As someone who licenses lead capture technology to agents during arguably one of the toughest times on record, I hear this all the time: “But I can’t afford to advertise.”  Of course, I would say, you can’t afford not to.  But you don’t have to spend a ton of money.

Here’s a strategy that will cost you nothing:  Advertise on CraigsList.  Advertising on CraigsList is free.  To use this strategy, all you’ll need is very efficient lead capture technology, and you’ll need some listings.

Let’s start with listings.  What if you don’t have any listings? Use your company’s listings.  Or call any listing agent and ask if you can advertise their listings.  I don’t know of a single agent who won’t let you.  I would pick the most impressive looking home I could find.  After all, the idea is to get buyers to contact you.

I would put a nice photo and verbal description in my CraigsList ad and offer those who register to email a detailed flier, free of charge.  Or I would use a call-capture hotline to capture information of those who call in response to your ad.  There are a variety of companies you can get lead capture technology from, although I’m partial to the LCM Success System created by our company.

Why do you need lead capture technology?  Because without it, you will probably not get enough traffic to capture any buyers.  But with the technology, you will capture a few new leads every single day.  Each day you’ll post a listing or two.

The way CraigsList works, the new ads come on above yours, moving yours down.  Then the next day you will feature different homes.  After about a week, you can start your rotation over again, removing the week-old listings.

I have an agent in the Raleigh, North Carolina market who had no money for advertising, and she had no listings.  We told her to borrow some listings, and she insisted that nobody would be willing to let her advertise their listings.  We asked her to humor us and go ask them.  She called us back later, both elated and amazed that area listing agents would welcome her advertising!

Then we told her how to place CraigsList ads.  Again, she was reluctant because she didn’t think anyone would go to CraigsList looking for a home.  Again, we asked her to humor us and just try it.  This was on Friday.  On Monday, she called us first thing.  She was ecstatic!  In three days she had gotten 17 new inbound leads, all for free.  Now she is a believer.

How nice would it be to generate 3-4 new inbound buyer leads, day after day, using only simple lead capture technology and CraigsList?  Imagine if you were able to attract and capture over 100 new leads every month without having to spend a dime on advertising.  That’s amazing!  No, that’s Max-Bang!

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Matt Jones is the founder and CEO of FavoriteAgent.com, nationally syndicated columnist, broker, and best selling author of LCM: The Secret to Success in the New Age of Real Estate, The Ultimate Listing Presentation, Traffic: How to Sell Fast and Net More, Becoming a Mega-Producer, The Science of Online Marketing, 10 Steps to Real Estate Success, 20 Questions: Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Real Estate but Were Afraid to Ask, The Virtual Office Model, Max-Bang!, and The NEW Ultimate Listing Presentation. Jones' North Carolina-based company has been profiled by major media outlets as an innovator and a pioneer in the industry, and CNN's Pulse on America claimed FavoriteAgent.com is "changing the way real estate is being done in America." This article is syndicated in the following locations: iTunes, YouTube, Stitcher Radio, BlogMattBlog.com, RealBlogging.com, NewsGeni.us, TheCommissionCheck.com, RevampedAgent.com, and now Amazon Kindle.