How to Improve Your Real Estate Landing Page Conversions

The buyer's journey in real estate is changing. Rather than waiting for the right agent to come along and help in the search for a new home, potential home owners are doing their own research and wait to find agents until they feel they need the help.

In that research phase, buyers will register on websites and sign up as leads to receive information helpful to their search. However, if you're not among the resources for which they sign up, you may have lost your chance to become their real estate agent long before they ever get close to the sale.

85% of home buyers visit an agent's website during their search. A full three quarters, 75%, register on that website for more information. To make sure you become a trusted resource for these home buyers, a focus on lead generation and conversion optimization is essential.

Lead generation, of course, starts with building a landing page designed to convert. You can get members of your target audience to your website using social media, SEO, and other inbound marketing tactics, but you have to prioritize your lead generation efforts as part of your strategy.

6 Tips to Improve Your Real Estate Lead Generation

1) Build Each Landing Page With a Single Conversion Point

It's easy to get greedy. When you get visitors to your landing page, it’s understandable you would want to offer them plenty of opportunities to convert and continue engaging. Unfortunately, doing so can actually hinder your lead generation efforts.

The conversion experts at Unbounce first established the Conversion Ratio principle.

Put simply, it describes the relationship between conversion goals (such as lead sign-ups) and conversion opportunities on your website. Ideally, to maximize your lead generation, your conversion ratio should be 1:1.

Here is an example that illustrates the concept:

Your conversion goal on a landing page is probably to get potential home buyers to become leads. Any link on your website that distracts from that goal, such as links to your social media profiles and even other pages on your website, will prevent your visitors from signing up.

This is in line with a long-standing principle:

If you give people too many options, their choice becomes more difficult, and they’ll likely choose nothing.

2) Optimize Your Content for Search Engines

Search engine optimization matters for your website as a whole, but becomes especially important for your landing pages. Ideally, you don't want prospective home buyers looking for more information about the process to land on your home page. Instead, you need them to arrive on your website at the exact spot they can convert to leads.

You can accomplish that feat by taking advantage of on-page optimization practices for your landing page. Find keywords and phrases that relate directly to the benefits your audience gets from becoming a lead, and integrate them naturally on the page.

Pages on your website rise in search engine rankings for a variety of reasons. The keyword for which your audience searches matters, but so does the engagement rate of visitors, the URL, the visuals, and more. This checklist can help you build a landing page designed for your audience to find you on Google and other search engines.

3) Create Convincing, Skimmable Content

The buyer's journey for potential homebuyers is long, and the space is crowded. To convince them your real estate expertise can be valuable in their search, the content of your landing pages needs to be both convincing and easily skimmable.

It starts with an effective headline that tells your audience exactly what they can expect after becoming a lead. The rest of the content should be separated by subheaders, and presented in short paragraphs and bullet points for maximum skimm-ability.

Finally, make sure your text is outwardly, not inwardly focused. While you should convince your audience about your real estate expertise, you probably don't need to tell them all about yourself. Instead, focus on pointing out exactly why they should become leads, and how your expertise can help them buy a better home for their needs.

4) Don't Forget About the Visuals

Frequent readers of this space won't be shocked that visuals can make or break any aspect of your digital marketing strategy. Not surprisingly, the same is true for your landing pages.

The human brain processes visual information 60,000 times faster than text. If you want your content to be convincing, you better incorporate images, videos, and even infographics into your landing page. Doing so allows you to get valuable information across without taking too much of your audience's time.

These visuals, of course, should enhance any text your landing page has. Rather than simply duplicating your message in visual form, make sure that each visual adds its own value. Ideally, create visuals that subtly point your visitors toward your sign up form.

5)  Highlight Social Proof to Build Your Credibility

No matter what you say on your landing page to get potential home buyers to sign up, your message will always be met with some degree of cynicism. Your audience knows ultimately, you're trying to get your business. That's why third-party evidence of your expertise is so important.

The best way to get that expertise: social proof. We have an innate need to feel validated by those around us, and trust even strangers online. That's why 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations from strangers.

For your real estate landing page, that means including testimonials from current clients. Be sure these testimonials are in-depth enough to be believable, instead of general statements. In other words, recruit current clients to make the case that signing up to receive information from you is valuable to any potential home owner.

6) Optimize Your Sign Up Form

In many ways, the above five tips are only preambles. If you don't get your sign up form right, your landing page will not generate the leads you need to grow your real estate contacts.

Generally speaking, optimizing your form should consist of three individual steps:

  1. Place Your Form in the Right Spot. The placement of your form can make the difference between an interested visitor and a converted lead. Research suggests you should put your form above the fold, not requiring any scrolling. A location on the right of the page makes sense, giving you opportunity convince your left-to-right reading audience with your content before they have the opportunity to sign up.
  2. Optimize the Number of Form Fields. The internet is littered with case studies who increased conversion rates simply by lowering the number of fields on their form. Of course, you need your leads' names and contact information, but don't ask for much more. Keep your form below 7 fields for optimum conversion rates.
  3. Be Careful With the Submit Button. Even though it's the standard option on most form generators, 'submit' is the worst word you could use as your final call to action. It decreases your conversion rate by 3%, while more action-oriented words and phrases like 'click here' actually increase your rate by up to 30%.

Building an Inbound Marketing Strategy Optimized for Lead Generation

Optimizing your landing pages, of course, is only the first step to effective lead generation. If you truly want to grow the number of potential home buyers in your contact database, you have to integrate your optimized landing pages with your larger marketing strategy.

Your paid and unpaid digital marketing efforts, for example, should link directly to your individual landing pages. Consistency is also key; try to avoid cognitive dissonance, which occurs when your audience reads inconsistent or conflicting messages about your benefits and value, and becomes less likely to trust you.

Your landing pages may be the key to generating more leads, but they should only be one cog in your real estate marketing machine. To learn more about integrating them into your larger strategy and using data insights to grow your business, contact us.