How to Make Squeeze Pages for Real Estate

When you first get started in real estate, everyone tells you to build a website.

Build a website, and leads will come.

…or so they say.

Great, your website is up and running so now you wait.

and wait…

…and wait.

So, you start to justify it. “Every professional needs a website.”

Many pros never have a website and do quite well via word of mouth. The purpose of a website is to generate leads and grow your business, if it’s not doing that then it’s a waste of time.

So, you start to generate some traffic to your website via content marketing or social media.

But still, it doesn’t seem to generate any leads.

The problem is that you don’t know how to convert traffic into leads. What you need is a… squeeze page

What is a Squeeze Page?

A squeeze page is a page on your site that offers something that someone wants and they are willing to put their contact info in there to get it. It’s an ethical bribe.

Maybe it’s a free PDF, cheat sheet, or informational guide. It could be a video course, book, or something else as well.

Whatever it is in business or real estate specifically, you need a page on your site that gets your traffic to put their contact info into the box so you can market to them directly.

Simple enough, right?

But first… If you haven’t already, you need to set up a website.

I prefer OnCarrot, which makes creating squeeze pages very easy. You can also check out my guide on setting up your investor website, both using onCarrot and without using them. It will walk you through step by step to creating your website to help you supercharge your business.

Structure of a Squeeze Page

There are 7 distinct aspects of a squeeze page. Each part is important and should generally be included unless a split test shows it detracts from your opt-in rate.

1. Content upgrade

The content upgrade for a real estate website is going to be something geared toward a niche or specific target audience. You probably won’t offer a roadmap to avoiding foreclosure if you’re a seller’s agent for luxury homes.

Content upgrades are usually short but useful, that’s why cheatsheets, roadmaps, and simple guides are so popular. Other popular upgrades are free video courses (3 or 4 part courses), an e-book, etc.

Here is a list of the most popular content upgrades.

Ebook or Guide

You write a short book about a specific topic. Even though it’s a free giveaway, you should make it the same quality as you would a typical book.

I don’t particularly like the idea of offering an ebook as a content upgrade and I personally don’t use this. Ebooks are great for people with really high price back-end offers, such as expensive coaching programs, but may not be good for people with lower-priced offers.

Instead, what I like to offer is a free guide. These are much shorter and more informal and there is no expectation of superb quality and editing of a normal book.

Cheat Sheet

Think of back when you were in school and the teacher would let you have a single page or notecard to help you on the test.

A cheat sheet should have several important things listed on it, but not delve into too much detail on it.

In real estate, you could put together all the real estate investing formulas or the most important items to consider when preparing to list a house.

Checklist

Your checklist should be a step by step list to get from point A to B.

It might be – The 7 steps to selling your house for maximum value, or, The 5 things to do before selling your house to an investor.

Video Series

A video series is usually 3 to 4 videos long and packed full of great information. At the end of the presentation there is usually a call to action and attempt to make a sale.

In real estate, it could be scheduling a consultation or getting a free quote on your house.

Coupon

Everyone loves to save money, right?

So, you offer them an exclusive discount if they get on your email list.

A real estate agent could offer a 0.5% discount on a listing or a $500 credit at closing. An investor might offer a $750 moving credit to a seller or $1,000 credit to a buyer.

Case Study

These are great because people like to see what results others have had.

The great part is these cases don’t have to come from you. You could find other agents in your brokerage or other sellers or buyers and just describe their journey.

2. Picture/Video

A picture can often (but not always) help convert a click into a lead.

You should test your squeeze page with a picture, a video, and neither.

Remember, opting in is a process that should take less than a few seconds from landing to clicking enter and everything should push a person in that direction.

Take one of my landing pages for example:

I’m always testing variations of the page, so you may not see exactly the same page when you navigate to the page (click the image to see the page), but this one is my highest converting variation with an opt-in rate of around 54%.

It’s possible that I just haven’t found the right image or video to go with it that could explode my opt-in rate up to 60-70%, but until then, this is my best one.

3. Title or Headline

When a person visits your page, the headline is going to be one of the first things they see, so you need to make sure it captures their attention and communicates the offer quickly and simply.

It should be relevant, clear, and concise.

Take a look at another one of my squeeze pages:

Why’s it good?

The title is clear – Free Calculator. The sub-title tells you how it will help you – save you a ton of time!

This combination of a clear title with a sub-title that describes what it does for the user has helped me achieve a 45%+ conversion on this page.

Here’s an example of a bad one:

Why’s it bad?

4. Description/Offer

This is the next most important part of your title/sub-title. If there is any question left about the value of your offer, you should describe it here.

In order to stay focused, you should limit the amount of text above the fold (the visible area when your page is first loaded). Now, don’t get me wrong, you can put a lot of text on the page, just do it below the fold.

Another trick is to keep a lot of white space up top, then fill the bottom with testimonials, social proof, and a longer description. A great example is the first squeeze page I showed you. I have several paragraphs and pictures as you scroll down, but above the fold, it is very clear and simple.

The fact is that 55% of your users will spend 15 seconds or less on your page. So, you need to gain their attention as quickly as possible to keep them on the page.

So make sure you are concise, convey the quality and desirability, and most of all, make them want it.

5. Opt-In Form

Obviously… you need an opt-in form.

That was never a question. But, what people debate about is WHAT information you should request in your contact form.

At a minimum, you’ll need to collect an email address, but what you collect beyond that will depend on what your offer is about.

If you are an investor or real estate agent looking for motivated sellers, you may want a name, email and perhaps a phone number to call them. If you are a Realtor looking to build up a pool of potential buyers or renters, you may be content with just an email address.

But, pay a lot of attention to exactly what information you need to collect vs what you want to collect. Some studies have shown that reducing the number of fields in the form from 4 to 3 increased conversions up to 50%.

Some people take it to the extreme and ask for only an email address, no name even. The idea is to put as few barriers between you and their contact information. While this may not work in most cases in real estate, make sure you always balance between what you need and the lost conversions.

6. The Call to Action (CTA)

The call to action is a statement that tells the user what to do. Simply put, if you don’t say “sign up now” or “call me now” people won’t actually sign up.

On the web, it is usually a button or a link that submits or opens a form.

The default text on most buttons will say “submit”… and this is terrible.

Instead, try using a more direct command along with stating the benefit when possible like – “Get My Free Cheat Sheet Now.”

Here are some call to action optimization tips to get you started:

• Use a color that stands out.
• Keep it simple.
• Use the right size button (bigger is not always better)
• Let them choose, but only two options (opt-in, or no, don’t opt-in)
• Make it look clickable
• Make it the next logical step

Looking at my two squeeze pages above, you notice I used reasonably sized buttons with a CTA like “Get my free calculator.”

7. Social Proof

Whenever possible, add social proof to the squeeze page. This can come in many different forms and it will depend on what your product/service is.

Shares

Often, I see social proof in the form of shares. You know what I’m talking about, as I’m sure you’ve seen it. It looks something like:

It’s usually on the side of the page and kinda slides in where you don’t really notice it and it doesn’t really bother you much.

This is very powerful if you have a page that has been shared a lot. Most pages don’t get shared so much so it may not be something that you do.

But, if you have something that is kind of viral, definitely utilize this.

Testimonials

These are great! Anytime you can get fans that rant and rave about you and your service, save that information and use it anywhere you can.

The great part about testimonials is if they are more general in nature, you can use them anytime you roll out a new product or service. Think about it this way:

If you are a buyers agent and help some people get great deals on a new home and they leave a testimonial about how amazing you are as an agent, but don’t mention specifically that you are a buyers agent.

Now, you are building out your website to attract sellers.

You can use this testimonial because it’s about YOU more than the specific service.

Real world examples

These are powerful, but can only be used once you have achieved real results.

If you are an investor looking to buy foreclosures, you can use real examples of how you’ve helped stop foreclosure both with and without actually purchasing the property.

People navigating to your page will see all these other real people and are far more likely to reach out to you.

What is a Good Squeeze Page Conversion Rate?

When someone puts their email in, it’s called a conversion. The goal is to get that conversion rate as high as possible.

But, what is a good conversion rate?

That truly depends on what your page is about, what your offer is, and how good you are at closing a lead to a sale.

Let’s think about it this way – would you rather have a squeeze page that converts 75% of people who land on it, but only 0.5% of those people ever purchase from you, or a page that converts only 25% of users but 2% of those people become your customers/clients.

Example 1 – 1,000 people land. at 75% conversion rate that is 750 leads. If 0.5% purchase, that is 3.75 customers.

Example 2 – 1,000 people land on your page at 25% conversion, that is 250 leads. When 2% purchase from you, that is a total of 5 customers.

So, a “good” conversion rate on a squeeze page will depend also on the conversion rate of the offer. You don’t want junk leads, plain and simple.

But, in general, good pages convert at 30-50% while amazing page can be above that. You should try running split tests on the page to see what get’s people to convert at a higher rate.

Making a Sales Funnel After the Squeeze Page

A person comes to your site, sees your great content, then clicks on a link to a squeeze page.

They see your squeeze page, put their email address in, then…

That’s it.

They are left hanging there. NO follow up, no sale, nothing. Just an email with a pdf or something they can read later.

…and you lost a customer.

I ran my website like this for about a year and a half, and lefts tens of thousands of dollars on the table, maybe even more.

I had highly converting pages, plenty of traffic, and no income. Don’t do this.

Like I pointed out above, the conversion rate from a lead to a sale is really important when building out your squeeze page offer. You want to make sure your page presents something that is in line with your ultimate offer. For example, a guide to preventing foreclosure is not a good lead-in to find good buyers.

Then, you need to build your sales funnel. This can be an immediate sell and upsell online, or it could be through a series of emails ending in a request to do a phone consultation.

Whatever it is, you need to have some sort of system to convert leads to sales.

And, that’s the great thing about services like OnCarrot. They do the hard part (building the website and squeeze pages) so you can focus on the follow-up sales sequence.

 So, if you haven’t already, go check out OnCarrot.