram-worthy staging that gets people talking
• Run targeted social ads to boost attendance
• Place eye-catching open house flyers in all the local hot spots
• Use digital sign-in sheets to capture leads seamlessly
• Follow up within 24 hours while you're still fresh in mind

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"One of our favorite things to focus on is helping agents with their self gen, specifically open houses. We know the conversion is really high there," says Chris VanderValk, COO at Whissel Realty Group.

Here’s how Chris uses open houses to generate more leads while keeping agents happy:

10. Use video

Video isn't just trendy—it's the most powerful way to showcase both properties and your personality to potential buyers.

So don't let perfectionism hold you back. Here are some easy ways to get started:

• Share weekly market updates (keep them short and data-driven)
• Create educational content answering common buyer questions
• Show behind-the-scenes glimpses of the buying process
• Mix professional and casual content styles

As Jordan Quaresma explains, even when creating videos feels uncomfortable, the process makes you better:

"I have my processes leading up to creating the script and getting all the numbers ready. I'm able to recite the numbers off the back of my mind the rest of the month because I've had to take so many takes to do this video. At the end of the day, it makes me a better agent and team leader because I'm doing the work."

With a four-person team that closed more than $50M in volume last year, Jordan’s willingness to do what others won’t is clearly paying off!

Here’s how Jordan describes his approach:

Build a pipeline of ready buyers

Finding real estate buyers isn't about flashy tactics—it's about showing up consistently and adding real value over time. Whether you're leveraging social media, hosting killer open houses, or building your referral network, the key is having reliable systems to track and nurture every lead that comes your way.

Ready to turn more leads into closings? Follow Up Boss helps you stay on top of every opportunity with automated follow-up, smart lead routing, and powerful tracking tools that show you exactly where your best deals are coming from.

Try it free for 14 days and see why 41 of the 50 highest-volume teams trust Follow Up Boss to grow their business.

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