Is your website a marketing platform?
For any real estate agency, a website can be a valuable marketing tool to help you sell more property, and attract more customers. Forward-thinking agencies are using their websites in creative ways to attract qualified leads who are looking to do business.
In this post, we’ll reveal three essential lead generation strategies for your real estate website. These will help you attract and convert local homebuyers, homesellers and people looking to rent.
Generate leads with a free appraisal offer
Most of our clients identified homesellers as their most valuable leads. Clients looking to sell their property form the backbone of most real estate agencies, and every realtor needs property to sell.
An effective way to generate leads like this is with an appraisal offer.
How it works:
Your website is being browsed by individuals looking to sell their property. While on your website they see a compelling offer for a free appraisal. They provide details about their property, their name, phone number, email etc, in exchange for a free valuation. Your team gets in contact with the lead directly and sets up a call or a meeting.
Every real estate website needs an appraisal lead-gen strategy, so here are some tips to make yours better.
Turn your appraisal into an offer
It's important to boost the ‘perceived value’ of your appraisal. We can do this by turning the appraisal into a valuable offer for the lead. This increases the chances they will fill out the form. In our offer we use language that builds trust such as; ‘our experts’, and we leverage location keywords.
For example; instead of saying;
"Contact us if you're interested in selling your property."
A better offer would be:
“Get a free valuation on your house by our ‘your location’ property experts”
The latter is much more compelling because you’re offering the lead value instead of asking a favour.
Adding "It only takes one minute" is another way to encourage users to engage with the form. The quicker and easier the process seems - the better!
Use multi step forms
Everyone who’s downloaded a mobile app has experienced an onboarding process via a multi step form. App developers use multi step forms because they have higher completion rates, ensuring as many users sign up as possible.
This is why the multi step form is our favourite type of appraisal form for property agencies. Here are some of the benefits you can see with this specific type of form:
- Higher completion rates
- A fun user experience
- Great for mobile users
- Easier to understand
We suggest splitting your appraisal form into three steps. Property info, contact info and a final message.
With these ‘bite sized’ chunks of information, we reduce cognitive load and the user completes the form one step at a time. A multi step form makes the overall process much less intimidating.
You can get a free cloneable of our multi step property appraisal here: https://webflow.com/made-in-webflow/website/multi-step-property-appraisal-form
A fun Mobile experience
Many of your browsers will be using mobile phones on your website. Therefore your appraisal form must be responsive on all devices. Leads should be able to apply for an appraisal from their car, in line at the supermarket, or while on the go.
If you’re using a multi step form, you’re already ahead of the game. This type of form lends itself well to mobile users because the form is compact, touch screen friendly, and has low cognitive load.
Remember to abide by accessibility best practices:
- Font size above 16 px
- Form fields with large tap area
- Bold, dark headings
Blog with a sticky offer:
A property blog is a great way to build trust with your clients and attract local search traffic.
It's also a place to put your appraisal offer so you can generate qualified leads. There should always be an offer on your blog posts.
Your blog should be optimised for local property keywords (regions, suburbs communities, etc) and discuss local news & relevant topics your customers could be searching for. The idea is to create content that's helpful for your customer segments. This builds trust and positions you as a leading agency in your community, and also helps people find you on Google.
Blog call to action
Every blog post must have a call to action (CTA) on the sidebar. Putting the CTA underneath the article means the user only sees the offer if they finish the article. You're already losing leads… Look on the right side of this blog post, you’ll see an offer that sticks with you for the whole article. If a reader has a sudden desire to engage, they can do so immediately.
As discussed before, our CTA should have high perceived value with a compelling offer. By using CTAs in our blog posts we are inviting traffic from Google to engage with our agency.
Dynamic offers
Dynamic offers are the ultimate way to generate leads from your blog. Remember those customer segments? Each blog post should be directed at one of your segments. The only problem; there’s no perfect CTA that fits all customer segments.
- Some segments want to contact an agent
- Others need an appraisal
Maybe you want an ebook offer on specific blog posts. The bottom line is; each post has a clear audience from your customer segments, and a targeted offer is displayed for that segment.
Welcome to dynamic blog offers.
Dynamic offers in the click of a button
Dynamic offers is a great use case for Webflow CMS. In the blog CMS, a switch can be set up for each offer. Simply switch on the offer that you want for that post, and it appears! Done.
If you want to change the offer at a later point, all you have to do is switch off the current offer and switch on the new. Simple, but powerful.
Property Ebook:
As real estate agents, you know how important winning your client’s trust is.
You’ll also know one of the best ways to gain trust is by demonstrating your expertise. If you can position yourself as the leading agency with the most expertise in your region, prospects will be more likely to trust you, and your clients will be more likely to buy property.
Your ebook creates trust
The Ebook is an excellent way for you to position yourself as a leading agency. Blog posts and websites are great, but there's something about a book that demonstrates expertise. With an ebook, you’re exchanging valuable information with prospects in return for their trust and confidence.
But that’s not all…
Building an email list
A more concrete asset we can get with our ebook are email addresses. Users enter their email to download the ebook, the emails are sent to your email list. Now you can start building a list of leads in your region.
These leads are qualified because they're interested in buying, selling and investing in your market. They were already on your website, and now they’re reading your book. These are signs they want to engage with you.
You can decide the best way to reach out to them. Whether it's an automated email after one week, or a personal introduction with an agent. Either way, you’ll want to get in touch with the lead to help them with their goals.
It’s also recommended you do some research on email marketing for real estate agencies.
Creating your ebook offer
Your ebook offer can be placed across your website. We want a nice mockup of your book, and some bullet points about what's in the ebook.
If made into a dynamic offer, you can 'switch on' the ebook offer on certain blog posts.
Creating the ebook
Someone at your agency with good copywriting skills can write a crash course on your local property market. With a large font, around 50 pages is a good length for your ebook. It should be concise, and full of bite sized tips and actionable advice.
Your title is very important, this is how the lead determines if the ebook is right for them. Remember to mention your local area in the title. Some ideas for titles are:
“The Ultimate Guide to Property in "location” or “Get Started with Property in "location”.
What should you write about?
Start with a brief crash course introduction to property in your region. Then move onto short chapters such as:
- The rental market
- Tips for buying
- Tips for selling
- Growing areas of town
- Investment properties
- The future of market
- How to choose an agency
The lead generating property website
Normal real estate agencies use their websites as a listings platform. Forward-thinking real estate agencies, see their website an all encompassing marketing platform.
To start turning your website into a marketing platform, we recommend you start by implementing the strategies discussed in this article.
- A local real estate blog
- Dynamic CTA offers
- Optimised appraisal forms
- An ebook
Thanks for reading and don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions.
