Realtors and Real Estate Agents: get your website up in less than 10 minutes and start generating leads today with a top-converting template built by an experienced consultant so it's guaranteed to bring you the clients you are looking for.
Are you sifting through a muddle of jargon, trying to figure out how to build your real estate agent website?
WordPress, HTML, hosting…
You probably didn’t become a realtor to spend your time looking up technical terms and fiddling around with code.
If you’re strapped for time, it might be tempting to leave it for another day.
But, hold on… Every day you don’t have a website, you’re missing out on potential clients.
Home buyers and sellers expect you to be online: 93% of home buyers use the internet during their home search.
Your website is a place to showcase your listings and build relationships with potential clients.
It’s your online salesperson, working for you 24/7 (so you don’t have to!).
You don’t need to sacrifice hours of your life or drop $20K on a complicated and expensive website (I promise).
All you need is a simple one-page website.
But many agents don’t know this.
Want to have a competitive edge?
Go against the grain. Do what other realtors haven’t figured out yet.
So what exactly does this website look like?
I’ll show you in just a minute, but first, let me start from the beginning and explain why most realtor websites DON’T work.
Why most real estate agent website builders don’t work: the top mistakes in realtor website design
Most realtor websites are making three mistakes that prevent them from generating a consistent stream of leads:
1. Not leading website visitors to take one single action.
If you had to make an analogy, you could compare most realtor websites to brochures.
Brochures are filled with glossy pictures and information. They’re meant to be flipped through. Often, they’re stashed into a hidden drawer for “future reference”. Or tossed in the recycle bin.
For a brochure-style website, the fate is much worse. There’s nothing physical to stash away. The viewer can just hit the back arrow to get back to their Google search results.
Next!
These websites aren’t designed to lead your website visitor to take any particular action. As a result, visitors wander around and usually leave.
2. Not answering this fundamental question.
Prospective customers are presented with an overwhelming number of choices when they search online.
When they land on a website, they’re looking for the answer to one question.
Without this answer, they’re hitting the back button.
The question is: why should they pick you? In other words: what can you offer them that other realtors can’t?
3. Not meeting prospective customers where they are.
Buying (or selling) a home is very different from ordering toothpaste on Amazon.
It’s a big and often emotional decision, filled with lists of questions and concerns.
Website visitors will come at various stages of readiness; some may just be starting to consider options, while others may already know exactly what they’re looking for.
A parent might be considering a certain neighborhood, but they don’t know if the schools are any good.
An investor might be looking for the next “hot” opportunity.
If your realtor website doesn’t help the parent or the investor answer their questions, they’ll move on to other sites to find what they need.
So that’s the bad news…But it’s not all bad.
Knowing what NOT to do is half the battle.
Now we get to the fun part: what can you do to create an effective website?
What your grocery store knows about getting customers in the door (and how it can help you)
“Sales funnels”.
Even if we don’t notice them, they’re all around us.
And we’re all prone to being sucked into them…
Maybe you receive your local grocery store weekly circular. Full of limited-time deals.
If it’s a scorching hot summer day and they have a $1 special on popsicles, you might be tempted to run and grab a few boxes. (Am I right?)
And next to the freezer you’ll see stacks of diet Pepsi boxes….And bags of sour-cream-and-onion chips…Perfect for summer snacking.
You fill your shopping cart. Before you know it you’ve spent $30.
The grocery store lured you in with a deal, and then upsold you on a bunch of extra stuff…Cha-ching!
Knowing this, now you can leverage sales funnels on your real estate agent website.
Want to generate phone calls and appointments on autopilot? Here’s how.
What’s the online version of your grocery store’s sales funnel?
Let’s say we have a 44-year-old working mom named Amy. She’s just started to think about buying a home to fit her ever-expanding family (husband, 3 kids, 2 dogs and a hamster).
She’s concerned about cost. When she loads up Google, she types in “how to save money buying a first home”.
She scrolls down the first page, scanning the listings. Her eyes stop at the words “Ultimate Guide to Saving Thousands on Your First Home.”
She clicks through and lands on a beautiful, easy-to-read webpage.
She notices that the webpage is offering to send her a helpful-sounding guide titled “The Ultimate Guide to Saving Thousands on Your First Home.”
To get the guide, she just has to enter her name, email and phone number into a form right next to the picture of the guide.
She hesitates and scans the rest of the page. On the top right, she notices a phone number.
Further down, she sees 3 glowing testimonials from happy clients.
Sounds good. She fills out the form and clicks on the “Get Your Money-Saving Guide” button. Another page loads.
Here she sees a short message thanking her and telling her to check her email for the guide.
She hears the ding of a new email notification and sees an email from the realtor. He’s sent her a copy of the guide and asks her if she has any questions.
Over the next few weeks, she gets a series of helpful emails explaining the home-buying process, and pitfalls to avoid.
In sales funnel terminology, the first webpage that Amy lands on is called the “Landing Page”.
The landing page is designed to do one thing: to entice website visitors to fill in a form and share their contact information with the realtor (you).
Remember the $1 offer in the grocery store circular? On the landing page, the offer is sometimes called a “lead magnet”. A lead magnet is usually some sort of helpful content in form of a PDF booklet, a series of videos, or a series of emails.
Once Amy clicks the “Get Your Money-Saving Guide” button, she’s directed to the “Thank-You Page”, which is exactly what it sounds like.
A chance for the realtor to thank her, and instruct her on next steps.
Once the realtor has Amy’s email, he can send her a pre-written series of emails. Every email gives her useful information and ends with a soft pitch to talk on the phone.
Instead of manually writing and sending each message, he can automate the process and start to build a relationship on autopilot.
To write, schedule and send the emails, he uses a software tool called an autoresponder.
The whole process from landing page to email messages to phone calls to sales is your online sales funnel.
This might seem a bit conceptual but in a moment I’m going to show you an EASY and fast way to build your own online sales funnel.
How can you use landing pages in real estate?
Online sales funnels enable you to walk away from your website and passively collect leads and build relationships.
It’s a leveraged way of growing your business that doesn’t depend on you physically being present (you could be showing houses while leads are rolling in).
And for the people who prefer to speak to you on the phone, you can prominently display your phone number on the landing page or thank-you page.
Your landing page and the lead magnet work best when they’re ultra-specific to one customer segment.
Ideally, you’ll have multiple landing pages, one per customer type. For example, one landing page could target families looking for homes in a good school district.
You’d design a different landing page for an investor looking to buy his tenth home.
What can you offer as a lead magnet? This depends on the demographics, interests, and psychographics of your target customers.
Here are a few ideas to get you going:
- For people looking to sell their home: How to Get Multiple Offers Over Asking
- For people researching mortgage options: Your Guide to Getting Rock-Bottom Interest Rates on Your Home Mortgage
- For people looking to invest in pre-sale condos in Toronto: Get First Dibs on the Latest Pre-Sale Condo Listings in Toronto
- For parents looking for homes near the best school districts in the SF Bay Area: Get Email Updates with Just-Listed Homes in the Bay Area’s Top School Districts.
You can also use landing pages to showcase your listings and give people the opportunity to book a showing or get the floorplans.
How to create your first realtor sales funnel: your options
You’re probably thinking, “Great, I need a sales funnel…but HOW do I create one?”
Fear not. I’m about to get to that.
You’ve probably heard of WordPress and maybe other website builders like Wix or Weebly.
So which of these platforms works best for creating a realtor sales funnel?
The short answer is that they all work, but I personally use and love ClickFunnels.
ClickFunnels is designed specifically for building sales funnels. (Here's a video walkthrough of this tool)
In the chart below I’ve compared the most common website building platforms.
[fusion_table]| Features | ClickFunnels | Website Builders (Wix, Weebly, etc.) | WordPress |
|---|---|---|---|
| Website Hosting | Included! | Your own domain name only in paid plans | Not Included |
| Proven Funnel Templates | Included! | Not Included | Need to purchase themes and plugins |
| Drag-and-drop Editor | Included! | Included | Need to purchase themes and plugins |
| Autoresponder | Included! | Not Included | Not Included |
| A/B Testing | Included! | Not Included | Not Included |
–
Realtor website hosting
Your real estate agent website needs to be hosted or stored, on a server. Some platforms will host it for you (less headache), while others expect you to get your own hosting.
Both Wix and Weebly will host your website. That’s good, but unless you get a paid plan you can’t use your own domain name (you’ll end up with something like www.bestrealtor.wix.com). As a professional, you absolutely need your own domain name.
Another potential negative: both Wix and Weebly will show ads on your site unless you pay for one of the higher-tier plans.
ClickFunnels will host your website too. And you can even use your own domain name without any hassles. They never show ads.
WordPress.org requires you to buy your own website hosting from a third-party provider. Once you have a host, you install WordPress on your site. This is the most technically-intensive option, but there are plenty of online tutorials to help you get started.
Funnel templates
ClickFunnels shines with its library of scientifically proven sales funnel templates. Quality real estate agent website templates save you time, headache and money. No need to code, or hire a tech whiz or designer.
You can customize your chosen template with their drag-and-drop editor. Just upload your images, edit the text, change the colors (if you want to) and hit publish.
As a Funnel Consultant (I work with a portfolio of SMEs and Fortune 500 companies on a recurring basis, and I’ve helped grow companies such as Amazon, Citrix, Hertz, Vimeo and Glamour Magazine just to name a few) I use ClickFunnels every day.
I recommend it without reservation, and if you’re thinking of testing it out, they offer a free two-week trial. You can check it out here.
Wix and Weebly also offer templates and a drag-and-drop editor, but they don’t specialize in sales funnels.
With WordPress, you can create stunning websites, but you do need to shop around for the right themes and plugins. There are some drag-and-drop WordPress themes, but they’re more “general purpose” and not sales funnel-specific.
Autoresponder
Once you start capturing leads with your landing page, you’ll want to follow up with them via email.
Manually sending out emails to each lead would take hours of your time, so to make things easy, you’ll need an autoresponder (or email marketing) software.
With an autoresponder, you can write a series of email messages once, and the software will take care of sending them out new leads. You can even specify the time intervals between email sends.
There are tons of options, both free and paid, like ActiveCampaign (which is great) and ClickFunnels allows you to integrate your favorite autoresponder out-of-the-box.
In the case of Weebly, Wix and WordPress sites, you’ll need to figure out which email marketing software to use and hook it up to your website. This process can be confusing, time-consuming and costly.
Moreover, with ClickFunnels you can follow which contacts optin to your funnels and track your funnel conversion rate so you can improve it over time.
Set up your first real estate funnel in minutes (here’s how)
Many realtors aren’t using sales funnels which means there’s a huge opportunity for those who do.
With Clickfunnels you can build your very first funnel or optin page today, without knowing how to code or design.
You can have a beautiful, professional real estate agent website within a day, without the headaches of dealing with the messy tech details.
You don’t need:
⛔ Hosting
⛔ A tech guy or gal
⛔ A graphic designer
⛔ A bunch of extra software
You can do it yourself.
Once your funnel is up and running it will work for you 24/7, collecting your leads and building relationships on autopilot.
Next Steps...
1 See which tools I use & recommend to clients:
I've hand-picked the best performing tools and resources I use every day or that I've seen my clients use with great success. To get tactics and copy to build a better funnel see Dotcom Secrets, Copywriting Secrets and Funnel Scripts. If you do affiliate marketing, I recommend you take a look at The Affiliate Bootcamp, ClickMagick and Active Campaign.2 Get My FREE Funnel
Get 3 “Done For You” + 100% Automated Sales Funnel. They're free. I will share these with you in PDF and via ClickFunnels.3 Book your FREE 30 Min strategy call:
Since 2012, I’ve helped generate over $100 Million in extra sales for Fortune 500s and SMEs. Let's see how I can help you and what you need to grow your sales and revenue. I use psychology, persuasion and science to get more leads or sales and I'll be 100% transparent on the best strategy for you, even if that's not me. Book your call now. Finally, you can also check out my other articles on funnels and Shopify and ecommerce.PLUS, these results are not typical and your experience will vary based upon your effort, education, business model, and market forces beyond my control. I make no earnings claims or return on investment claims, and you may not make your money back.
Excellent stuff Nick, thanks