Make your Letting Agent website a lead generator, not a brochure based website
Portals like Rightmove and Zoopla have revolutionised the property sector, they have reach and help create sales. Yet, if you rely on them exclusively for your leads – and this is not uncommon – you risk putting the wellbeing of your enterprise in their hands. To alleviate that risk, turn your brochure website into a lead generating one.
Lead-generating or brochure-based? You decide
If your website went down, would it just be inconvenient or actually have a negative impact on your business? If you answered ‘inconvenient’ you’ve probably got what we call a ‘brochure website’ and you’re not utilising this powerful tool to its full capability.
So what is a brochure website?
Brochure websites serve a purpose BUT they generally don’t give you a steady flow of good quality leads. On the upside, a brochure website can verify who you are, be visually attractive to showcase your properties, be optimised for search and be quick, simple and inexpensive to design, build and deploy to various devices
On the downside, in today’s fiercely competitive property market, your ‘static’ brochure website – no matter how good looking – is probably not doing a lot of good. This is your shop window on the world. It should be ‘active,’ the hub of all your marketing efforts, your top salesperson and deliver results.
How do you change your letting agent brochure website into a website that generates leads, and why should you?
Essentially you need a website that can generate leads, 24/7/365. You can achieve this by getting visitors to complete a form to view a property, sign up to go on a waiting list or give you their details in exchange for being able to download something of value. Once they have, you’re in a position to start and sustain a conversation with them – that’s a ‘conversion,’ a quality, qualified lead.
Start with your strategy
We consider these strategic questions when we design and build a lead generation website:
- What are you trying to achieve: your website should be created to support your business metrics and objectives
- Who do you serve: be specific, what does the person you’re targeting look, think and behave like (we call this the ‘customer persona’)
- What do they want: what problem/s do you solve for them
- What do you want your visitors to do: build in opportunities and prompts for your visitors to take clearly defined actions you can track, verify and respond to
- What can you offer to add value: provide something – a free report or guide, for example – to entice people to give their name and contact details
- Are your remarketing pixels in place: this small, invisible piece of code is embedded in your web pages so you can save visitors’ cookies and target them in future.
Now, armed with this information you’re ready to tackle the content of your website.
Next focus on your homepage
You don’t get a second chance to make the right first impression, so your home page is critical. An effective, efficient one must quickly answer three essential questions for your visitors:
- What you do: how you solve their problems?
- Why they should care: what makes you different or better than the rest?
- Where’s the next step: is it clear, fast and simple?
Then get your homepage call to action right
You need to create a compelling reason or giveaway with a clear value proposition, one that will encourage visitors to sign up. For example, you could offer a free report or guide to download in exchange for their contact details. This will not only help you gain leads, it will give your website extra impact and memorability.
But keep the ’sign up and download’ process quick and easy. Stick to the essentials – a simple form asking for a name and e-mail address is sufficient to start a conversation with a prospect.
The best of the rest of your web pages
Visitors do not always land on your homepage first. So check to see which of your website’s other pages are the most visited. Usually around 20% of your web pages will get 80% of your traffic. Ensure these pages are the first to get your attention.
An added bonus – your own marketing database
A lead generation website doesn’t just enable you to build up your leads, sales and revenues. It also allows you to build your own prospect and customer database, a valuable asset to leverage to generate business. Plus it gives you more control over your marketing, so you don’t have to rely on third party portals. If you don’t have the time or expertise to create your own lead generation website, we know of experts that can, so please get in touch.
Written by Kevin Williams. As one of the founders of Servon Design, Kevin has more than two decades of web and digital marketing experience in the property sector. He focuses on helping Landlords, Property Managers and Letting Agents not only generate leads through digital marketing but also helps improve their online brand and presence.
Written by Kevin William [Director at Servon Design Limited]
www.servondesign.co.uk
