Your real estate website should be more than an on-line business card. It’s an asset.
Hopefully, that asset has been converting for you over the years. If it has, great, keep going.
If it hasn’t, here are some areas (and features) that I would consider adding to your website to help you turn more site visitors into subscribers and customers.
1. Fresh Content
If you want to rank well in search results you have to continue to feed “the blog beast.” That means creating great local content.
Write about:
- Things to do in the community
- New developments
- Share local market statistics
An excellent example is what Nick Bastian has done with RailLife.com.
Take a look at last year’s traffic on your website. Which posts and pages did site visitors visit the most? Focus on creating the type of content that keeps people engaged.
While writing local market reports doesn’t sound all that “sexy,” it’s going to be totally relevant to that buyer and seller that’s ready to transact right now.
If you’re still short on post ideas, here’s a tip, subscribe to blogs like Zillow and Keeping Current Matters. What are they writing that’s relevant in today’s market? Can you re-apply some of their stats, fun facts, and tips to your local market?
2. What’s My Home Worth Landing Page
One of the quickest and most in-expensive ways to generate seller leads is through Facebook’s paid advertising. It’s both easy and cost-effective to create an ad that’s going to reach the right demographic. You just need the right tool in place to convert that traffic into a qualified lead.
This agent below for example generated 8 leads with less than $150 spend.
Here’s the ad that he’s running:
With Cloud CMA for example, we have our “What’s My Home Worth?” landing pages available in each account. The lead registration process is a two step process:
(Disclosure: I work for W&R Studios, makers of Cloud CMA)
Step 1: The lead visits your landing page and enters their property address > then Cloud CMA fetches data from the MLS and brings it back
Step2: Then, the lead is asked to enter their name, email, and phone number (this field is optional)
Once they complete step two, Cloud CMA sends a link to a CMA report to the consumer via email and the agent gets an email that says: “You have a new lead!” The agent will also receive a copy of the report via email along with the lead’s contact information.
If you’re not using a “What’s My Home Worth” landing page to generate seller leads you’re missing on a great opportunity to score some big wins.
3. Pop-Up Banners for Email Capture
What are you doing to keep site visitors coming back to your website again and again?
If you find that site visitors are coming to your site and sticking around for more than a few minutes, accessing multiple pages per visit, you want to make sure that you’re also capturing their email address so that you can continue to send them regular updates. Whether they’re listing alerts, local blog posts, financing updates, or whatever.
Here’s how Scott get’s site visitors to subscribe and stick around:
OptinMonster is a great pop-up tool that get’s site visitors to convert into subscribers. What I love about OptinMonster is their exit-intent pop-up which triggers the pop-up when a site visitors goes to close the browser to leave to another site. It’s like it says, “wait, before you go, sign-up to get regular updates!”
Say what you will about pop-up banners, they convert!
4. Buyer & Seller Guides
I regularly hear agents ask on Facebook what services or providers they recommend for creating buyer and seller guides.
Seasonal Buyer & Seller Guides are a great way to generate new subscribers and leads. And if you don’t have the time or copywriting chops to create these guides yourself every season, don’t worry, here’s a great service that has seasonal guides ready to go and ready to download: keepingcurrentmatters.com.
Here’s what I recommend:
- Sign-up (a subscription costs $19.95/month and it comes with a free 14-day trial)
- Download the guides and slap your logo and contact information on there
- Re-write some of the content to add your own local content if you wish (I’d highly recommend doing this)
- Setup a landing page with an email opt-in to download the guides
- Create some ads that you can place strategically on the sidebar of your website to get site visitors to click-through and sign-up to download the guide
And viola! You’re all set. You just saved yourself countless hours all for the low price of $19.95.
5. Integrate With A CRM & Follow Up More
One of the biggest reasons leads fail to convert is: poor follow up.
A CRM like Follow Up Boss is going to allow you to start each day with a follow up list. Who do you need to contact today that’s hot and ready to go? Any old leads that you can re-engage?
Rather than sifting through leads in your inbox, having a CRM system where you can categorize your hottest opportunities, is going to make you much more efficient so that you don’t miss or lose any opportunities right now.
Over to you …
How well did your website convert in 2015? What are you looking to change and improve in 2016?
Any specific successes or failures in your marketing and the tools you’ve been using?
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