Real estate landing pages help agents capture leads by collecting contact information through their real estate website. In general, you can optimize landing pages for real estate by offering potential leads home search or home valuation tools or free content. Then, incorporate informative copy, easy to use forms, and high-quality images to attract potential clients.
What Are Real Estate Landing Pages?
A real estate landing page, or squeeze page, is a simple page on your website that you link to from your ads on Facebook, Google, Pinterest, or other websites. Once users click on your ad, they “land” on your landing page. Landing pages have one purpose: to get that visitor to provide their contact information.
Because they have such a targeted purpose, real estate landing pages generally only have short, direct copy and a few images. They should also include a contact form where your site visitor can leave their contact information.
4 Reasons Real Estate Landing Pages Are so Important for Realtors to Master in 2018
Since attention spans are so low, you need to eliminate distractions. Via Neil Patel
If you want a real-world analogy for a landing page, think of it as the closing room used in high-pressure sales environments like timeshare offices or used car lots. They don’t take you to the smaller room so you’ll have more privacy—they take you to the smaller room because it narrows your focus and makes you easier to close. Since there are fewer distractions, it’s easier to guide you into making a decision.
Since the vast majority of lead generation is online in 2018, closing rooms are largely a thing of the past. Instead, we have landing pages, which work almost exactly like online closing rooms. Facebook is distracting. Your landing page is not. Luckily, the closing on your landing page isn’t signing someone up for an overpriced hotel room in Miami. Instead, you just need to persuade someone to give you their contact information and entice them to speak with you.
Real Estate Landing Pages Work for Offline Ads Too
Another reason to master real estate landing pages is to drive traffic to them from many different sources. Landing pages not only capture contact information from leads who click on your online ads, you can also link to them from your social media accounts or with QR codes on yard signs, postcards, billboards, or flyers. This is a great way to use technology to track how many people are visiting your website from your offline marketing strategies.
Landing Pages Let You Make a Longer, More Targeted Pitch
While most digital marketing experts (myself included) will say that your copy on your landing page should be as brief 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. 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.
You Can A/B Test Your Landing Pages & Optimize Them Based on 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. For example, let’s say you wrote two different versions of copy for your landing page but aren’t quite sure which one to pick. You can set up your landing page to show half your visitors option A, half option B, and then run the one 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…
You Can Get Partial Leads with Landing Pages
While only getting an address or email may not be ideal, landing pages let you decide on how much or how little information your leads are allowed to leave. As you might imagine, it’s much, much easier to get less information than more. Don’t sweat it, though. You can take a partial lead who only gave you their address for a free home valuation and add them to your postcard or door hanger campaign.
The 3 Types of Real Estate Landing Pages Every Realtor Needs to Master
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 three types of landing pages every realtor needs to master in 2018. Each type will have its own expected conversion rates as well as its own benefits and drawbacks.
1. Home Search Landing Pages
Screenshot of Real Geeks landing page
Lead Type: Buyer
Conversion rate: Low
Benefits: Higher CTR (click through rate, aka how many people click on your ad)
Drawbacks: Lower conversion rate; people will search for listings on your site but may not sign up
Popularized by lead generation website companies like Real Geeks, 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 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.
Home search landing pages are great because you don’t even really need a landing page—you can just use your homepage as your landing page. To get started, you can turn to a service such as Real Geeks that allows you to make any page on your site into your landing page. Visit Real Geeks and see the different types of landing pages they offer.
2. Home Value Landing Pages
Screenshot of TORCHx landing page
Lead type: Seller leads
Benefits: Can have a good conversion rate (number of people leaving their contact information)
Drawbacks: Can require a subscription to instant home value services
Home value landing pages are among the most popular methods used to get seller leads. To capture leads, post a Facebook ad targeting people who are likely to move or sell their home. Generally speaking, the ad will 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.
The two types of home value landing pages are:
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.
Real Geeks offers a great home valuation tool which comes already embedded in all their property and market report pages. It not only provides one of the best ways to capture seller leads, but will also automatically send those leads bi-monthly market reports in order to keep them interested. Click here to sign up for a free demo.
The great thing about instant value landing pages is that the conversion rate (the percentage of people who leave contact information) is pretty high. After all, more people are willing to click through to something that doesn’t involve a lot of their time or attention. This 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.
CMA Offer Landing Pages
Conversion rate (how many people leave their contact information): Low/medium
Benefits: Leads more likely to want a professional CMA
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.
3. Free Content Landing Pages
Screenshot of HouseHunt.com landing page
Lead Type: Seller or Buyer
Conversion rate (how many people leave their contact information): Medium/high
Benefits: Leads will be more likely to leave contact information
Drawbacks: Leads may be further away from making a buying or selling decision
Free content landing pages are real estate landing pages that offer potential leads something free in exchange for their contact information. In the world of digital marketing, this is known as a lead magnet, as the offer of something free draws in leads.
Examples of effective lead magnets may be something like a buyer or seller e-book, a guide to off-market listings in your farm area, a list of the top ten renovations with the best ROI, an updated list of foreclosures, or any other content a buyer or seller might want from a real estate professional.
While free content 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 we dig into 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: copywriting, overall design, and call to action (CTA).
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 perhaps 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.
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. This 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
Since you have such a short amount of time to grab their 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 and timing words, like “call now,” in your copy.
Here’s a quick example:
Mediocre: “There are Lots of Great 3 Bedroom Ranches in Your Area”
Better: “There are 97 3-bedroom ranches in West Cucamonga on the market right now”
Even Better: “There are 17 3-bedroom ranches under $400k that came on the market yesterday. See them before they get offers!”
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.
2. Overall Design
Screenshot of Zillow landing page
Like your copy, the design of your landing page should be simple, attractive, and help convince your leads to give you their contact information. Here are a few design tips to make sure your landing pages convert visitors to leads:
Don’t Reinvent the Wheel: Use Landing Page Templates
Most people think graphic design is easy. After all, your brother’s cousin has 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. Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, just customize one of the hundreds of landing page templates available from software like Leadpages or through lead generation services like Real Geeks.
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?
Landing Pages Must Be Responsive
In web design, a page is “responsive” when it looks good on desktop computers and mobile devices. As you might have guessed, you need to work hard to make sure your landing page looks great on mobile and desktop. You may need to create two separate pages. Luckily, you can do this pretty easily using landing page builders like Unbounce.
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 fewer images, fewer fonts, and fewer colors or other distractions.
Use Images to Get an Emotional Response
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).
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.
Landing page for freevalues.com
Landing page for freevalues.com
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. For an example of powerful stock images on a landing page, check out Trulia’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?
Screenshot of Trulia landing page
3. Mastering the Call to Action
Screenshot of landing page
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…or Don’t
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 2017, 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,” or “give” in your call to action. Think about it. Who wants to “submit”? Doesn’t “sign up” sounds like a commitment and possibly an invitation for spam?
If you need more evidence that this works, check out the chart below from Hubspot. You can clearly see that the word with the most friction, the dreaded “register,” performed substantially worse than any other word for CTA buttons.
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. This 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.
Screenshot of landing page
Button Text
In some cases, your CTA may just be on the button itself with only a headline on the page. In that case, then you need to work very hard on crafting the right CTA in only a few words. Remember to avoid friction words, use timing words, and focus on the value for your visitor. Finally, remember to always use the first person when writing button text. For example, “download my free guide” works better than “download the guide.”
The Lead Capture Form
Screenshot of landing page
Many realtors who design landing pages don’t think too much about their lead capture forms. This is a huge mistake, as they could be costing you leads. Generally speaking, it makes sense to present your visitors with only one, or at most two questions to answer on your main page. While you may need or want more information from them, people get intimidated when looking at too many form fields to fill out.
Instead, you can ask just for very simple information on your landing page, then ask for more details on the confirmation page. Some landing page builders give you only one or two form fields on your main page, then present the visitor with more on the next page.
The Best Real Estate Landing Page Builders, Templates & Tools 2018
Landing page builders are online platforms that provide templates and other design options to help generate real estate leads. Comprehensive landing page builders feature drag-and-drop functionality, smart integrations, A/B testing, and more. To get started on your own landing page, check out Leadpages, with access to lead page templates starting at $25 per month.
How to Build DIY Landing Pages
You don’t need fancy software to build landing pages. Leadpages is an easy-to-use tool that helps you build beautiful real estate-specific landing pages that integrate with your social media campaigns. Choose from 150+ landing page templates or use the drag-and-drop builder to design your own. Click here to get five free, ready-to-launch campaigns.
Using Landing Pages with Real Estate Lead Generation Platform
If you sign up for real estate lead generation platforms like Real Geeks, they will throw in landing pages for free. For most realtors, this is the most economical way to build and use real estate landing pages.
12 Examples of Great Real Estate Landing Pages
1. Real Geeks
2. Leadpages
3. Redfin
4. David Stone: Greater Good Realty (TigerLead)
5. Corcoran Group (Custom Landing Page)
6. Bay City Group (Torchx)
7. Lori Ballen (Custom WordPress & Listings to Leads Instant Home Valuation Tool)
8. Corcoran
9. David Mueller Keller Williams Realty Ann Arbor (Zurple)
10. Yost Realty Group (Boomtown)
11. Market Leader
12. Wells Realty and Law Group Keller Williams
The Bottom Line
Mastering the real estate landing page is becoming more and more important for realtors in 2018. When building landing pages, understand your target audience and use short copy and simple layouts. Make sure your call to action stands out with a bright button and appealing copy, and choose a design that works best for your business.
Sasa Vukicevic
This is exactly what I was looking for. Many thanks Emile for sharing this,
American Dream Homes Property
There are a lot of things to consider and this article perfectly suits those who are just beginning in any form of business. SEO can only “make you” if you know how to effectively use it. Don’t forget the golden rule “less is more”!
Emile L'Eplattenier
Yup. There have been studies done that show the more choices someone has, the longer it takes them to take action. Limiting their choices to your CTA generally works better than crowding the page.
Mike C.
Thanks Emile for another wonderful article. Very informative. On my viewpoint, the most effective landing pages stay strictly on point. You don’t want it to end after the click-throughs. It’s best if you use multiple landing pages that coincide with your social media accounts such as your profiles on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Emile L'Eplattenier
Hey Mike,
I have to agree with you here. You landing pages have one purpose and one purpose only; to get people to give you their contact information. That’s it. Everything else including design, layout, aesthetics, etc. etc. is secondary to this. That said, I am a firm believer in professional design and good branding. Without both, your leads are going to think less of you and your services.
Anyway, thanks for stopping by and hope you’re having a killer 2018 so far.
Mike C.
Glad to have come across your blog. It sure is worth the time. Thanks Emile for your input. Indeed we are having an awesome roller-coaster ride start of the year. We do hope that you can keep on coming up with insightful articles as this is very helpful to all first-timers in the business. Kudos!
Tom Davies
We are just about to launch our brand new website and I just want to say this is a h*ll of a resource! The one thing that felt wrong was the rumor that CTA’s perform better if below the fold feels rather misleading, for, in my humble opinion, the efficiency of the page comes down to how attractive is the buy/ sale/ etc pitch at the end of the day. If you have a great value proposition, then prospects will turn into leads and convert, but if the property deal isn’t too much of a deal, it won’t matter where the CTA is.
Emile L'Eplattenier
Hey Tom,
Glad you found the article helpful and thanks for stopping by. The whole below or above the fold debate is a thorny one to be sure, and my editor is very much on the side of above. That said, I saw the alternative opinion and decided to teach the controversy. For most realtors, landing pages are going to be for home valuation rather than selling specific properties. If your copy is great, it shouldn’t really matter.
Emaar
Very insightful read. It’s amazing how many website owners completely ignore even the basics when it comes to landing pages. At the end of the day, a landing page is a shopfront for any business and needs to be treated as at least that. Bad design and slow loading time will only mean your potential clients leave immediately and go to your competitors.
Emile L'Eplattenier
Hey Emaar,
I couldn’t agree more! Landing page design is definitely an art these days, and you’ll find lot’s of conflicting best practices among marketers, but it’s still crucially important to make sure your landing page is designed and written in a way that increases the likelihood of leads giving you their contact information. At the end of the day nothing else matters!