3 Marketing Ideas to Grow Your Customer Pipeline
Real estate pros offer up some of their best lead generation efforts.
By Melissa Dittmann Tracey, Guest Contributor
From online giveaways to client appreciation events, real estate professionals credit relationship-building marketing strategies for generating a steady stream of new business, even allowing them to double their customer base. Agents gathering at Keller William Realty’s Family Reunion 2025 event in Las Vegas last month highlighted several ideas on how they’ve been expanding their customer outreach.
Danny Baron, founder of Keller Williams’ The Baron Group in Cincinnati, Ohio, hosts large-scale client appreciation events four times a year. His events can attract thousands from his expansive sphere. The events create thankful prospects and helpkeep him top-of-mind in his market.
For example, Baron has invited 3,000 clients to a Cincinnati Reds baseball game. He’s also hosted events at FC Cincinnati games and local comedy venues. Baron partners with preferred vendors and contractors to help defray the costs of the events.
Each event results in multiple touch-points prior to and after the event with prospects, from hand-delivering invitations to making calls and texts in promoting the event to post-event connections—like sharing photos, tagging them on social media posts, providingsponsor vendor information and more. Baron hires a professional photographer and videographer to capture images of each of his events.
Baron has used client appreciation events as his main marketing initiative ever since starting in the real estate business. Even before selling a single home, he hosted a Launch Party, inviting 175 acquaintances. Six years later, 100 of those original 175 attendees are now past clients who he remains in contact with.
Laura Gillott, founder of Keller Williams’ The Gillott Home Team in Lebanon, Ga., promotes weekly giveaways on Facebook. Participants can win prizes like Yeti coolers to Stanley cups or VIP box seats to events at the local racetrack.
Participants entering the online giveaway must either like, share or comment on the Facebook post and then complete a Google form to register for the drawing. The Google form includes questions about their real estate interests (like in buying a home, investment property or receiving a market analysis) as well as asks if they’d be interested in receiving a real estate newsletter or take a class on home buying, selling or real estate investing.
In one Mother’s Day Giveaway—which included $1,000 of prizes for a catered brunch, car wash, cleaning products and more—Gillott received 533 registrations within five days. For her real estate business, the giveaway generated 34 CMA requests, 20 referrals, 110 monthly newsletter sign-ups and about 100 people who expressed an interest in taking a class on home buying, seller or investing. Three months later, just that one giveaway has resulted in one listed and sold one property and 116 new leads added to their database.
Keller Williams real estate pro Will Sawyer credits YouTube for helping to double his real estate business, contributing to $612,000 of his gross commission income last year. His YouTube channel targets buyers looking to relocate to the area—particularly retirees and empty nesters—and positions him as a local expert for Greenville, S.C. He posts videos cover various aspects of the local area, such as “What I Wish I Knew Before Moving to Greenville, S.C.” or “Why Are People Fleeing California for the Carolinas?”
In January, Sawyer got more than 50 new customer leads in one month alone from viewers of his YouTube channel.
Sawyer posts 8-13 minute videos consistently—every Friday. He repurposes each oneinto four YouTube shorts—about 30-60 seconds in length for each—and posts those on Facebook, Instagram and other social media sites.
Along with his YouTube channel, he maintains a Facebook group focused on Greenville, which consists of some 35,000 members. He also connects with prospects with a weekly or bi-weekly newsletter, which includes local news, favorite new listings, properties recently closed and client reviews.
Melissa Dittmann Tracey
ABOUT ME:
Melissa Dittmann Tracey is an award-winning journalist who covers the latest real estate news and trends. You can hear her weekly on the syndicated radio show and podcast, Real Estate Today, in her housing trends segment, “Hot or Not?” She is the creator of the Styled, Staged & Sold blog and a frequent contributor to Houselogic.com and REALTOR Magazine. She’s also the host of The Housing Muse podcast at http://www.housingmuse.com. Follow her on Instagram or X @housingmuse.