Why so many real estate agents use landing pages instead of a website?
Real Estate landing pages are not to be mistaken with a website. The real estate landing page is a single page showing one unique property to help you catch leads by gathering contact information.
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You can enhance the quality your real estate landing pages by offering your prospects:
- potential buyers
- home search
- comparative market analysis
- home valuation tool
- lead magnet
You don’t need a full fledge website to start your real estate digital marketing, a simple landing page is enough to show your listings, capture leads and follow-up with your customers.
What is a Real Estate Landing Page?
A real estate landing page, also called sales page or squeeze page, is a single web page that you hook to from your ads on Google, Facebook, Pinterest, or main websites. But, the most significant thing about landing pages is that you don’t need a website because it is a standalone solution.
When you place an ad on social media, your prospect clicks on your ad and they “land” on your landing page (hence, the name….)
Landing pages only have 1 goal: to get your prospect to give you their contact so you can follow up with them.
The great advantage of a landing page is that is it extremely affordable, so if you are new in the market, or if you never used digital marketing, you can try it for a fistful of dollars.
5 Reasons Landing Pages for Realtors Are Essential for 2019
Because shorter Landing Pages are working
That means that in 2019, you will only have 7 seconds to convince your visitors that you are worth their time.
Websites take time to download. A landing page is just one simple page with a minimum of information and opens in a couple of seconds.
First impressions are essentials.
If a customer doesn’t like what they within the first 7 seconds, they probably won’t try to take a deeper look at your offering.
If your Realty lacks a (good) landing page, it will affect everything:
- your social media presence
- the way you attract customers
- how you convert leads
- how much properties you sell in a month
Don’t forget the golden rule of marketing “less is more!” exactly what landing pages are.
The following 4 points should convince you about landing pages’ importance and how to reap their benefits.
a. They Simplify Decision Making for Your prospects
When you’re thinking about a website, it’s tempting to try to say as much as possible about you and your business. You want to make sure your prospects will find everything that they’re looking for. Most people feel like they need to cram as much information into it as possible.
While this isn’t necessarily harmful to your website as a whole, it can be deadly for your landing page.
Landing pages are meant to focus your audience on committing to one single action. If your page has too many choices, your prospects may get distracted and fail to follow through on your chosen purpose. A good Landing pages limit the number of decisions a visitor can make, allowing you to bring them to the outcome you desire.
b Landing Pages Generate Leads
A good landing page isn’t just there to attract & engage your audience. It also allows you to establish contact with your prospects and gauge whether they’re interested in your company’s services or products. You do this by adding a web form that asks your prospects for their contact information in exchange for information, or a discount, content like whitepapers or exclusive articles.
A landing page is a lead generator. You receive your prospects phone # or email and you follow up with them.
c Landing Pages are Essential for Closed-Loop Marketing
Generating leads isn’t the only reason why landing pages are important. They can also help you maximize your website’s efficiency and learn more about your audience. All of this is possible through closed-loop marketing.
The process involves setting up tracking URLs and cookies on your website or in the social media posts you use to share your content (Facebook and Google are especially good at that).
When visitors arrive on your page, you can use a CRM (customer relationship management) software to determine which method (email, social media, search engine, QR Code, Ad, etc.) directed them to which page.
From there, you can rate them, tag them, classify them, track their activity and see which pages they visit and what they are interested in.
If they navigate through to your form and fill it out, the CRM software will immediately associate the prospect and their information with their path through your site. You can use this data to interpret who your customers are and what they need, allowing you to tailor your content and outbound marketing campaigns to appeal to the desired demographic.
On the other hand, if many people exit the website when they reach a given page, it may indicate a weak spot in your web presence, and you can adjust your strategy accordingly.
d Landing Pages Help Your Ad Campaign Succeed
If you are paying for high search engine placement, you want to make sure that you’re getting the best value for your purchase.
As a result, you need to quickly and efficiently convert visitors into leads and leads into sales. When it comes to ads, you’re really only guaranteed one click, and redirecting a customer to another page may cause them to leave. Landing pages aren’t just important because they allow you to convert leads quickly, but also because they can reduce your bounce rate.
2 It’s OK to get partial leads with Landing Pages
Partial leas are incomplete leads; they are missing one or several important information. That usually is the name, the telephone, or the address. Only getting an email is not ideal, but you can add a tel# via text-message or a WhatsApp account. Modern Web Forms let you decide on how much or how little information your leads are allowed to leave. Most forms on landing pages are just requesting a name and email address.
Most of the forms that I personally use just request an email address.
Of course, it’s much, much easier to get less information than more. Take it easy, though. You can take a partial lead who only gave you their address for a free home valuation and add them to your postcard mailer or door hanger campaign. If you don’t have their name, use “Freind,” “Hello Friend” or “Hello Neighbor” or anything similar.
3 Real Estate Landing Pages also work for offline marketing
Another reason to use real estate landing pages is to bring traffic to them from as many sources as possible, especially the ones from printed material.
Landing pages can be accessed not only from online ads and social media accounts but also from printed material:
- QR codes printed on flyers, brochures, business cards
- QR codes printed on yard signs
- QR Codes from postcards
- billboards etc
MyAdGency is a specialist in printed marketing. Take a look here.
Qr codes and Google Analytics are a great way to see how technology can track how many people are visiting your website from your offline marketing efforts.
When you use offline marketing (i.e. printed material) you can easily direct your prospects to your landing page through QR codes.
4 Standalone or Dedicated Landing Pages Help You Make a Longer, More Targeted Sales Pitch
There are 2 types of Landing Pages:
- the short ones
- the long-form
Most internet marketing gurus will tell you that your copy on your landing page should be as condensed as possible. You can fit a great deal more detail on your landing page than you can on a tiny square Facebook ad or sign rider.
A landing page is the natural extension of an ad. You can design your ad and your landing page with the same copy, same colors, same pictures and same designs.
Even better, since you know they’re in the bottom of your sales funnel, it’s much easier to encourage them to give you their contact information.
Think about it. If you send a lead right to your homepage, they may click around, get distracted by something, and never come back. Since landing pages are specifically designed to get contact information, you’re much more likely to get a lead if you send them to one.
3 Landing Pages can be A/B Tested & Optimized according to the Results
One of the most powerful features of landing pages is the ability to offer half your page visitors one page, and the other half another page in order to see what works better. Of course, you will need to write 2 different versions for your landing page (versions A & B). Then, you set up your landing page to show half your visitors version A, half version B, and then run the version that performs best.
You can keep doing this endlessly, modifying the layout, pictures, different calls to action, and even the color of the button and contact forms. You might be surprised at what converts better! More on this later…
Extra: your buyer persona
Even before you start building your landing page, you should have worked on your buyer persona.
A buyer persona (also called an avatar) is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers. When creating your buyer persona(s), consider including customer demographics, behavior patterns, motivations, and goals. The more detailed you are, the better.
Of course, it is something that you should have done intuitively. You don’t talk the same way to someone who’s purchasing a $300,000 home in Riverside or a 30,000,000 mansion in Beverly Hills…
Conversely, your landing page should be adapted to the type of buyer persona.
If you want to know more about how to define your customer avatar, click here.
The 5 Types of Real Estate Landing Pages Every Real Estate Agent Should Have
Okay, now that you know a little bit more about what real estate landing pages are and why they’re so important, let’s take a look at the 3 types of landing pages every realtor needs to master in 2019.
Each landing page type will have its own expected conversion rates as well as its own benefits and drawbacks.
1. Standalone Landing Pages
A standalone Landing Page may be the only page you need.
Characteristics:
Conversion rate: Medium
Benefits:
- the lowest cost ever, incredibly affordable for new Agents
- higher CTR (aka how many people click on your page)
Drawbacks:
- lower conversion rate
- people might look for listings on your site without signing up
If you are a big real estate agency with hundreds of property and dozen of agents, you definitively need a full-fledged website. But if you are working alone and just have a couple of properties, the standalone IS the best solution for you.
One of the differences between a website and a landing page is the way you bring traffic.
Your website gets traffic through a variety of sources, including word-of-mouth, referrals, organic searches, particular keywords that your website ranks for, or through direct traffic.
But multiple options for driving traffic to your landing pages include:
- Facebook ads
- Google Adwords
- Email marketing
When they click on your ad, visitors are taken to the landing page (shown below), which promotes your Landing Page only.
The value proposition for this particular landing page is obvious:
- track leads
- optimize your sales activities
- close deals faster
Visitors who are interested in purchasing your property only have 2 options: – register for the free trial
– exit the landing page
This landing page accomplishes the same goal as the call-to-action on the homepage of your website (if you have one): encouraging visitors to sign up to get more information for the featured property.
As a real estate agent, you can leverage landing pages by inserting call-to-action buttons into your website where you offer additional, specialized information in exchange for the visitors’ contact information.
Or, you can utilize standalone landing pages and promote them with paid ads.
You’ll continue generating more leads as you get better at understanding the unique wants and needs of your target audience.
Landing pages rich with helpful, informative content are the key to active lead generation.
2. Home Search Landing Pages
These landing page allows your visitor to search for new homes in their desired area. In this instance, this type of page isn’t really a “landing page”. The person may “land” on it from an ad, however, they can navigate the site freely and search for home listing results.
Lead Type: BuyerConversion rate: Low
Benefits:
- low cost, very affordable for new Agents
- higher CTR (aka how many people click on your ad)
Drawbacks:
- lower conversion rate
- people might search for listings on your site but may not sign up
Popularized by lead generation websites, home search landing pages generate buyer leads by offering a free listing search to those who click on your ad.
Leads are then directed to your IDX website (if you have one) so they can search for homes and save their favorites.
After a few minutes of searching, they’re encouraged to leave their contact information to continue using the site.
If you need a startup, you can turn to a service such as MyAdGency that will turn any page from your site into an efficient landing page. The design of a specific landing page can be expensive, but it can be replicated, so additional landing pages come at a nominal price.
Visit MyAdGency and see the different types of landing pages they offer.
There are a lot of different landing pages. You can test each of them with an A/B split test to understand which one is the most adapted to your clientele.
3. Home Value Landing Pages
These landing pages provide the visitor with a chance to receive an estimate of their home value. It’s a great service for free.
Lead type: Seller Leads
Benefits:
- The page forces visitors to enter in their contact information in order to view the listings, allowing the company to follow up.
- good conversion rate (number of people leaving their contact information)
Drawbacks:
- asking for your prospect data immediately may cause them to leave before browsing the site
- require a subscription to instant home value services
- doesn’t show any property
- you will need strong follow-up; otherwise, you will lose the lead
Home value landing pages represent a popular method to get seller leads. To capture leads, post a Facebook or Google ad targeting people who are likely to move or sell their home.
Your ad should offer them a free home valuation so they can find out how much their home is worth in today’s market. When a potential lead clicks on the ad, they’ll be directed to a home value landing page.
Instant Home Value Landing Pages
Conversion rate (how many people leave their contact information): Medium/high
Benefits: Higher conversion rate
Drawbacks: More partial leads (e.g., just an address without an email)
An instant home value landing page offers potential leads an instant home valuation in return for their contact information. In order to set up an instant home value landing page, you need to be able to offer your potential leads an instant home valuation as soon as they enter their home’s details and contact information.
The great thing about instant value landing pages is that the conversion rate (the percentage of people who leave contact information) is quite high.
After all, more people are willing to click through to something that doesn’t involve a lot of their time or attention.
That is especially true for people who are leery of getting spam emails or cold calls from realtors.
The downside is that you end up with more partial leads. In this case, a partial lead will be someone who puts in their address and some details about their home but leaves no contact details or fake information. While this is indeed an issue, you can always put them on a postcard or door hanger campaign, so there is still a potential to turn them into a client down the road.
MyAdGency can design the postcard to match the colors and design of your website, including your logo. So when your prospects receive your card, they remember where it’s coming from.
4. CMA Offer Landing Pages
Conversion rate (how many people leave their contact information): Low/medium
Benefits:
- filter people who are to your website for “just looking” with no real intention to buy or sell
- the leads are more likely to want a professional CMA
- the leads are more likely to answer your email, text messages or phone calls to have a discussion with you
- you lose less time because uncommitted people will be left out
Drawbacks:
- fewer people leave their contact information
A CMA offer landing page encourages a potential lead to give you their contact information in order to have a professional come up with a more accurate valuation of their home. While the pitch in your ads will be very similar, “Is Your Home Worth More Than You Think?”, potential leads will knowingly sign up to get your professional opinion on how much their home is worth.
As you can imagine, fewer people will be willing to schedule a call than get an instant home valuation.
That said, these people will be more willing to work with a realtor, and will also more than likely be more serious about selling their home. That’s a better seller lead by pretty much anyone’s definition.
5. Lead Magnet Landing Pages
Lead Type: Seller or Buyer
Conversion rate (how many people leave their contact information): high
Benefits:
- leads will be more likely to leave their contact information
Drawbacks:
- leads may not be ready for the next step
- you may need more marketing of follow-up to convince them from making a buying or selling decision
- you may receive much more leads than you can treat in a day, leading to potential loss
Lead Magnet landing pages are real estate landing pages that offer potential leads something free in exchange for their contact information. In the world of marketing, this is known as a loss leader: the offer of something free irresistibly brings in the leads.
There are a lot of examples of effective lead magnets for real estate agents, including:
- a buyer’s guide
- a seller e-book
- an updated list of foreclosures
- a guide to financing
- a guide to off-market listings in your area
- a list of the top 10 renovations with the best ROI
- or any other content a buyer or seller might want from a real estate professional
While lead magnet landing pages should have a relatively high conversion rate, there is a danger that the leads you end up with will be too high in the funnel to be of immediate use. While these leads aren’t as desirable as motivated buyers or sellers, they can be easily nurtured with drip campaigns.
How to Design Real Estate Landing Pages That Convert Visitors to Leads
Before you choose the software and tools you’ll need to build your landing pages, let’s take a look at the three factors that are common to all great landing pages.
They are:
- overall design
- copywriting
- call to action (CTA).
. Overall Design
Remember that you need to convince any visitor arriving on your landing page within the first 7 seconds. So, the design of your landing page should be simple, attractive, and help convince your leads that they need to read the rest of the page and give you their contact information.
Most people think designing a landing page is easy because it’s only one page and it’s less challenging to do than an entire website.
One of the solutions is using Landing Page Templates
That will make your life easier. However, you still have to learn how to use the software, design all the elements of your page and finally build your page.
For those who are willing to do it, here are a couple of design tips to make sure your landing pages convert visitors to leads:
Customize one of the hundreds of landing page templates available from software like Leadpages.
CTA/Lead Capture Should Be the Main Focus of the Page
Don’t worry about making your landing page look pretty. Yes, you want something that looks professional, but professional is not always pretty. In fact, in some cases, “ugly” landing pages convert better than pretty ones.
While this may seem somewhat counterintuitive, it makes sense when you think about it. People want to work with someone they can trust. Who would you trust more: a slick Wall Street investment bank or your local credit union?
Now, Real Estate agents can use the same marketing funnels as ecommerce: lead-magnet, trip-wire, A/B split-test, core offer.
Landing Pages Must Adapted to Smartphones
This is called responsiveness.
In web design, a HTML page is “responsive” when it is adapted to any support:
- desktop computers
- laptop
- tablet
- smartphone
In the past, designers had to build as many web pages as support. They needed to create several separate pages. Not only they needed to work hard to make sure your landing page looked great on desktop and laptop, but also on smartphone and tablet.
Nowadays it’s easier.
The same page can be seen on all supports at the same time, but you need to know how to do it.
Landing page builders like MyAdGency can do that for you.
Less Is More
Like with your copy, you should always ask yourself if the layout, fonts, or images you choose are going to help get more people to give you their contact information.
In most cases, that means less text, fewer images, fewer fonts, and fewer colors or other distractions and no link to another part of your website (if you have one).
Use Images to Get an Emotional Response
Be careful with the graphic design. Again, Most people think graphic design is easy. After all, your brother’s cousin had Photoshop and went to art school for a year, so how hard could it be? The answer, of course, is that like all crafts, it can take a lifetime to master.
The images you choose for your landing page are just as important, if not more important than, your copy or call to action.
When you’re choosing images for your landing page, make sure they’re of the highest quality you can find. Even more importantly, make sure they make your potential leads react positively to your page. Generally, that means gorgeous shots of well-designed interiors (kitchens especially), exteriors, your headshot, for example (great stock photos work best).
If you are not a professional photographer, you might need to contract a freelancer to do the pictures for you.
Think about it: a picture of a beautiful house will probably produce a more positive emotional response than a picture of an ugly house. That said, a picture of a mansion may be intimidating to someone who lives in a lower income area. Always tailor your imagery to your audience.
Houses or People?
While pictures of houses are generally a safe bet for landing pages, images of people can be a little bit trickier. In a recent study by Marketing Experiments, pages with images of real people performed 34 percent better than stock photos of people. If you have a great headshot, use it.
In addition to using high-resolution, professional headshots, incorporate pictures of people that are looking towards your CTA and lead capture form. Never use pictures of people looking away from your CTA and form. Here’s an example from Homelight. Notice where she’s looking and the way her body is positioned.
All Stock Photos Are Not Created Equal
While the warning against stock photos is a good one, sometimes you can find stock photos that work amazingly well for landing pages. If you want high-quality stock photos, you can use free sites like Unsplash, or pay for images from iStock or 123rf.com.
I personally have been using Dreamstime for at least 5 years and I am really satisfied with the quality of the content and the price I am paying to purchase images. For an example of powerful stock images on a landing page, check out Dreamstime’s landing page below.
If you were searching for a home or trying to sell your home, do you think you could relate to the woman in the photo?
1. Copywriting
When it comes to copywriting for your landing page, you want to briefly clearly outline your value proposition and also demonstrate your authority in real estate.
That means:
- including a short paragraph on why they should download your e-book
- schedule a comparative market analysis (CMA) call
- or whatever else you’re trying to get them to do.
Keep It Simple
Remember that your potential lead has a very short attention span, so always keep your copy short and to the point. Use short declarative sentences. Complex sentences tire people out quickly. If they get bored, they might leave your page.
If you are still unsure how to do a good landing page for your realty, or you don’t have the time, turn to professionals. MyAdGency can handle your digital marketing and design landing pages that are best adapted to your personality and clientele.
Break It Up
If you absolutely must have a ton of copy on your landing page, make sure to break it up with subheadings, icons, images, bullet points, or valuable testimonials. That will make it easy for people to skim the page and only read what they’re most interested in. Remember the goldfish!
Less Important Info Belongs Below the Fold
When it comes to demonstrating your authority in the market, put a few short sentences below the fold (this refers to the copy that is visible when they first land on your page). Anything they need to scroll down for is considered “below the fold.” You can also include your designations.
Use Statistics & Timing Words
Use Real Numbers & Timing Words
Since you only have 7 sec to grab your prospects’ attention and get them to convert, you need to pack as much punch into your words as you can. In order to do this effectively, always use statistics, real numbers and timing words, add “call now” or “click here” in your copy.
Here are some examples:
- Very bad: “We have the best listing in Los Angeles”
- Mediocre: “We have a lot of 2& 3 bedrooms in Los Angeles”
- Better: “Only 17 3-bedroom under $400k came on the market yesterday. See them before they’re gone. Click here now.”
- Even better: “Click here now to schedule a free assessment of 3-bedrooms under $300K in Los Angeles immediately available”
Always Remember Your Goal
The most important thing to keep in mind when writing copy for your landing page is to always keep your goal in mind. Before adding another word, always ask yourself if it will help convince your lead to fill out the form and give you their contact information. If the answer is no, leave it out.
For more in-depth information about how copywriting works, check MyAdGency.Com’s copywriting section.
Finally, if you don’t have the feeling or the time to do your own copywriting, MyAdGency has specialists who will make your life easier
3. Mastering the CTA
Okay, now let’s look at the most important element of any great landing page: the call to action. A call to action is just what it sounds like. It encourages your visitor to take action. Not just any action, but a very specific action—to give you their contact information.
Here are a few tips to create irresistible calls to action.
Keep Your CTA Above the Fold
While it may not look great in your design, you should always keep the CTA near the top of the page. This will greatly increase the chances of someone converting. However, if you have a home value landing page where you are trying to get people to sign up for a comparative market analysis, then it might make sense to put your CTA below the fold.
The data actually proves this. In 2018, Marketing Experiments did an A/B test that found CTA’s below the fold performed 20 percent better than above the fold CTAs on pages with more copy. It makes sense when you think about. People often need to be convinced to take action, and this may take time.
Avoid Friction Words
Friction words are words that your visitors will naturally have negative associations with. Generally, these words make them think they have to do work.
Avoid using words like:
- submit
- buy
- sign up
- give
in your call to action.
Think about it. When you are about to purchase the home of your dream, you don’t want to commit to anything unless you are really sure of what you are doing. Who else wants to “submit”?
And doesn’t “sign up” sounds like another commitment and possibly an invitation for spam?
If you need more evidence that this works, check out the chart below. You can clearly see that the word with the most friction, the dreaded “register,” performed substantially worse than any other word for CTA buttons.
You CTA should be soft and non-committal.
Table showing click-through rates
Make Your Button Stand Out on the Page
Have you ever wondered why so many buttons on websites and landing pages are boldly colored? The answer is simple. Your button should be the FIRST thing people notice when looking at your page. It should jump straight out at them and shout “CLICK ME!!”
Color
According to data from OptinMonster, red buttons performed better than green buttons. OptinMonster also suggests using complementary colors, which are colors that are the opposite of your dominant page color on the color wheel. That will help your button stand out and increase clicks.
Check out the CTA button on Zillow’s landing page below. The primary color theme of the background image is a reddish brown, so they went with a complementary bright blue button, making it extremely eye-catching.
Button Text
In some cases, your CTA may just be on the button itself with only a headline on the page. If that’s the case, you need to work very hard on crafting the right CTA in only a few words. Avoid negative or friction words, use timing words, and focus on the value for your visitor.
Finally, remember to always use the first or third person when writing button text. For example, “download my free guide” or “donwloard your free guide” works much better than “download the guide.”