The world’s greatest real estate website will make it more likely for you to convert a visitor into a lead.
Even the best websites for real estate agents won’t always succeed in converting a prospect into a visitor.
1. Prospect > 2. Website Visitor > 3. Active Lead > 4. Customer
People who have not visited your website and are part of your target audience are considered prospects. Some people who visit your website can be turned into active leads by interacting with contact forms, calls to action, and contact information. After that, it is your responsibility to contact them and turn them into a customer.
Although your website may not be explicitly advertised to them, nor are they searching for you by name on Google, This means that if you don’t take them to your site, they will never be able to find it.
You need to bring as many potential customers to your website as possible and make sure it has effective tools for capturing leads.
What if you hosted an open house but didn’t invite any prospects or promote it anywhere, not even on MLS®? You shouldn’t attend the open house yourself or leave any business cards because you would be lucky if one person showed up or stuck around.
Your real estate website is a tool you can use to help sell your house, just like an open house. The more prospects that are relevant to your site that you invite, the higher the possibility that your site will convert them into active leads, and eventually customers.
You should know that your real estate website can be a great asset if you use it correctly. Here are 19 ways that you can use this information to your advantage this month.
If you’re not sure if you can handle local marketing on your own, consider hiring an expert. There are many people who have experience working with realtors and can help you with your marketing. (We do websites, not marketing.)
1. Email Signature
An email signature is the signoff you created that is shown at the bottom of all your emails. Your website should be accessible through your email signature. You could type out your website domain, or you could include a link to your website using a call to action. You can find out what your home is worth for free by clicking here. It’s not the most powerful marketing channel, but it’s a good place to start. People who visit your website through your email signature are always there for a reason.
2. For Sale & Open House Signs
It is important that your latest for sale signs and open house signs include a URL so that potential customers can visit your website. If you want your real estate sign to stand out, you’ll need to be creative. Think about ways to make your sign more eye-catching than the others. Consider adding a phrase like “View this property online” or “Video tour on our website” to increase your chances of converting prospects to visitors. Make sure your website is worth visiting by linking to interesting and useful content.
3. Outdoor Advertisements
If you want to advertise your real estate website on an outdoor advertisement, make sure it is clear and easy to read even if someone is driving by. Remember that most people who will see your website on a bus shelter ad will be passersby. The people who are most likely to see the advertisement are those who are waiting at the bus stop, riding on the bus, or walking by. The majority of individuals have a mobile device that is internet accessible. How can you make them want to load your website right then and there?
A phone number is necessary, but there should also be another call to action for people who aren’t ready to contact you yet, such as “Meet the team on our website” or “View upcoming open houses online.” What are some others?
4. Newspaper Ads
Newspaper and community paper ads are common marketing channels for real estate agents. Your website URL should always be included in these ads. Even though newspapers aren’t as sexy or modern as other publications, they can still help increase brand awareness and convert leads. And, if you use modern tools, you can convert even more leads.
Your newspaper ad shouldn’t be the last thing the reader sees from you that day. Generate leads from your ad by sending prospects to your website. You should not be afraid to try different call to actions to test which ones are more effective. For example, compare “View color photos of these listings at…” with “View drone videos of these listings at…”
5. PPC Campaigns
PPC can be a great way to drive relevant prospects to your real estate website. The only problem with this method is that it requires payment, and if not done correctly, can be quite costly while yielding few results. If you are not knowledgeable in PPC advertising, you should hire a local expert. This quote by Red Adair is relevant to PPC ads– it’s better to hire a professional to do the job than an amateur, because the amateur will likely end up costing more money.
Create several PPC campaigns simultaneously and compare which ad attracts more prospects who then become visitors, and which landing page results in more visitors becoming leads. Tweak and repeat. You need to make sure your keywords and demographics are targeting the right audience to reach your potential customers. Your ad copy should always match the landing page you’re sending people to. It is important to have a clear objective for your PPC campaign from the beginning to the end. your email campaign should provide some sort of value Your email campaign’s objective should provide some sort of value, whether it be increasing mailing list subscribers, sending eyes to a blog post, or promoting a listing.
6. Quality Content
Original text: The reason you go to the movies, pay $50 for 2 tickets and a bag of popcorn, and sit with hundreds of other people to watch a 2 hour movie is because of the exclusive content that you can’t find anywhere else. Content is why you fill your bookshelves with books. You listen to that radio station during the day because you like the music. Content is why you’re reading our blog right now. Content that is high-quality and evocative can push people towards your website, as it demonstrates what your company is about and what kind of standards you maintain.
I said at the start of this piece that potential customers aren’t looking for you by name on Google, and that your website isn’t drawing them in on its own. Your website can attract visitors by providing the information or content they are searching for. Some ways to generate content for a website include creating infographics, producing videos, compiling industry whitepapers, taking great photos, and writing awesome blogs.
If you’re not sure what content to create, try asking your potential customers what kind of content they engage with online. Use that as a starting point. To produce high-quality content that will appeal to your potential customers, host it on your website, and do so regularly. Once in a while, make it so they can’t access the content without giving you their email address.
7. Blogging
To blog is to produce content in order to attract potential customers to your business. An active blog is still better than an inactive blog, but it is not 2008 anymore. It is now more difficult to make your blog posts unique, timely and interesting. Some REALTORS® only share information about local events and real estate stats on their blogs. There are websites that are dedicated to local events and statistics. You cannot compete with large, established websites by simply including statistics or events in your blog articles. You need to take other measures to make your blog stand out and attract visitors. Develop a game plan in advance, begin with modest goals if necessary, and stick to your schedule. Producing rich results from blogging takes time, similar to the amount of time needed to produce a rich harvest from gardening. If you want to grow fruits and vegetables, you have to take care of your garden regularly. If you take it seriously, it will produce traffic for you on a consistent and ongoing basis.
8. Business Cards & Stationary
If your website is not clearly printed on your business cards, please update them the next time you reprint them. Business cards for real estate agents are handed out and exchanged frequently, so much so that 500 of them can disappear quickly. Most of the business cards get lost, however, some of them manage to bring customers to the website. This is also true for envelopes, letterheads, and notepads that REALTORS® send out in direct mailings (which are great). Always include a link to your website on your stationary. This is not going to your primary website marketing channel, however it is easy to do and it will make a difference.
9. Company Vehicles
If your company has a branded vehicle, be sure to include your website on it. Some agents might decorate an entire vehicle with a design, others might only put a sticker on the window. If you choose to brand your company vehicles, be sure to include a link to your website. This is a branded real estate vehicle that you might see if you live in North or West Vancouver.
10. Open House Literature
The person who came to your open house is already interested in your listing. Now is a great time to encourage your customers to visit your website on their mobile devices. Printed feature sheets with your website URL are a great way to promote your website. Make sure to include a sign or verbal mention of your digital feature sheet available on your website to each visitor. Make sure to include a few sentences about yourself on your /about-me page, so your visitors can get to know you better. You could also tell them to download your free “PDF Buyer’s Guide” on your site. If you are collecting contact information from visitors at an open house, you can use the top of that form to promote your blog. Make sure that the people who visit your physical open house also visit your website soon afterwards.
11. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
You can encourage people to visit your real estate website by improving its ranking on search engines. Blogging is one way to optimize your website. Having other reputable sites link to yours is another. If you want your website to be successful, you need to make sure you’re regularly updating it with new content. There are other tactics that can improve your SEO, but we won’t go over all of them in detail here. A Realtorfuel website comes with micro-optimizations that improve your SEO rank by default. That is your foundation. How you build and maintain the rest is your responsibility. If you optimize for search engines, more people will be able to find you online, and your online presence will become more reputable. Contact a 3rd party local SEO specialist for assistance.
12. Social Media Marketing
Websites predate social media by roughly two decades. Even though times have changed, online marketing efforts are still focused on the same things. Your social media marketing should at least partially aim to send potential customers to your website. Social Media Marketing pairs really well with point 7. If you want people to see the great content you have on your website, share it through social media!
Promote your blog articles on your personal Facebook page and profile. Tweet your listings and make sure to include a photo (Content with relevant images gets 94% more views than content without – HubSpot.) Publish your aerial tours on YouTube and Vimeo. By having a link to your website in your Instagram bio, you can direct people to your site. To use Pinterest to promote your website, simply create boards dedicated to your website’s content and then pin photos from your site onto those boards. One of your main goals on social media should be to get people who are interested in your product or service to visit your website.
13. Open House Invitations
This advice is for real estate agents who commonly send electronic invitations and physical invitations to people they are hoping to do business with when hosting an open house. It is beneficial to direct those who have received your open house invitation to your website for more information about the listing before they attend. Make sure that your open house invitation has links to any extra content about the property, like a virtual tour, photos and videos, drone footage, or floor plans. The main purpose of the invitation is for the recipients to attend your open house, so make sure the message is not diluted. Mentioning where they can get more information will ensure that people know what they are getting into before they RSVP.
14. Write Guest Articles
If you write a guest piece for a popular blog, you will likely get a link back to your website at the top or bottom of the article. You can link text in your article back to your website. I contribute real estate marketing articles to REW.ca’s Agent Resources section. I link RealtyNinja.com to the phrase “lead generating real estate websites” in my articles, which helps search engines connect our website to that phrase.
It is beneficial to have one or more links from your site to other popular sites on the internet. If you want to be seen as an expert and attract relevant traffic, you need to have backlinks from reputable online publications. These backlinks tell search engines that your website is endorsed by a trusted source, which can help your website rank higher in search results. Search engines like this a lot!
15. Feature Sheets
Earlier in point 10. Open House Literature, we touched briefly on Feature Sheets. Sometimes people find your feature sheets from places other than your website. When you are presenting your feature sheets to a potential customer, you want to make sure that they have a clear plan of action for what to do next.
If you think of the feature sheet as an advertisement, it should include a call to action. While a feature sheet can give potential buyers an overview of your property, it cannot tell the story like your website can. You want people to be able to contact you easily about the property, so your website is the best place to include all the information. In addition, your feature sheet does not have any lead-capture functions, such as forms or clickable buttons. Make sure to include a call to action on your feature sheet that tells potential buyers to visit your website for more photos and a drone video tour of the property. This will help increase interest in the property and make it more likely to sell.