Here’s a beginner’s guide to using landing pages for selling real estate.
As a real estate agent working in the 21st century, you need two things: A cell phone and Internet marketing savvy. You probably don’t need to be persuaded on the benefits of having a cell phone, but Internet marketing may be a tougher sell. Why do you need to be a part-time Internet marketer in order to sell homes?
Here’s why: 9 out of 10 buyers begin their real estate search on the Internet. To reach these buyers, you must position yourself strategically so that they find you. The same is true if you’re hoping to attract sellers.
You need a landing page. With a carefully-planned landing page, you can reach prospective clients who need your help to buy or sell real estate.
So what’s a landing page? Why are landing pages necessary for selling real estate? How do you create an effective landing page? We’ll tackle all of these questions and more below. Let’s get started.
A landing page is a single page on your website that’s entirely focused on one objective. That objective may be to sell a specific home, to build your mailing list for future open houses, or to find homeowners who are interested in selling their property.
Unlike other pages on your website that include menu navigation to encourage visitors to click on different links, a landing page is simple, a stripped down page that’s built around a single call to action.
It’s called a “landing” page because your site visitors “land” on this page after clicking on a link in an ad or Google search. You may also hear them referred to as “squeeze pages” or “sales pages.”
You may be thinking, “Okay, that’s great, but why are landing pages useful for selling real estate?” Good question! Let’s take a look at the top reasons you should use landing pages in your marketing strategy.
Imagine you’ve created an ad on Facebook to promote your latest listing. You want to attract people who are actually interested in buying the property. The problem is that you’ve linked to your home page.
Sending prospective buyers to your homepage is equivalent to dropping them at the entrance of a maze. They may arrive at your listings page and find the one they’re interested in, or they may get distracted by all of the links, not find the listing that they’re actually interested in, and then leave the page (or get eaten by a minotaur!).
With a landing page, you can send them to the direct page that they’re interested in without worrying that they’ll get lost along the way. A landing page is a better use of your marketing dollars.
Landing pages give you more opportunities to rank on search engines for a particular keyword. Let’s say you want to woo sellers into listing with you. You can create a landing page where you target a topic that sellers would be likely to search for in Google. For example, a seller may search for “How to Sell a Home in Massachusetts.” On your landing page, you could offer a free ebook under the same title.
You can capture search engine traffic because your landing page can be centered around one particular keyword phrase— the same keyword phrase that sellers (or buyers) actually type into the search box.
Plus, using landing pages to grab search engine traffic is free. You don’t have to buy ad space. You only need to optimize your landing page so that search engines will display it in the search results. This is known as search engine optimization (SEO), and there are various ways to ensure that your landing page gets the most traffic possible. We’ll explore how later on in this post.
Now that we’ve discussed some of the benefits of using landing pages for real estate marketing, let’s take a look at some of the different types of landing pages you can use, broken down by client type:
Create a “How much is your home worth?” landing page where you estimate home value through a personalized report. This type of landing page can help you generate incomplete leads because you won’t have their name or phone number (you could ask, but doing so reduces the amount of people who are willing to give you their information). However, you will have their address. This allows you to send a follow-up mailer to engage the potential client.
Another landing page to create for sellers is “Top repairs to make around your home before selling.” In this page, you can discuss how tiny repairs can cause houses to stay on the market for longer and sell for less. Present this information in a downloadable ebook, but be sure to ask for their email address (and permission to receive your marketing emails) in exchange for the free gift. This allows you to build up your email list so that you can continue building trust with the prospective client in the future.
Create a “Home in the spotlight” landing page where you showcase one home in particular. Share images or a video tour of the home to drum up interest. Then, invite page visitors to call you to find out more information about the property.
You can also speak directly to your niche audience using landing pages. Let’s say you specialize in working with first time homebuyers. You can create a guide that helps them understand the buying process. Similar to the ebook example above, request their email before giving away away the guide. Other guide topics include: Buying after bankruptcy, getting approved by the co-op board, choosing the right neighborhood, and questions to ask when house hunting.
So, how exactly do you create the perfect real estate landing page? Not only do you need to optimize your landing page for search engine traffic (remember, SEO!), you also need it to accomplish your goal. Here’s how to make it happen.
Every landing page has a short-term goal. What’s the short term goal for your landing page? (Hint: It’s not to sell houses.)
The short term goal of your landing page is to get visitors to the very next step. That next step may be to join your email list or download an ebook or request a call for more information. Your landing page, no matter how good it is, won’t take a prospect from interested into sold in one fell swoop. So, don’t try. Instead, focus on getting the prospect to the next step.
The best title answers the question, “What’s in it for me?” It’s important that you lead off your landing page with an incentive to grab their attention. Use keywords that appeal to your target audience, such as: urban, modern, convenient, luxury, green, and spacious.
An opt-in form won’t apply to every landing page. Sometimes, your goal is to receive a phone call. However, if you want to build your mailing list, always ask for their email address and name. You can also ask for more information, but be careful: The more information you ask for, the fewer signups you’ll get.
The main focus on your landing page will be the content. Whether your content is mostly text to promote an ebook or guide, or mostly images to promote a listing, you need to populate your landing page with enough information to get a bite. On landing pages, it’s crucial that you start with the best stuff first, whether that’s the top benefit or the best picture, and then descend in order of importance. This ensures that your visitor is immediately engaged and continues to be as they scroll down the page.
Every landing page needs a singular call to action. This is what you want your page visitor to do next. Instead of using a button with “submit” at the bottom of your signup form, use language like “sign up for more information.” This call to action makes it clear what the visitor is doing next.
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