

Ask HN: How do I generate leads? - gawker

Hi,<p>Thanks to the community for inspiring me. It's my first time trying to build something commercial. I'm developing a web service for real estate agents to create a listings page with a few simple click.<p>http://signup.mintspaces.com/<p>I'm trying to generate some leads and am wondering if there are any experts who can give some pointers.<p>My basic strategy is to visit real estate forums, google search real estate agent websites and reach out to them and try to get them to sign up. My marketing skills aren't the best so I hope someone with more experience can help me out.<p>Thanks!
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dougbarrett
I've worked with real estate technology, and the best way to get clients is to
get to know the brokers. Create a relationship with a broker, "team", group,
whatever you want to call it but that's what you need to do.

Find local real estate agents, and see who they are working with.

Just be careful though, chances are whatever service the agent is using for
their website already has a listings creator.

I know that Zillow just created a service a few months ago, and there are some
others out there as well.

Also, as far as the backend goes, you want it to be simple. Real Estate agents
are concerned about making money, and for the most part they do not believe in
the internet yet and they do not believe that the internet is a viable source
for lead generation.

You're in a good position, because their mindset is changing especially with a
wave of new real estate agents coming in.

In marketing it, you need to explain that your product is strong in two
points, the front-end and the backend. Make sure your product at the bare
minimum can export to a CSV file, but try to see what software agents are
using to manage their agents, and create export features for that.

Make sure they get leads right away, and they are legit leads. I used akismet
for our lead generator, and it worked great for the most part to weed out the
spam.

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions. I'd be more than happy to
help you how I can in a general sense, I don't want to step on my previous
employers toes though since they are also getting into the same market
eventually (could be years though).

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gawker
Thanks for all your help! I've been speaking with a friend of mine who's a
real estate agent. He's mentioned about IDX listings - would you happen to
know how it works and whether or not, I can just fetch API data? It seems like
some companies provide it as a full embeddable solution which looks horrible
for my purposes.

Would you also be able to elaborate more on using akismet for lead generator?
Did you mean that spammers would hit the contact form fairly often?

Thanks for your help. And I understand about not stepping on your previous
employers' toes. If there are any questions I'm asking that you do not feel
comfortable with, please let me know.

~~~
dougbarrett
No worries. IDX Information you get from the MLS directly. They are very
strict about their feeds, so you'll have to talk to them about their terms and
conditions and how they allow you to access their information. The RETS[1]
feed is slowly becoming the standard, but again, it varies.

To start, I'd just have it simply be a form the agent can fill out. I think
Zillow might have an API, but you'll just have to put on the site that the
data is from Zillow. A small price to pay for a huge convenience for the
agent.

I used Akismet to weed out spam posts. I didn't want to implement a captcha, I
set up a javascript honeypot as the first defense but Akismet was the second
defense. It was great, because it allowed for "Mark as spam" "This is not
spam" options that you can contribute back to the Akismet engine to make it
smarter, and it took about an hour to implement in PHP...super easy and a
great selling point.

[1]: <http://www.rets.org/> (Looks like their website is down)

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nalidixic
I think it's awesome your reaching out for help. I think the problem your
going to run into is the same problem I've run into many times before.

Your basically starting in the wrong place. Rather than coming up with an idea
and trying to find market fit and leads you really ought to be finding your
market and learning how to help them. If you take that approach not only will
you know how to reach your market but you'll also know more about how to sell
and talk to them.

A few questions to consider

1) Do real estate agents buy software?

2) Does the pain point your working on make them more money or drastically
decrease pain?

3) How do you plan on reaching your market?

I'm not saying I'm an expert on this by any means but I'm learning as I go and
have come to the point where I won't bullshit myself any longer on useless
ideas.

Feel free to email me at nalidixic@gmail.com or hit me up on twitter
@nalidixic

Cheers!

~~~
gawker
Thanks for the advice! So far, I've talked to several people based upon Jason
Cohen's advice on getting at least 10 people to say they would pay for it. So
far, I have about 6 but maybe I'm missing something here.

I'll attempt to answer your questions :) I just checked out your rent
management software. It looks great - had a similar idea but didn't work on
it. Good luck!

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gawker
Clickable link: <http://signup.mintspaces.com/>

