How to Increase Your Real Estate Lead Conversion Rates

If you were to double or triple your online real estate lead conversion rate, how would that factor into your commissions? You’ve asked “how do I convert more of my Website leads” so here’s a number of things you need to do. One is to Wow them with a fantastic unique value proposition right off the bat. Then you build trust and relevance right away.

What Realtors never talk about is their value proposition. If you don’t have one, they won’t call and they likely won’t convert later via your CRM. With people: first impressions count but it’s more than web design they’ll looking at.

Research shows that 35-50% of home buyers go with the first agent they find. (Source: InsideSales.com).  How can you wow them and make them an offer they can’t refuse?

When They Land on Your Website

Websites, good content and SEO have never been given proper credit for their help in generating real estate leads. Social media too isn’t getting credit. In reality, prospects do visit your website and you need to convert them quick.

CRM and Nurturing Means You Missed Them

CRM Solutions aren’t lead conversion. I’ll tell you why you need to ignore CRM solutions shortly. Right now, I know you’re thinking “if I could triple conversions on my website, that would be magnificent.” You’d be right. In the realm of real estate sales, it could mean millions of dollars and sustained future sales. It’s time you started getting into this conversion thing in-depth. And that’s the thrust of this post.

The words lead conversion today have been unfortunately branded and tied to marketing automation. And that’s sad.

That’s “after the fact marketing.”  We must convert those leads right away on your site. This is your top mission. If you’re not, something is definitely wrong — they gave you the thumbs down, and now you have to chase and nurture them. That’s doing things the hard way. So lets fix it, so you don’t have to get into all that obnoxious marketing automation silliness. You’ll find out what the key is and then apply it to your website like a pro.

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Creating Value and Delivering It

If prospects begin to associate you with the value they want, those leads will begin to convert. With no value presented, they’re onto another agent online, or in their community or, they just don’t bother selling their house. So if Realtors have failed online, it’s because of a lack of communicating value to visitors. Without that, there can be no trust, relevance, or magnifying of their buying intent.

And I have to say that the keywords searchers type in tells you a lot about whether you’re going to convert them too. Crappy keywords generate crappy leads and so do low search engine rankings.  The leads that convert are at the top.  Just do some Adwords ads, and you’ll find out.  So a good part of your lead conversion is due to the fact you’ve got the wrong people coming in, or they’re just tire kickers and time wasters. Even if you have all they want, they’ll still waste your time and not convert.

Buyers and Sellers are online. You know the stats. 90% go online. So the question is, why aren’t you getting in front of them and delivering the value they want?

You Convert Leads with Your Value Proposition

What plagues most realtors is a missing value proposition. It’s not unique, differentiated from all the hordes of mediocre realtors out there. It’s not personalized nor significant to them. And it makes no impact and doesn’t engage them for very long. Yikes, why would they want to work with you? Building a clear preference for you is what it’s all about.

And your Realtor UVP is actually fairly complex and has to be presented well. Realtors blame design, poor CRM tools, and ineffective digital marketing techniques. But most visitors can see through shiny buttons and ragged clothing and know instinctively whether you deliver the goods. You need a way to infuse your value proposition into your content, your webdesign, and your ongoing client nurturing campaign — so it’s laser clear.

If you haven’t explored and built your best Realtor unique value proposition, read my in-depth post on the topic. It could be career changing for you. Then after you’ve developed your personalized, significant unique value proposition and refined your approach with the techniques in this post on lead conversion, who do you think will be the most preferred Realtor?

The old days of offering a photograph and sales awards seems silly now, but how far have you come in delivering an excellent promise of value to your prospects?  You’ve tried lead generation companies and discovered that converting real estate leads requires sincerity and time and not something for nothing attitudes. Visitors need a reason to trust you and like you.

Think about your losses over a lifetime because real estate is a long term business. Repeat sales happen over decades, but those sales are serious business.

Let’s Take a Good Look at Your Value Proposition right now:

• do you communicate your experience?
• have you shown/communicated your past and current success?
• do you demonstrate your knowledge of your local city and micromarkets?
• do you mention events with your past clients?
• do you have testimonials and what is the real message in those testimonials?
• have you expressed how you are dependable and honest?
• have you shown empathy and willingness to listen?
• do you mention your performance of getting over asking price?
• did you mention your record of putting in winning bids?
• do you have authoritative content easily found on your website?
• does your website content/blogs/FB posts show you are knowledgeable and have good judgement?
• does your website suck or is broken or slow with irrelevant content?
• do you communicate a friendly, professional image who is easy to work with and not a hard nosed troublemaker who won’t bend?
• do you offer free home staging and cleaning services?
• is there a link to your Linkedin profile?
• can customers visit your Facebook page?
• are you using the latest technology on your website?

The Calgary Home Boys have an amazing website (with a superb CRM system). It gives visitors what they want most, a great home search experience.

What are the Top 8 Conversion Rate Factors?

1. the quality of incoming lead/visitor
2. the source of incoming lead/visitors
3. the generosity and transparency of your value proposition
4. relevance of your personal services, experience and knowledge
5. a clear presentation of your personal/professional brand image
6. a clear call to action
7. incentives and feel good content given free
8. immediacy and fast response – they must contact you right now and you’re ready for them

If you optimize these 8 conversion rate factors above, prospects will be good quality therefore easier to convert and you’ll have given every reason to work with you.

Remember that prospective home buyers or home sellers want to feel trust, comfort, happiness, confidence, and even euphoria about their decision to buy or sell. They want to feel that you’re going to be a positive part of their dream and that you’re a good fit.

They’re going take your brand image and try to include it as part of their beautiful puzzle picture. You have to be a relevant part of the dream.

It all comes down to their moment of decision. If you exalt and maximize their moment of decision with you in it, you might get the call and be their preferred Realtor. And this applies equally to any other profession including mortgages, home loans, home renovation, replacement windows, plumbing, landscape design, and interior design.

They see your trustworthiness in your web site design and the value proposition expressed in your copywriting. You may have thought pretty copywriting was all you needed. Do you have standard copy blurbs that appear on many other Realtor websites? Oh man, you’ll killing your conversions and making yourself look run of the mill.

Get Into Their Dream or Be Forgotten

To get the quality, relevance, impact and trustworthiness message across, you need epic level, information-rich, and affirmative copywriting. Pretend you’re creating a business case for their purchase and you get the idea. They’re looking to you for emotional support, data, direction, and help in presenting this to their significant others.

Remember that they need to justify the purchase (and to hire you) to their spouse, children, friends and banker. If they can’t do it, the discussion is short lived, never to be mentioned again. If you can align with their dream, they’ll choose you to sell their home. All you need to to do is express it on your website.

If you’ll notice I didn’t mention anything about a CRM solution. There are some good ones sure and you need to manage your leads of course. The point is, that if you convert them right away with a phone call, you may not need to spend so much time chasing them, nurturing and paying for expensive, time consuming marketing automation (which could be harmful).

CRM software solutions are passive tools for converting weak leads — create value and convert now!

How about pretending you don’t have any follow up and lead nurturing solution? Now you must convert them right away. If you think it’s time for you to look into redeveloping a new real estate website and your content then give me a call at 416 998 6246!