Landing Pages 101: Tips and Tools for Getting Set Up Fast

We've been getting a lot of questions about landing pages lately. It's no wonder, either—from Facebook ads to Google Adwords to home valuation offers, landing pages are a critical piece of your online lead generation activities.

After all, a good landing page can turn an anonymous web surfer who clicked your Facebook ad into a bonafide lead who willingly gives you their contact information. But who has time to create a landing page from scratch? (Hint: not you!)

Today, we'll look at a handful of easy-to-use landing page solutions, and best practices for making your landing pages successful.

What is a landing page, anyway?

Before we get started, let's clarify what a landing page actually is and why Realtors may want to use them.

A landing page is a standalone web page dedicated to one thing only: capturing leads. Agents typically use landing pages as the destination that web surfers go to when they click on an ad. For example, let's say you're creating a Facebook Ad that offers homeowners a free home valuation. Where should you send people that click your ad? To a landing page where prospects can receive that home valuation instantly in exchange for their contact information, so you can follow up with them later!

A landing page is different than an ordinary page on your agent website. For starters, a landing page should match what your ad is offering. Prospects who click on an ad for a free home valuation should be sent to a page where they can get exactly that--not the front page of your website, or your "Contact me" page, as that would just cause confusion for the prospect.

Landing pages, on the other hand, are designed to be straightforward and offer prospects exactly what they want in order to get them to give up their contact information as quickly as possible. The best landing page designs eliminate all distractions not pertaining to the offer at hand. There are no links to your agent website or elsewhere—just persuasive copy, relevant images, and a lead capture form.

If you'd like a little more in-depth information about landing page basics, check out these articles:

• Anatomy of a Real Estate Landing Page
• Landing Page Tips to Help You Generate More Leads

Landing page solutions

Now that you know what a landing page is, let's take a look at a few solutions that are easy to get up and running quickly:

1. Leadpages - While Leadpages serves multiple industries, they do offer multiple landing page templates specific to real estate. This service is affordable and offers integrations with many popular tools, including CRMs, as well as A/B testing, drag-and-drop customization, a weekly coaching call, and more.

2. Cloud Attract - On the pricier end of the spectrum is this brand new offering from the makers of Cloud CMA. Cloud Attract is designed specifically for real estate and offers multiple templates that offer prospects a CMA, home valuation, or listing alerts. You can easily embed these pages into your existing website, share them on social media, or use them as a standalone destination.

3. Home Value Leads - If you're specifically looking for listing leads, give Home Value Leads a try. This solution offers sellers automated home valuations, and lets you continue to nurture them via built-in drip marketing campaigns. If a prospect doesn't offer their contact information, this tool can optionally search for their name, email, and phone number for you.

4. Elevated REM - Another option for offering home valuations, Elevated REM offers new lead notifications via text and email, an email autoresponder, partial lead capture capabilities, and more.

5. Unbounce - While created to service multiple industries, Unbounce does offer several landing page templates for real estate. There no home valuations here, though—these templates mainly focus on capturing interest for individual properties, which may be useful for luxury-focused agents.

Agent website providers like iFoundAgent are increasingly offering support for landing pages today. Before purchasing a standalone landing page solution, you may want to check with your website vendor to see if they offer landing page capabilities, and if those pages will support your needs.

Tips and Best Practices

Once you've decided on a landing page solution, how can you ensure that you maximize your lead capture? Here are a few ideas:

• Include a clear and concise call-to-action.
• If your landing page is focused on a single property, make sure that the page's title and H1 tags contain the entire property address in it.
• Ditto for the URL. Aim for a web address like yourwebsite.com/456-Elm-Street-City-State to ensure the page is indexed favorably by Google.
• Go beyond the typical home valuation and single property landing pages. Try offering guides for first-time homeowners, sellers, or free listing alerts, and beyond.
• If you're offering downloadable assets, force prospects to give you their correct email address by saying you'll send them the download link in an email, rather than just immediately redirecting them to the asset.

For more on optimizing your landing pages, see Top 10 Real Estate Landing Page Tips.

There you have it—our crash course in real estate landing pages. What other tips or recommendations do you have for your fellow agents? Let us know in the comments below!