Increase your visibility in your community
Homes might still be made of brick and mortar, but the world of real estate is very much a digital one.
93 percent of buyers start their home search online, with 76 percent of buyers saying they found their home on a mobile device, and these figures only trend upward if you look at generational buying habits.
The same report revealed 46 percent of all real estate firms said keeping up with technology was one of their main challenges. If your website isn’t attracting visitors and converting them, creating and optimizing your landing pages will help your business compete in a digital landscape.
What Is a Landing Page?
If you’re not a technically-minded SEO whiz, don’t worry. We’re keeping things simple, as they should be.
A landing page is a standalone page on your website. Yes, it really is that straightforward. It’s where a visitor “lands” on your site after coming in from a certain route online. There are various ways people can come into your site, whether through Google Ads, social media ads, email, or even from a QR code in a print ad. There’s no exhaustive list.
The difference between a landing page and the rest of your website pages is that landing pages are built with one purpose – to convert leads. Your conversion might look like a couple of different things; booking a viewing, receiving contact information, or requesting a callback.
All of this depends on what the goal of your landing page is or the purpose of it. It would be best if you always started with your goal when creating your landing page.
How to Create a Landing Page
Let’s say you’ve got a Google Ad running for free home valuation in your area. Your customer clicks on your ad, costing you money, and lands on your homepage. They then have the choice to trawl through your website, trying to find where to get a free home valuation, or they leave. What do you think they’ll do?
This is why figuring out your goals is so important when creating landing pages. To figure out your landing page's goal, you need to understand your audience, mainly what it is they’re looking for and where they’re coming in from?
With your audience figured out, you can segment them into distinct groups, so your landing page exactly matches the message that convinced them to come to your site in the first place. It would be best to end up with a list of dedicated landing pages that match your potential customers’ needs.
Once you’ve figured out your audience, their routes, and your messaging, you can look at the next step, which is designing your landing pages.
What Makes a Good Landing Page?
We’ve looked before at the best real estate websites, but what makes a good website doesn’t necessarily make a good landing page. We’ll go through it all step by step below, but in essence, a good landing page is clear, concise, and solves a unique problem.
Short and Sweet
Your landing page should focus on one single goal. Don’t overload your visitor with information that isn’t relevant to why they ended up on your website. If they came looking for rentals in your area, give them the means to find that they need nothing else from you by entering their zip code.
If they came looking for a great real estate firm to sell their home, tell them why you’re the best, but don’t ramble on. Generally, you shouldn’t need to scroll much, or at all, on a good landing page. It’s instantly obvious what the offer is, and it’s visually pleasing.
Killer Copy
Keeping it short and sweet doesn’t mean having any copy whatsoever; it means your copy needs to be great. In general, your landing page copy should feature:
- A great headline
- Persuasive subheader
- Your offer
- A singular, convincing CTA
8 of 10 people read a headline, but only 2 out of 10 of those people will read on. That’s how important your headline is. A great headline lets the reader know who you are and what you do in the least amount of words possible.
It’s appealing, emotional, and tells the reader your site is where they’ll find the answers to their needs. You’re not talking about yourself in it; you’re letting your audience know you’re the solution to their problem.
Your subheader should reaffirm your headline. It can expand on it by giving more detail or showing the reader that you understand their problem. Whether that’s finding a trustworthy real estate firm or selling their home fast, let them know you can help with a unique value proposition.
If your landing page convinces buyers to let you sell their homes and you know you sell more than 80 percent of homes within 30 days, tell them! Hard facts and figures will win your trust here; it shows you know what you’re talking about.
Your offer will be unique to the goals you figured out when creating your landing page. But it needs to be compelling, whatever it is.
If your goal is to collect email addresses or other contact information, your offer must be valuable and convincing as these are hard sales. A generic “we can help you” won’t cut it. Give something back in return, whether that’s a customized list of properties in the area, a free home valuation, or a local guidebook.
The Convincing Call to Action
Your Call to Action or CTA is the button that screams, “click me, and your problems will be solved.” We’re all familiar with them as they’re so widely used across websites now, they come in many shapes and sizes, but their function remains the same.
Your CTA shouldn’t be a submit button. It needs to speak to your audience uniquely and match with your landing page messaging. For a property search landing page, “find my home” might be a great idea for a CTA, or a home valuation landing page, “get an instant evaluation” works much better than a simple “submit.”
You should generally only have one call to action. However, on some particular landing pages where scrolling is unavoidable, you may repeat the same CTA lower down on the page to save visitors scrolling the page up to find it.
A Visual Feast
Fortunately, most real estate firms know the value of a beautiful image in creating leads, unlike other markets. Stun your visitors with awe-inspiring photos that make them think, “I need that.” Images connect with humans on an emotional level in a way that your copy often can’t; your visual reaffirms your content and engages your reader further.
As well as your stunning image, your color choices matter. The psychology of color has been widely studied and is one of your greatest tools in creating visually convincing landing pages.
This isn’t to say create a collage board of images with a rainbow of positive colors; your page should still be minimalistic in its looks. Too much distracts from the overall goal to convert. Your visuals should prop up your offer beautifully, without distracting from it.
Social Proof
Trustworthiness is already a big factor for real estate firms, which remains true on your landing pages. Online customer testimonials are word of mouth for the modern-day.
Rather than tooting your own horn, let your previous customers say it for you with social proof. This can be in the form of your Trustpilot score, Google reviews, site testimonials, or social media reviews. Take the very best of your reviews and shout about them on your landing page.
Mobile First
53 percent of all traffic online is mobile. That means if you don’t design your landing pages with mobile in mind, you’re immediately disappointing half your visitors.
When designing your pages, make sure you’re not only looking at desktop wireframes or designs. In fact, we’d actually recommend starting with mobile designs and then looking at desktop designs afterward. Make sure your images fit beautifully, there’s minimal scrolling, your page loads quickly, and your CTA is responsive and easy to use on mobile.
No Long Forms
Although we’ve highlighted the importance of short, concise landing pages already, it’s worth reiterating that long forms are a conversion killer. Everyone hates filling out their information online, especially when they can’t see how it's relevant for the company to know.
Ask for what you need. If you need an email address, ask for that. You don’t need their first and last names, date of birth, and mobile number.
This will vary from page to page; for example, on a callback request page, of course, it’s ok to ask for a name and mobile number, but do you actually need their email address too?
Types of Landing Pages
While there are no one-size-fits landing pages, there are a couple of tried and tested formats for you to look at for inspiration for your own landing pages. Some that might work for your business include:
Lead Magnet Landing Page
Lead magnet landing pages are one of our favorites. They’re simple to create and can convert like crazy if they’re done right. A lead magnet is a free offer in exchange for some information you want, like an email address.
Ideally, your lead magnet will be instant, so usually some irresistible digital download for your specific targeted audience like local neighborhood guides for those moving from out of state, a local real estate market analysis for investors, and loads more. We have some great content ideas for lead magnet landing pages, which will help you create landing pages that convert.
Property Search Landing Page
Although many homepages serve this function for many real estate firms, having a dedicated property search page segmented for your audience can really impact conversion rates.
Split your property search landing pages into residential and commercial, rental, and purchase, and more to target concise messaging at your different customers. It saves them the hassle of filtering results themselves and shows immediately you can cater to their unique needs, building trust.
Video Landing Page
These can fit in with other landing page types, but video-led landing pages can often target particular concerns for your potential audience. Let’s say you’re targeting people in your area who want to sell; instead of telling them with the copy (which they may never read) what you can do for them, show them in a video. Even better, feature your customers telling them for social proof.
Landing Pages That Convert
With so much information on landing pages available online and no one size fits all to guide you, it can be difficult to know why your landing page might not be converting. If they aren’t, don’t just give up on them; figure out why that might be. Ask yourself:
- Does the message match the need?
- Is my message convincing enough?
- Is my design too busy?
- Am I reaching the right audience?
It’s also worth spending some time looking at what your competitors are doing right and then doing it better. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, after all!
Even if your landing pages are doing well, there’s a chance they could always be doing better. A/B testing allows you to optimize your conversion rate by testing what works for your unique customers.
Get Help Optimizing Your Landing Pages
If this all sounds like a lot of work, you’re right; it is.
Many real estate firms don’t have the time or workforce to focus on their digital presence, like landing pages. Fortunately, we offer a wide variety of digital services, from local SEO to conversion rate optimization. Just get in touch to find out more about how we can help your real estate business.
Need more local marketing tips? Check out The Essential Marketing Guide for Real Estate Professionals
