Want to increase your digital conversion rate by nearly 550%?
Top landing pages can help you get there. Making the most of these pages will strengthen your lead generation efforts, and turn visitors into customers.
When people enter your site, you need to deliver them what they’re looking for in detail. Whether that be a new home, sales services, or even vacant positions with your real estate company.
There’s no point in spending days working on your search engine optimization efforts (SEO) if your landing pages are dull. People want to see pictures, videos, and even enjoy tours of the homes you’re listing. Not to face a jumble of keywords, poor copy, and an uninspiring, non-committal call-to-action.
However, we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves. If you’re brand new to the world of digital marketing, maybe you’re scratching your head. What’s a landing page? How many do I need?
Let’s go. Together, we’re going to build some top landing pages.
What are Landing Pages?
Landing pages are the web pages people ‘land’ on when they click through to your site — the first page they see.
We don’t mean the home page they see when they type your URL into the address bar, or search your name in Google.
That’s a different kind of user. They’re the direct type who already knows you exist. They’re probably a warm-ish lead if they’re looking specifically for you.
Landing pages are where people who are clicking your pay-per-click (PPC) ads land, or those acquired through banner/display ads. As well people who have come across your SEO-targeted pages which searching the net.
They will offer some kind of specific service or offer. For example, for home sellers you might be offering a special reduced commission rate. Your landing page will center around that offer and push them to list their home with you.
For buyers, you might have a brand new set of gorgeous homes in a desirable neighborhood that you want to draw their attention to. Which you’re offering at very competitive prices. Book today(!), you say.
Essentially, you’re driving engagement and conversion with a page designed to act as a ‘funnel’ to make users take the action they want. You can then measure success on the number of conversions from these pages.
You can then figure out what’s working and what’s not working to refine and improve their performance. This feedback-driven approach helps you build top landing pages which deliver solid leads for your business.
SEO vs Top Landing Pages
Good SEO results rely on appropriate keywords and decent keyword density, as well speed, structure and many other factors.
With this in mind, how do you make your landing pages as powerful as possible?
If you prioritize SEO at the expense of good landing page design, people will find you but may not find your landing page that interesting.
If you prioritize the other way round, you’ll have amazing landing pages with great conversion – but this will mostly be fed by PPC ads, which most of us ignore.
You won’t have the volume of visitors you would have had with a successful SEO campaign. Especially given the effectiveness of local search optimization, a strategy which lends itself well to the real estate world. That’s not to say you should ignore PPC, as it can deliver great results too. You need an approach which covers all the bases.
There’s a fine balance that top landing pages must achieve between SEO objectives and attractive, user-friendly pages. So we’ll talk a bit about both in what’s to follow.
Using Images and Video
Images and video are two of the most important elements on any landing page.
Images immediately make pages seem much more attractive and break up chunks of copy. Video is also at the forefront of modern content marketing strategies. Let’s examine both in a bit more detail.
Images
Top landing pages need imagery to be effective. Invest in professional photography if you can. It’s worth it for the results it delivers.
This is particularly true if you’re working in a luxury segment of the market where buyers inevitably expect nothing but the best.
You need to send the best impression possible on your landing page, or they simply won’t be interested.
If you want to improve clickthrough rates and conversion, that means no blurry pictures, no weird angles and no obstructions. There should be lots of well-produced (and ideally professional retouched) galleries for users to look through.
Video
Video can give you the opportunity to walk through the home just once in order to attract hundreds of potential buyers.
It’s more dynamic than still images, and you can add commentary as the camera roams the house.
Top landing pages with video can perform up to 71% more effectively than pages without.
Alt Text
For SEO purposes, don’t forget to tag all media content properly. Search engines can’t see. They can’t analyze the content pictures or video (yet), although they will notice that they are there, which will boost your SEO ranking.
However, they need a little helping hand. For example, if you’ve got a picture of a home, you need to use ‘alt’ text in your code to explain to Google what it is you’re showing. This tag sits in the ‘IMG’ element.
In the context of a real estate agency, you could label a picture of a house as ‘house’. But that’s pretty boring, and doesn’t respond to your audience’s search terms.
It also doesn’t help people with sight problems see what they’re looking at. 3.4 million Americans are either blind or suffer from severe sight problems. These people buy homes too — don’t forget about them!
Descriptive alt text like ‘luxury San Diego home’ can help top landing pages to offer a little more direction to search engines and sight-impaired users. And including at least the town name in your alt text will boost your search ranking too.
3D Virtual Tours
A perennial problem in real estate industry is that when you’re advertising a house, you can easily overload people with information on your landing page.
There’s just so much to tell people about the homes on offer, there’s no space for it. This is the information you want to give them during viewings.
Hosting viewings means committing time. Ultimately, you might be committing time to people who are just not that interested. It’s a waste of both parties’ time.
A real conundrum, but we have the solution! 3D virtual tours provide a real ‘wow’ moment for customers on your landing page. And 54% of buyers feel more comfortable visiting a home once they’ve seen a 3D virtual tour.
Top landing pages can use this to secure interest, and importantly, this interest is from people who have already ‘seen’ the house and who liked it online. Think of it as a vetting mechanism. People who aren’t interested will look elsewhere.
People who are interested will ring you up, and as they’ve already seen the house via your top landing pages, there’s a much higher chance that they’ll go on to buy it.
Getting the Copy Right
Video and images are really important elements of top landing pages.
However, too many people forget about the copy. Which is too bad. Great copy can perform around 350% better than dull copy.
It’s too easy to simply describe a home in bullet points. For example, let’s say you’ve got a few apartments in Philadelphia to sell. You might describe them on the landing page:
These homes feature:
- 3 Bedrooms
- 2 Bathrooms
- Large kitchens
- A communal garden”
Boring, right? Let’s try that again:
A collection of spacious 3-bedroom apartments in the popular borough of Society Hill, Philadelphia. The perfect choice for a young family or couple looking to stretch their legs a little.
With master bedrooms facing out onto well-kept communal gardens, you’ll enjoy great city views beyond.
Two bathrooms, including an en-suite in the master, mean no more fighting for space.
There are gorgeous hardwood floors throughout, except in the roomy kitchen which features Brazilian black slate flooring with cream and glass units for a modern feel.”
Let’s break it down a little. Instead of stating facts, we’re trying to solve problems. For people who want to upsize and need more space, who want a nicer environment to live in, and for those who want a more modern home.
It’s a bunch of problems tackled at once, meaning that many different groups of people will spot something they like. It’s definitely more attractive than bullet points!
Strong copy helps you to sell. It works best in conjunction with jaw-dropping pictures. It’s a partnership. Forget either element and your landing pages may fall short.
How Many Top Landing Pages Should I Use?
It’s tempting to go for a ‘shotgun’ approach and make a bunch of landing pages for the same offer. Or a single landing page covering many things.
This isn’t really helpful, as it becomes much harder to test what’s working and what’s just luck.
You should A/B test live landing pages using a limited budget to see which route to take, before you embark on your full campaign.
Each offer that you have should ultimately have just one landing page. And top landing pages should feature only one offer. This makes it much easier to track and optimize performance.
If you start offering several options on a landing page, customers need to make a decision. This might confuse them, or lead them away from the path you want them to follow, in order to convert. Stay focused and keep it simple.
They’ve clicked through from a search link or PPC ad, while Googling for new-build homes in Houston. Your landing page shows them a beautiful collection of apartments for sale.
They’re wowed by your video or virtual tour, and they’re getting excited. They want to come and see an apartment in person!
The big call-to-action button tells them to… ‘Click here to see more homes in Houston’.
What? Why? These ones are great. Why do you want to distract them?
Some form of ‘contact us’ call-to-action is far more appropriate, and secures their viewing. The less work they have to do, the better.
An online appointment form is often the best approach, as this gets you their details. Remember to ask if they’re happy to be contacted directly. Not many people are fans of cold calls or unsolicited emails.
Does Everything Work?
Top landing pages have to look and feel amazing.
However, they also serve a vital functional importance.
You need to test every element of your landing pages thoroughly before putting your campaign live.
Check to see if there are any broken links, videos which don’t work, or mixed messages to visitors.
All of these things will harm the landing page’s chances of doing its job right.
A web page which doesn’t work could also make people think negatively about your business. If your web pages don’t work, what will they think about your services? That’s right – a broken landing page could do significant harm to your brand reputation.
Test, re-test, and test again.
Time to Make Those Home Sales!
Once you’ve made some top landing pages for yourself, and combined this with an excellent digital strategy touching every point on the list (SEO, PPC, display, and so on), your leads will come flowing in.
All that’s left to do is to conduct viewings and make those sales. Being the born salesperson that you are, we know you won’t struggle with this bit.
Top landing pages can help to increase the volume and quality of your clients, meaning less time wasted and a more efficient sales process. Helping your real estate business to thrive.
Got questions? Thoughts? Start the discussion in the comments section below.