Boldleads vs. Market Leader: Which is Best for Real Estate Farming? 

There are dozens of claimed “leaders” in the real estate lead generation industry. While some of these companies have built an excellent reputation for producing great results and delivering value, others have shadier practices and a history of leaving customers out to dry. 

Our goal is to help agents spend their hard-earned marketing dollars on software that matters and the services that are most likely to overcome real estate farming challenges and drive success.  

Comparison Summary 

Market Leader and BoldLeads each offer “concierge-style” lead generation. This means that leads are produced primarily through advertising efforts and sent to agents after their data is captured. Both real estate lead generation services also provide CRM capabilities and the opportunity to create lead nurturing programs through a variety of channels, including email, text, etc.  

Overall, Market Leader provides real estate agents with more opportunities for lead generation and offers a wider set of marketing, CRM, and automation tools for prospect development. Users comparing their features and value will likely find that Market Leader meets and exceeds what BoldLeads can offer. 

Wait. Our goal is to find the right platform for improving real estate farming results, right? 

Are either of these platforms the best tool for generating leads from real estate farming? Keep reading to see why SmartZip might be the leading alternative to Market Leader and BoldLeads.  

What is Market Leader? 

Market Leader is an online real estate lead generation service that provides several services and platforms to help realtors find new clients. Depending on what clients need, Market Leader offers two different types of lead generation capabilities: 

1. Digital leads produced through a combination of ads and automated home valuation pages. 
2. Custom-branded websites that allow realtors to generate their own leads online. 

Regardless of how leads are generated, agents can use Market Leader’s sophisticated CRM and automation tools to stay in front of prospects both online and offline. According to Market Leader, these real estate lead generation solutions can scale up or down as needed based on the size of the organization – from large firms to solo-agent setups. 

Market Leader Pros 

Market Leader offers key advantages when compared to similar types of lead generation services. Some of their biggest benefits include: 

• Market Leader guarantees a certain number of leads each month. 
• Exclusivity with leads means that realtors don’t have to worry about a competitor reaching out first. 
• Leads are owned for life, and agents can continually cultivate prospects as long as needed. 
• Clients are charged a flat service rate each month, no surprises. 
• Agents are given a content library to use that can be customized with individual branding. 
• Service, training, and support are offered to all clients to ensure smooth onboarding and operations. 

Market Leader Cons 

Though their tools do a lot of heavy marketing lifting for agents, Market Leader has the same data quality shortcomings as most other real estate lead generation services. 

• There’s no way to control the quality of leads.  
• Agents are only given one indication of how likely leads are to actually list their home. Since this data point is self-submitted by the prospect, it’s not always reliable. 
• Agents are dependent on Market Leader for their new business generation (most leads are not captured through Market Leader’s proprietary website).  

How Does Market Leader Help Realtors Generate Leads? 

Market Leader has multiple tools for helping realtors generate new leads and convert existing prospects. 

• Leads are generated via a website that Market Leader owns, called housevalues.com. This website receives traffic from interested sellers and captures key contact data and information, including when they intend to sell their home. New leads are then distributed to realtors based on their region.  

Image Credit: Market Leader 

• Market Leader offers an easy-to-use website builder which lets agents quickly create an IDX-enabled website that’s fully branded and SEO-friendly. IDX powers MLS listings directly on the website. This branded website with updated listings allows you to put your brand first and immediately establish a relationship with buyers.  
• Once a new lead is generated, Market Leader’s CRM allows agents to store and search leads. When combined with marketing automation, this creates a powerful capture and nurturing system. These capabilities can replace the cost and management of a marketing resource on your team. Here are a few of the benefits offered by Market Leader’s CRM and marketing platform:  
  • An optimized and customized website with no developer costs (available with Pro and Business Suite). 
  • Polished listing emails with a simple tool to target the right contacts in your CRM. 
  • One-click social media posts for Facebook and LinkedIn. 
  • Ready-to-print flyers and postcards for real estate farming direct mail. 
  • Content repositories that can be branded, tweaked, and reused to stay in touch with high-value prospects.  

Market Leader Reviews 

Market Leader maintains positive reputation across many review websites. Some of the features that users like most include: 

• Clean and simple backend (user interface). 
• Notifications via text when prospects visit the website.  
• Market Leader scores highly on ease-of-use, support, and ease-of-setup. 
• Though there’s a learning curve to understanding marketing automation features, Market Leader provides a significant amount of training material and support.  
• You can read Market Leader reviews on G2 and Cuspera. 

Market Leader is the best fit for: 

Market Leader provides multiple options depending on your size – from agents to brokerages. This makes them a good fit for: 

• Single agents. 
• All sizes of brokerages. 
• Enterprise-level customers.  

What will it take to be successful with Market Leader? 

Market Leader offers training and support resources to ensure a successful launch with their system. Agents should be prepared to quickly contact new leads and identify which ones have the most value, following up with nurturing through the near term. Long term success will be more likely if time is invested into learning the Market Leader system and consistently nurturing new leads with targeted messaging and outreach. 

What is BoldLeads? 

BoldLeads is a real estate lead generation service that specializes in helping agents find new business through two specific channels: Facebook and Google ads. Though they offer other CRM and lead nurturing capabilities, most agents use BoldLeads for their ability to generate new prospects via advertising within specific geographies. 

BoldLeads Advantages 

BoldLeads can certainly expedite your advertising efforts by handling the creation and management of all campaigns. Some of their top advantages include: 

• High-level of proficiency and scalability with Facebook and search engine advertising. 
• Consistency with lead generation, bringing in a flow of new business. 
• BoldLeads service has a relatively low cost, depending on the advertising budget that is set for your campaigns.  
• Through advertising, BoldLeads can help source both buyer and seller leads. 
• BoldLeads can integrate with several of the biggest CRMs, including HubSpot and Salesforce. 

BoldLeads Disadvantages 

Data quality, access, and a lack of control over lead generation tools can be substantial downsides: 

• BoldLeads is not a data service, which means you only get information on the leads that are generated. You don’t get access to a larger database.   
   
• There’s no ability to prioritize leads or understand which ones are most likely to list without reaching out and receiving a reply, which may only happen in a small percentage of cases.  
   
• BoldLeads essentially offers single channel marketing through a platform (Facebook) that realtors cannot control. This means that if they stop paying for the service, lead generation will immediately stop because agents haven’t built up other channels of generating new business.  
   
• Advertising costs can make the pricing seem variable and feel less predictable than desired. 
   
• Facebook ads used by BoldLeads are not branded for specific realtors, but simply appear as generic “Find Your Home Value” advertisements. 
•   
• BoldLeads previously offered exclusive territories, but this option does not appear to be available anymore.  
   
• BoldLeads does not provide a guaranteed number of leads each month. 

How Does BoldLeads Help Realtors Generate Leads? 

BoldLeads relies on advertising to source leads. They help realtors by simplifying advertising and handling many aspects of the ad creation, placement, campaign management, and landing page development. When working with BoldLeads, realtors can expect the process to be fairly easy during the beginning stages.  

• Agents select a general territory (usually within their specific farming region) where they want to generate and cultivate leads. BoldLeads has an interactive map that helps agents quickly identify which areas are available based on the city name or zip code. 
   
• Next, the BoldLeads team creates simple ads that will be displayed on Facebook, Google, or both networks. The advertisements used by BoldLeads all use very similar CTAs, which directs leads to request either a valuation for the current home or a market analysis of their zip code.  

Here are examples of what real BoldLeads ads look like on Facebook. 

Image Credit: BoldLeads 

• Although they do present a clear offer to both buyers and sellers, the ad designs and copy can feel pretty generic when compared to branded ads directly from competing realtors.  
• There are a few other important caveats to BoldLeads’ advertising approach: 
  • There are minimum budgets for some ad campaigns if you’d like to use search advertising, not just Facebook. 
  • The forms filled out by prospects don’t require them to indicate if or when they intend to list their home, which leaves agents to make their best guess and prioritize leads accordingly. 
  • Agents are immediately notified when a new lead is received in their territory and they are able to make contact via phone or email.  
     
• For an additional fee, BoldLeads provides a service called Text Concierge that will message new leads and attempt to qualify them on your behalf. This automated service will use a messaging sequence to discover more information about a prospect, including specific budgets, time frames, desired home types, and more. According to The Close, Text Concierge will qualify up to 500 prospects at a time for up to 6 months.  
   
• If their initial outreach efforts don’t produce results, agents can use BoldLeads CRM tools to follow-up with prospects through various channels, including email, text, automated voicemail messages, etc. Within the CRM, agents can monitor prospect’s activities and prioritize their outreach based on engagement levels.  

BoldLeads Reviews 

 BoldLeads reviews are mixed on multiple sites, and feedback generally includes the following:  

• Training and resources are helpful. 
• The hands-off advertising approach saves time. 
• Many leads aren’t motivated or interested in taking action.  
• Leads don’t have context on why realtors are reaching out after they request a home valuation. 

Read more reviews from real BoldLeads users on Hooquest and G2.

BoldLeads is the best fit for: 

1. Solo agents. 
2. Small and mid-sized brokerages. 

SmartZip: the Best Alternative to BoldLeads and Market Leader 

MarketLeader and BoldLeads both offer advantages for real estate lead generation but fall short of the key capabilities needed to make farming successful. There are three specific reasons why SmartZip is clearly the leading option when compared to other providers: 

Better Data.  

Vetted, quality homeowner data drives results for lead generation campaigns. SmartZip starts with the highest quality data in the industry, then uses a proprietary scoring system that allows agents to see exactly which leads are most likely to list their home. These scores are produced using data from over 25 different sources, including: 

• Length of home ownership. 
• Household income. 
• Number of residents. 
• Consumer habits. 
• Loan status. 
• Much more 

Most importantly, the leads in our database are not produced through digital ads, and their level of potential interest is not measured with self-provided information.  

Market Leader will try to estimate the timeframe within which the lead intends to list. This is based on one data point that the lead provides. In comparison, BoldLeads can only use search terms and basic demographic data when creating campaigns.  

SmartZip uses numerous, objective data sources and predictive analytics to accurately estimate how likely a lead is to sell in the near future. SmartZip empowers agents to start with the right data, then apply the right outreach tactics – this is a smarter approach. 

Better Outreach 

Digital real estate farming is a long-term strategy, and success is highly dependent on maintaining consistent, personalized outreach over time. With SmartZip, agents can use proven lead cultivation strategies like direct mail, personal calls, automated valuation landing pages, online ads, and much more. The best part is that agents can customize and brand each aspect of their campaigns, which provides much more flexibility and control than BoldLeads’ rigid ad creation process. 

Leverage the Power of Referrals  

SmartZip offers a platform called Reach150, which lets agents easily create a search engine-friendly website specifically for their testimonials and success stories. Using reach 150, agents can turn their referrals into marketing collateral and target specific prospects with ads that keep them top of mind. 

Experience SmartZip 

Agents can quickly and easily pick a completely customized farming territory, sort and filter leads to identify the best prospects, and create marketing campaigns to reach the best prospects. 

Want to experience the power of better real estate farming data and outreach tools? Request a demo of SmartZip today to see how you can transform your lead generation processes and results.