Lead Generation Tactics: Capturing and Converting Visitors on Real Estate Websites

Intro

Making a sale in the real estate sector is not easy. While the sales cycle can range from 6 months to 24 months or even longer because the ticket size is very big and is considered a long-term investment, the sector is very competitive, with numerous local small brokers coming up now and then. Furthermore, repeat business is quite low, as the average real estate buyer waits around 7 years between two investments.

As a result, whether you bring traffic to your website or landing pages through organic search, PPC, social media, Public Relations, offline branding, or traditional advertising, you need a solid strategy in place to ensure that the traffic follows the path that you intend them to take and enters the sales funnel, as driving traffic to the website through any of the mentioned methods involves an investment of time, resources, and money.

However, boosting traffic is not the real challenge in real estate because individuals are more likely to invest time and effort in completing organic research, and browsing through many portals and resources before making the final decision to invest. Capturing and converting interested prospects and moving them through the sales funnel is the real challenge. As a result, marketing professionals working in the industry must continuously be on the lookout for new ways and means to generate more leads while still maintaining quality.centric approach, combined with the expertise of a web design agency in Los Angeles, can significantly improve your website's performance, boost engagement, and drive business growth.

And if you're dealing with a low lead-to-visitor conversion rate, this article can be a game changer for your real estate business. Here, we've outlined several excellent, time-tested strategies that can help you optimize your website conversion funnel and outperform the competition.

Keep the website navigation and content flow simple and intuitive

The content flow or information architecture (IA) plays a crucial role in enhancing user experience (UX) and improving conversion rates. The website is a one-stop shop for all possible information, about your business, products, services, values, customer queries, insights, reports, testimonials, customer success stories, and more. Visitors from different sources and belonging to different stages of the buying process visit your website. A well-planned and intuitive site structure enables visitors to navigate your website effortlessly, find relevant information quickly, and take desired actions, ultimately increasing the likelihood of conversions.

Each page starting from the HomePage on your real estate website should have a specific purpose and deliver relevant information to visitors.

HomePage

The home page serves as the virtual storefront of your real estate business, and it should provide a clear overview of your offerings and engage visitors from the moment they arrive. Some key best practices include:

1. Having a prominent and compelling headline that captures the essence of your business and differentiates you from competitors.
2. Showcasing popular listing that aligns with your target audience preference. You can use tools like Hotjar, CrazyEgg, or Google Analytics to identify the most browsed listings.
3. Providing a search functionality that allows visitors to reach directly to the listing they are interested in.
4. Additionally, highlight any unique selling points, testimonials, or trust signals to build credibility.

Navigation and flow of content

There is no hard and fast rule or navigation type that you should adopt, the basic objective is to make it easy for visitors to find what they are looking for. To be able to do this effectively, you can map the website’s IA to search queries of customers or analyze user flow using platforms like Google Analytics, and Hotjar, or do a small experiment with your target audience by classifying and sorting information on your website into different categories. The experiment is very beneficial in understanding what feels intuitive to users.

Once the key pages are identified, you can order them in such a way that the most important pages are on the extreme ends of navigation. Multiple studies show that people remember links on either end. Use clear and concise labels for navigation items, ensuring they reflect the users' mental models. Common navigation items for a real estate website could include "Home," "Property Search," "Sell Your Home," "Neighborhoods," "About Us," and "Contact."

Compelling, Informative content

As previously stated, on the one hand, you may have visitors who have not yet made the choice to purchase a house and are simply looking around, while on the other hand, the real estate sector is highly competitive.

As a result, high-quality content is critical in catching and holding users' attention. Investigate what your visitors are looking for, their common inquiries, their desires, and their demands. Utilize the sales staff to better understand your visitors' wants and problem areas.

Offer them unique, trustworthy, and engaging content resources that are easy to engage with, such as long-form videos or in-depth guides that contain information they won't find anywhere else. Quality content can help you earn trust and move your prospects closer to conversion.

To keep your visitors engaged, you can adopt the following best practices of real estate:

• Virtual tours: With the advancement of technology, interactive virtual property tours using QR Codes including that of neighborhood, and 3D floor plans have become essential tools for capturing visitors' interest and enhancing user experience.
• Videos have the potential to double the amount of time spent by visitors. Include video in your content strategy for the website, for example, you can use videos for client interviews, Q&A sessions live streams, How-to, and general information videos, Agent profiles, videos of local community events, and so on.

Optimize webpages for conversions

One of the reasons why most real estate businesses suffer from low conversion rates is that they drive traffic to web pages that are not optimized for conversions, what this means is that the webpages are not optimized to capture email and submit contact information, they don’t use custom landing pages to convert visitors into leads.

It is important to have one landing page for one and only one specific action, which means real estate businesses should have as many landing pages as the number of actions they want users to take or in short, more number of landing pages. Also, the landing page preferably shouldn’t have navigation menus, so that the visitors either take the action intended or exit from the landing page.You can take the help of landing page builders to create your own landing pages effortlessly. Hubspot found that businesses with 10 to 15 landing pages increase real estate lead generation by 55%.

The call-to-action, or the action you want the visitor to take, is another crucial factor to take into account when optimizing web pages for conversions and conversion rate. This could entail requesting pricing, making an appointment, downloading a guide, or subscribing to the newsletter. Place pertinent calls to action on all the pages. Every page should have pertinent CTAs that offer a logical next step toward conversion. Take into account the themes on each page. Additionally, use CTAs that are not generic and that emphasize the benefit the visitor will receive.

Retarget website visitors with offers, and exclusive deals

Retargeting people who have previously expressed an interest in your content boosts your chances of obtaining more high-quality leads. You can display tailored adverts to these visitors when they browse other websites or social media platforms by employing tracking pixels or cookies. This serves as a constant reminder of your business's brand and products, which keeps your real estate services top of mind and motivates site visitors to come back and become leads. Segment your retargeting campaigns based on the pages or listings visitors interacted with, resulting in more tailored and relevant adverts.

Use certain lead magnets like getting floor plans for free, downloading a locality map for the property the visitor had visited, or a brochure of the property, to incentivize them to share their contacts.

Implement an effective CRM system

To effectively capture and manage leads, it's essential to have a robust customer relationship management (CRM) system in place. A CRM system helps you organize and track leads, automate follow-up processes, and personalize communications. It allows you to segment leads based on their interests, preferences, and stages in the buying or selling process, enabling you to tailor your approach and nurture leads more effectively.

Remember, not all visitors are looking to buy property, but, with a good content strategy, can be converted to marketing-qualified leads, and then after further nurturing they can be converted to sales-qualified leads. Hence, collect email addresses or WhatsApp contact through lead capture forms in exchange for virtual property tours, or free resource downloads, and build a list of potential clients and target them through email marketing and SMS marketing.

Using an effective CRM like Corefactors AI CRM, send regular newsletters, market updates, new property listings, and relevant content to keep your audience engaged and informed. Personalize your emails or WhatsApp conversation based on the recipient's interests and preferences to increase open rates and click-through rates. Incorporate compelling calls-to-action in your messages and emails to encourage recipients to take the next steps in their real estate journey.

Final Words:

In conclusion, capturing and converting visitors on real estate websites requires a comprehensive approach that incorporates various lead generation tactics. By optimizing your website for search engines, creating valuable content, utilizing lead capture forms, offering compelling and informative content like virtual property tours, implementing live chat functionality, retargeting campaigns, utilizing email marketing, and implementing an effective CRM Solution, you can significantly enhance your chances of capturing high-quality leads and driving conversions.

Stay proactive, adapt to the evolving digital landscape, and continuously measure and optimize your lead generation strategies to maximize your website's potential and achieve long-term success in the real estate industry.