Want more new homebuyer inbound leads? Your Guide to Landing Page Success.

How do you know when a young millennial couple is shopping your website and dreaming about their first home? You don't, unless they self-identify. How do you encourage them to reach out so you can support their search? That's the topic of our blog post today. We interviewed HubSpot Gold Partner Spencer Powell, with the Builder Funnel about how to develop an effective promotional landing page. "Effective" for purposes of this this article means that a landing page increases inbound leads for New Home Builder brands. The outcome of our interview is this Guide to Premium Content and Landing Page Success.  If you read nothing else, listen to Spencer's answer to our first question. It's a compelling argument for creating landing pages that trade relevant premium content for a prospective home buyer's contact information, so you can get them into your sales funnel.   Marketing Blueprints: Most of our clients have invested in beautifully designed websites with gorgeous imagery of their homes. Why do you need to use promotional landing pages in addition to a beautiful, well designed website? Spencer Powell: The answer to this question of "why a landing page?" is a good one! We recently looked back at an early client and analyzed data over 3 years that looked at leads coming into their website. The data is compelling in support of landing pages as effective lead generators. Here are the simple data:

• 5-7% of leads came through a "contact us" form
• 93-95% of prospects who came into the website downloaded a brochure, eBook, checklist and filled out information on a landing page.

Home shoppers are researching and browsing tons of sites like Zillow, Trulia and Builder listing websites. If you don't capture them when they are on your site, they may never come back. You need to give your prospects a reason to take action to launch themselves into your sales funnel.  Every page on your website is an opportunity to convert a prospect into an engaged home buyer with your brand. Marketing Blueprints: What's the number one goal of building a promotional landing page? Spencer: Get people to fill out the form which shares their contact information. Marketing Blueprints: Including the form, how many conversion opportunities should a landing page offer? Spencer: We like to have 2-3 opportunities to convert.  It's important to remember that we don't know where website visitors are in their buyer's journey, so we like to provide options that are relevant to any stage of their home shopping research. Here are some ideas for conversion tactics that get action:

• Contact us
• Schedule a Tour
• Schedule a private appointment
• Download a brochure
• Download our move-in checklist
• Download (other Premium Content - discussed below)

Marketing Blueprints: Can you give us some examples of premium content that would be relevant to a prospect shopping for a new home? And, can you give our readers your time saving tips for creating that content? Marketers are super busy. Spencer: The easiest and least time consuming way to develop content is to reformat what you already have. Ask someone convert your Community Brochure into a nice looking PDF (which should cost you less than $100). Prospects want a summary of what is already available free on your website in the form of a Community Brochure and they are willing to give you their contact information for that. So, take what you have and repackage it into a PDF. Marketing Blueprints:  If you've already converted your Community Brochure and you want to create some new premium content, what topics are worth developing? Spencer: These are a few titles and formats that we have found to work well for New Home Builder content:

• Your Process of Building a New Home (repurpose from your own content)
• Kitchen Design Guide (use your existing images)
• Beautiful Bathrooms (use your existing images)
• Model Home Comparison Guide and Checklist
• Move-in Checklist
• Home Buying Checklist
• Home Design Guide - options, selections, layouts, colors
• Download e-Book for Space Planning
• Financing Your Dream Home (repurpose your content into a PDF if your brand has Mortgage products)

Marketing Blueprints: Where can Marketers get help to create this content? Many of our clients are strapped for time already. Spencer: There are 4 good options for this which depend on your company size and resources:

• Existing Digital Agencies likely have your assets and can easily create some PDF's and a landing page.
• Builder Funnel can create all of this for you.
• Upwork has excellent freelance writers and artists who are easy to work with.
• Subscribe to landing page software. Here are a few of our favorites. HubSpot (our preferred choice, but it's more than just landing page software), UnBounce, Lead Pages. They're easy!

Marketing Blueprints: Would you agree that the key feature of this landing page is Premium Content? Spencer: Yes! The page is all about telling your prospective home buyer, "Here's what you are going to get if you fill out this form." Without the premium content, you cannot necessarily convert these types of inbound leads. They are looking for information they can use to support their home research and ultimately their decision to purchase in your Community. Marketing Blueprints: How do you organize and build the actual landing page? Spencer: It depends on the size of your Builder entity and the kind of internal support you have. So first let's talk about what goes into this kind of landing page. General best practices say that your landing page header banner matches your website banner. There should be no navigation because you want to keep prospects focused on your Call to Action (CTA). Your landing page should use just a "little bit" of copy (paragraph total). People need to see a good graphic visual of what they are getting in exchange for sharing their information with you. Here's a simple way to think about the content, once you've applied your web look n' feel to the banner: 1.) The Pitch - Here's what you get when you fill out this form. Here's what's inside (describe what's of value in the content they can download). See the example below:   2.) Set up the form you are asking your prospective home buyer to complete: Enable prospects to fill out their information to receive the premium content. Once they fill it out, your landing page should initiate two other actions. A typical form asks for a first/last name, email contact and phone number at the absolute least. This way you are able to contact the person who filled out the form. At that point, we know they are interested in what you have to offer, so it's important to contact them.

• A second landing page says thank you to the prospect for engaging. This second landing page can then be used for another Call to Action. Offer your prospect the opportunity to schedule an appointment at your Sales Center. Some of them will be ready to take that next step. You won't know if you don't ask them!
• The form they fill out should also initiate an email that thanks them for engaging and reinforces the benefits of the Community you are marketing.

Marketing Blueprints: That's pretty simple. Thank you! Now...How do you get prospects to visit your landing page? Spencer: This is a simple and important last step that many people forget to implement. You need to create a "Call to Action Button". The button needs to be designed and you can use the same options as we described above for the landing page and content design. Also, Canva.com is a great graphic support site that lets non-artists create simple graphics like a CTA button.  Then you need to place your newly designed CTA button on every page of your Community Brochure on either side or bottom navigation. Here's an example: Marketing Blueprints: Now that you have a landing page on your site and CTA buttons in your Community content, how should Builder Marketers get prepared to take action on prospect lead forms? Spencer: Your form needs to feed into an email or CRM that is monitored by staff who can take action and respond to prospective home buyers. This is critical. Please don't spend money investing in a landing page unless you have this part of the process in place. The communication outreach is a simple email that might say, "Hi! Thanks for downloading our Community Brochure. Can I help answer any questions?" Be sure to put the new prospect on your email list and your newsletter list. You will want them to automatically get updates and to be invited to Community Events, etc. Marketing Blueprints: Do you have any bonus tips for readers who are advanced landing page users? Spencer: Yes! There is so much more than can be done to engage and talk to people digitally. Here are a few more ideas if Marketers have the time and capabilities.

• When a home shopper fills out the form, redirect them to a thank you page and the thank you page is a landing page with the download on it.
• You can then add a "step two" on the Thank You page that invites them to take further action and come visit the Community, schedule a private tour, join an upcoming event, attend a financing workshop, etc.
• If they fill out the form, you automatically have a sales-ready lead!
• Once they've filled out the form, they get specific nurturing campaigns tied into the Community. Nurturing Campaigns leverage your efforts to acquire a lead for your home buyer sales funnel.

Marketing Blueprints: How do we leverage the time and money we've spent launching our landing page? Time is money and our readers are incredibly busy. Spencer: You've gone to the effort of creating content, a landing page and a system for following up on the leads, so you want to use it! Here are some ways to leverage your investment in new premium content across other marketing channels:

• Re-engage your data base with a promotional email letting them know you have a new piece of premium content.
• Immediately present the content to prospects that are already part of your nurturing campaigns.
• Post information about your new premium content on your Social Media Pages.
• Write an article about your new content in your Newsletter before you send your next update.
• Write an article about your new content in your company blog.
• If you use a branded USB drive to deliver Community content, add the new premium content as a bonus.

Thanks Spencer! We appreciate your tips for creating landing pages that build lead volume for New Home Communities. I know our readers will enjoy immediate access to this simple Landing Page Checklist so they can begin to use premium landing pages to encourage qualified home shoppers to share their information.

Landing Page Checklist - Premium Content Success

Home shoppers are online researching and getting educated so that they feel comfortable with their choice of new home builder. Giving them content they can use in this process engenders trust and prospects are willing to share their contact information in return. We hope this blog post adds value to your Marketing and that you test some of these tactics to enjoy a higher volume of leads. Thank for stopping by! See you soon. Cheers! Leslie Bridges, Chief Blogger Marketing Blueprints is sponsored by Builder Promotions. Builder Promotions is a complete solution of branded products and print collateral that support the entire new home buyer journey.