EDITION 02
Read time: under 3 minutes
Welcome back.
We launched the first edition of this free lead generation newsletter last week and received a ton of great feedback.
If you missed Edition 01, you can check it out here.
If you read and applied the tip or tool we shared, please reply to this message with what you did, as we’d love to check it out and even help you promote it.
We have some very impactful updates for you this week, all of which can dramatically affect your business. We hope they resonate with you and encourage you to put them to use. If you do, you will see more leads (and probably better ones too).
Scroll down for one actionable tip, one handy tool, and one essential news story that will impact your lead generation efforts.
Get More Leads from Your Real Estate Website When You Have These 5 Things in Place
More often than not, minor things make the most significant impact. This certainly applies to generating leads from a real estate website.
If you want your website visitors to contact you, sign up, or subscribe, then your website must have these five things in place:
Homepage Hero with a Hook: When someone first lands on your website’s homepage they should immediately know what you do and what you want them to do. If you make them work for this info, they will be off to your competitor’s website.
Prominent Click-to-Call/Text: More than half of your website’s traffic comes from mobile users. Make your phone number easy to find and click, no matter where someone is on your site. If you force them to fill out a form or even use a live chat as the primary way to get to you, they will already be talking to your competition.
Clear Call to Action: “Search Properties”, “View My Listings”, “Contact Me”, or “Sign Up for Listing Alerts” are all weak, lazy calls to action. Instead, understand the specific problems that your audience has and use that in your CTAs (e.g., Send me a voice note describing your dream home and neighborhood, and I will send you 5 homes in 2 different communities that I think you’ll love).
Real Social Proof: Testimonials (especially video ones), media mentions, awards, and legitimate certifications are all ways to build initial trust with someone who has never met you. Would you choose a restaurant to try if they had no reviews on Yelp versus one with hundreds of reviews and four or more stars? Of course not. A stranger won’t want to talk with you or give you their info if no one else is vouching for you.
Easy Navigation: Don’t try to be “cute” with the names of your pages/links in your navigation. If someone has to guess where they’ll end up from a link, they probably won’t click or get frustrated and leave your site. Your navigation should be concise, direct, easy to use (no multi-tiered dropdowns), and accessible anywhere from your site. Bad navigation is one of the biggest culprits of high bounce rates, low conversion rates, and few returning visitors.
You have some homework if your website lacks any of these five things. And although it seems like a lot, this should take about 1 hour to plan and 1-2 hours to implement. These 2-3 hours of your time will be very well spent.
And if you’re unsure how your website stacks up or even has any of these things, reply to this email with your website URL, and we’ll respond to get you on track.
Make Your Real Estate Website ADA Compliant to Accommodate All Users and Avoid Legal Issues
Over 20% of the population has disabilities that exclude them from experiencing and enjoying websites the way the rest of the world does. Your next client could easily be within this 20%, so you cannot risk isolating them, or you will lose business.
This alone is reason enough to ensure that your website is accessible to everyone. However, if that doesn’t implore you to prioritize this, then maybe the possibility of receiving a formal, and even legal, complaint will.
Don’t wait for this to happen. It’s unnecessary, preventable stress and loss of time and money.
Our recommended tool for this week can help. We use it on all of our websites and love it. We think you will too.
Overview: accessiBe provides an easy-to-install solution that makes websites ADA and WCAG compliant. Once installed, its widget becomes accessible throughout a website, giving users multiple options to accommodate any disabilities.
Helpful Features:
Robust, but User-Friendly Interface: The widget makes it very simple for any user, no matter their disability, to adjust the settings of your website to meet their needs.
Accessibility Statement and Certificate: An "Accessibility Statement & Certificate" is built into the widget and emailed as a PDF. This indicates the remediations your website has undergone.
AI-Powered: Machine learning processes run in the background and use contextual understanding and computer vision models to address complex requirements for screen reader and keyboard navigation accessibility.
Support Documentation: In the case of a complaint, accessiBe provides any documentation you will need to prove that your site is compliant.
Your options are simple:
1) Run an audit on your website to determine whether or not it’s ADA-compliant and then have them update and recode your website to get it there
or
2) Go signup for and install accessiBe on your website and let them do all of the heavy lifting
Apple is Ramping Up Plans to Integrate AI Across Its Devices
A recent report from the Financial Times (gated article / non-gated article) has found evidence that Apple is getting very serious about integrating generative AI across all its devices, specifically the iPhone.
“I’d be shocked if they don’t do a sizable AI deal this year, because there’s an AI arms race going on, and Apple is not going to be on the outside looking in.” - Daniel Ives, Wedbush Analyst
What does this have to do with you or your real estate business?
Everything.
For Buyers & Sellers: If Apple releases a legitimate “Siri 2.0” then consumers (especially home buyers) will interact with real estate information in a whole new way. One example would be a conversational chat with Siri to create a list of homes that meet their criteria, including an Apple Maps supplement to tour each property efficiently. These search use cases will eat into any organic, paid, or social media traffic Realtors may rely on for home buyers.
For Realtors: A “Siri 2.0” can be a productive assistant to your real estate business. It could help you plan your day, schedule your showings, analyze your market reports, and more. On top of that, it could quickly and effectively respond to your new inquiries promptly so your leads don’t go cold if you cannot respond immediately.
What are you supposed to do with this information?
Simple.
You need to become proficient at prompting via text and voice.
Not only will this help you maximize “Siri 2.0” but it will help you to understand how your prospects will be using the same features to find homes, information, and Realtors like you for their next transaction.
If you’re not confident in your prompting skills, then check out this list of 50 prompts that we posted on X or reply to this email for some extra help.
What did you think of this week's email?
Thanks for reading.
See you next week.
The Real Estate Marketing Update Team @ imFORZA