I’m sure you know that you need something on your website that will motivate visitors to contact you.  Otherwise, you end up with a pretty website that may even have a fair number of visitors, but does nothing for you in terms of lead generation.

This post will address the last of the three things you need to do to provide strong motivation for your real estate website visitors to contact you:

1. Identify a unique, valuable and attention-grabbing offer.
2. Create the offer.
3. Promote the offer.

Let’s say that you have already identified and created a compelling proposition.   The last step is promoting it!  And, that’s where the concept of web-centric real estate marketing comes in.

Web-Centric Real Estate Marketing

The idea of web-centric real estate marketing is to make sure that all marketing tools you use end up driving people to your website.  The reasons are simple. 

• People are much more comfortable stopping by a website than they are placing a telephone call to you directly.
• Your website should have tools and information that visitors find useful.
• Once someone gets to know your website, they will likely do things like return to it from time to time or add it to their favorites.  That should help them to remember to contact you when they want to speak to a professional.
• If you don’t have any direct contact with a website visitor, at least you have the opportunity to stay in front of them when they visit your site.

Therefore, any type of advertising or promotion you do should drive people to your website.  Here are some examples:

• Email - include a live link to your website in your email signature
• Printed material – Your web address on everything – business cards, promotional items, etc.
• Print advertising -  Invite the reader to take advantage of your compelling offer and direct them to your website
• Postcards – regardless of any other topic – that invites the erader to take advantage of your compelling proposition and directs them to the website.  Even if you’re sending out a Just Listed postcard, the offer should be on there.
• Ads on Craig’s list - yup, same thing.

And, the examples could go on and on.  So, now that you have all of your marketing initiatives pointing to your website, make sure it’s easy for people to find your proposition.

Your Website: The Compelling Proposition Should Leap Up and Grab People!

Well, naturally, you’re going to put the proposition on your website.  But, where?  If you read the Insider Insight post by Kevin Kaiser on improving lead conversion, you have some ideas already.

Kevin’s testing found that he got the most response by having a call to action in the upper left corner of the home page.  You might want to give that a try.  Create an eye-catching graphic “button” that contains a strong call to action to make sure your offer is seen immediately.

Don’t assume that people are going to poke around your website trying to figure out where this great offer is!   A text link in the body of the home page isn’t visible enough, a tab on your menu isn’t visible enough.  If someone is visiting your site with the express purpose of taking you up on a special offer, that offer better just jump up and bite them!  If it doesn’t, that visitor will turn into another bounce statistic on your traffic report.

If you can put the offer on a page of its own and use that link in your promotions, even better.  Just make sure it’s something easy to remember.   Something like AtlantaRealEstate.com/FirstTime  might be good.  Something like AtlantaRealEstate.com/First_Time_Home_Buyer.html – not so much.

So, what do you think?  Any great ideas for new ways to motivate your Internet visitors?