Door knocking in real estate is about as old-school as prospecting gets. For new agents, it can feel like time-consuming, old-school drudgery – a classic case of managers deciding that “I had to do this when I was new in the business, so you do too!” Other options, like social media outreach or pay-per-click ads, subjectively feel more efficient and modern.
The reality is that all of these initiatives, as well as direct mail, flyers, and even cold-calling, can be effective when used intelligently. This is where the individual agent’s resourcefulness and perseverance come into play. Something as basic as a physical address can be parlayed into actionable leads through the strategic use of modern tools — a fine example of working smarter, not harder.
Let’s explore what that might look like.
Lead Generation Begins With a Physical Address
Every real estate professional, from the greenest novice to the most seasoned sales leader, has a clear picture of the kind of clients and properties they want to work with. Inevitably, those clients and properties will be found more reliably in some neighborhoods than others. The fundamental groundwork of any lead-generation process, then, looks like this:
- Identify areas that appear to meet your preferred criteria, based on the real estate data at your disposal (or the “eye test”).
- Track down at least a modest degree of information about the people living in those properties.
- Find contact information for those property owners, and choose a suitable method of making contact.
Step one is relatively straightforward and something you probably already do. Steps two and three, however, can be more challenging. Door knocking and cold calling traditionally fill that gap, and deep-pocketed agents and agencies can purchase leads or personal information about property owners from third-party data marketing firms. While those legacy data providers have an established presence, the information they provide is often incomplete or dated. With the use of newer, nimbler (and more cost-effective) data tools, it’s possible to generate much better leads.
What You Can Learn From a Physical Address
Let’s assume that you’ve compiled a list of the addresses on a street or in a neighborhood that seems promising. What can you learn from the address alone? Well, Google’s Street View can show you what it looks like from the front and above with its satellite imaging. It can also give you some ideas of amenities and schools nearby, as well as driving times to get there. Walking the street in person can help you gain a feel for the neighborhood’s vibe and personality. But these approaches are sharply limited.
Now, let’s take a look at what you can learn by searching these addresses instead with Spokeo for Business. Each search takes just a few seconds (and batch searches are also possible), but can provide you with a deep pool of information drawn from each address, typically including:
- The names and ages of the residents, as well as whether they’re the property’s owners.
- How long they’ve owned their home, as well as their previous known addresses.
- Current and former email addresses and phone numbers for the residents.
- Their public social media accounts and usernames.
- And, because real estate agents are vulnerable due to the nature of the career, a Spokeo search may also turn up whether the residents at a given property have a criminal record.
All of these data points can help you determine a) whether a given property or owner fits your desired profile; and b) how best to approach them. Better yet, every property or person you identify now becomes a qualified, exclusive lead by your own chosen criteria, not those established by a lead-generation firm.
This process of taking a piece of basic data — in this case, an address, though it applies to a name or a phone number as well — and fleshing it out with additional pertinent details is called “data enrichment.”
How Spokeo’s Data Enrichment Capabilities Can Fuel Your Prospecting
Let’s dig down a little further and look at how Spokeo’s powerful approach to data enrichment can help you turn basic information into leads, conversations, and ultimately listings.
Cold Calling After Data Enrichment
Cold calling potential clients is perhaps the one outreach method that’s dreaded most, especially for younger agents who’ve come of age in what’s largely a post-telephone era. When texts, emails, and DMs are your habitual methods of communication, cold-calling strangers can feel intrusive and old-fashioned.
Cold-calling will always be a numbers game, with success hinging largely — but not entirely — on how many calls you make. We say “not entirely,” because you can stack the deck in your favor by only calling people who demonstrably fit your chosen profile. Here’s how:
- First, Spokeo’s data enrichment can help you pre-screen those property owners you choose to call, so you don’t squander your day’s supply of willpower on people who aren’t suitable leads.
- Second, you’ll have current phone numbers for them and not waste your time with disconnected or wrong numbers.
- Finally, when you do generate interest from a cold call, you already know they’re the kind of prospect you’re looking for.
Data Enrichment and Door Knocking
Despite the old-fashioned feel of door knocking, it has one powerful component that many other forms of prospecting don’t: direct, face-to-face personal contact. It gives potential sellers or buyers an opportunity to shake your hand and look into your eyes, and it gives you the chance to make a personal connection. That counts for a lot, even in the age of social media.
Giving you an opportunity to prep for those encounters is the big advantage data enrichment brings to door-knocking. If you arrive at the door well-prepared with notes on the owner’s history, stage of life, and circumstances, you’ll be better positioned to casually add details to your script that increase the chances of making that personal connection. This could be anything from the ages of your kids to places you’ve lived, schools you’ve attended, or teams you root for.
Don’t be creepy about it (“I see from your Instagram that…”). It’s better if you frame that point of contact as a passing detail (“I first got interested in real estate when I was at LSU… ”) and let the homeowners make the connection themselves.
Flyer Drops and Mailers
The use of data enrichment for flyering and mailers isn’t as direct as with door knocking, but it will absolutely help you get a bigger benefit from your efforts and expenditure. Spokeo’s enriched data can help you fine-tune which specific streets and micro-neighborhoods you target with a flyer or mail-out campaign, for example.
With flyers or doorknob hangers, you can tweak the text, creating fine-tuned alternative versions for use in neighborhoods with specific characteristics. In the case of physical direct-mail campaigns or email campaigns, if you want to drill down and get really detailed, you can choose which specific version of your prospecting text goes to each individual household.
The more targeted your campaign is, the better its results are likely to be.
Social Media Outreach
Social media offers a number of ways for real estate agents to connect with clients and prospects. In the National Association of Realtors’ (NAR) 2023 Technology Survey (the question was not asked in the 2024 survey):
- 68% used social media to promote their listings
- 67% used it to build and maintain relationships with existing clients
- 52% used it to generate leads
Social media has shown itself to be a fruitful source of leads for agents who use it effectively, with 54% of respondents to the 2023 survey and 52% in the 2024 survey naming it as the tool that gives them the highest number of quality leads.
This is where Spokeo’s powerful data enrichment capabilities can really shine. Our searches cover 120+ social platforms, the majority of which are overlooked by most search engines (and rival agents). By searching addresses in your chosen neighborhood, you can find the owners’ social media accounts and decide which platforms are your best bets for advertising, or which community-focused groups and pages they participate in. Joining and contributing to those community groups and pages is an excellent way to raise your visibility in those neighborhoods.
Another very powerful tool is Spokeo’s ability to link social media accounts back to the person behind them. That can be difficult if it’s a common name, or if the username is a pseudonym, but Spokeo’s billions of data points are up to the task. So, if anyone reaches out to you on your page or in your DMs, you can quickly find out who they are and whether they meet your desired profile. We’ve previously written at length about using social media to generate real estate leads, if you want to dig deeper.
More and Better Data, More and Better Leads
The industry as a whole is doing just fine. According to the NAR, in 2024 its members held steady at an average of 10 transactions and a median gross sales of $2.5 million, the same as in 2023. Fears about a decline in earnings after the NAR’s legal settlement seem to have faded, with NAR members showing a slight uptick in income year-over-year.
The question for individual agents, then, is whether they’ll keep up, or — ideally — outperform their peers. Creativity plays a role. We’ve touched on some traditional methods of connecting with potential prospects, but there are many less-conventional alternatives. You might, for example, hold a Reddit-style real estate “Ask Me Anything” on your social media page, or in a physical location within your targeted territory.
However you choose to reach out to potential prospects, having access to deep, broad, and accessible data about them is crucial to maximizing your results. There are only so many property owners in a given area, and it’s never a good thing to miss a chance with one of them through inadequate information. Spokeo for Business is as simple to use as any internet search, but vastly more powerful. It can even be integrated with your agency’s existing software stack, through its powerful application programming interface (API), so you can use it to enrich the data you receive from other sources.
To learn more about how you can use Spokeo for Business in real estate, to request a demonstration of the product, or to evaluate it hands-on with a no-cost trial, reach out to our team using the information on our Real Estate page.
Note: Make sure you consult with legal and operational experts to ensure the methods by which you prospect are compliant with all applicable laws, including those related to telephonic solicitation and email spam, junk mail, and online advertising.
Sources
National Association of Realtors: 2023 Technology Survey
National Association of Realtors: 2024 Technology Survey
National Association of Realtors: REALTORS® Show Strong Commitment to Profession Amid Market Headwinds, New NAR Report Finds