According to a recent survey by Demand Metric and GetResponse, less than 30 percent of marketers clearly understand the return on investment of their marketing funnel.
The same study revealed that only 69 percent of marketers make converting leads into customers their top priority.
Imagine how many marketing dollars get flushed down the toilet that way.
A similar situation is likely actual in the real estate industry.
Many know the money is in the list of generated leads but don’t actually do much with their collected leads and are not following up enough.
This comes from not finding the right strategy, lacking structure or a system to generate leads, and not measuring the lead generation results.
The lack of a real estate funnel can cause you to be left behind by your competitors and lose market share.
Many real estate pros might think they could have closed more deals if they had an efficient lead generation system several years ago.
And more deals usually mean more money in the bank.
I know “could have” and “should have.” So, let’s put the past behind us and focus on what you can do today.
Because in today’s article, we will create several powerful and profitable real estate funnels so you…
- can generate and nurture better leads efficiently for your real estate business
- save time and be able to scale your marketing to make more money
- have a better chance against your competition who don’t have a systematic marketing funnel yet
- get a bigger picture and structure for your overall marketing strategy
- be able to measure your lead generation and, therefore, get better every day
So, What’s a (Real Estate) Marketing Funnel or, Rather, Marketing Panning?
Actually, I don’t like the term “funnel” because it misrepresents the process of what is happening when you apply marketing or sales funnels to your traffic.
You might have a funnel in your kitchen, and when you put a substance in the wide opening, the same substance leaves from the narrow area to where you want it.
Nothing changed the substance; you just facilitated a better bottle filling.
Why is this a misrepresentation, and what happens in a real estate marketing or sales funnel?
A marketing funnel functions more like a filter, and I consider it somewhat similar to the process of gold panning, where you look for a river that you assume has some gold particles.
Then you go to that riverbed with your gold pan and swirl around the gravel from the deposit in several iterations.
You do that until left with some potential gold particles in the center.
The river and gravel correspond to the traffic you generate for a particular website or landing page; the gold particles represent the customer you get out of it.
The process of swirling between traffic and customers is the steps you need to apply to filter out the unusable gravel from the potential customers — your gold.
Like swirling techniques, different techniques and tactics filter out or convert your traffic to actual customers.
The Basis from Which You Can Invent Your Own Real Estate Marketing Funnel
Looking at the function of marketing funnels with the eyes of a copywriter, you will quickly find a pattern that reminds you of one of the classic copywriting formulas.
In this case, the formula usually applied to an entire ad, sales letter, or sales video is a funnel with different steps.
The formula I am talking about is called AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desires, and Action), which I already mentioned in this article.
How does this apply to a (Real Estate) Marketing Funnel?
You create attention by offering something for free that is valuable to your target group.
Once someone is interested in your free thing, you tell them exciting facts or uses and partially solve their problem, but not completely.
Through the same communication channel, you also create the desire for the actual product you sell (e.g., properties, real estate services, deals, contracts, etc.). Your target group is then convinced to take action, which is the last step in the AIDA formula.
Whatever channel you use, you might want to alternate between content that creates interest or provides interesting things that incite desire (more promotional and less educational).
Summarized, this would be the basis of any (real estate) funnel:
- Attention: Offer something of value for free
- Interest: Teach or tell them exciting facts or uses and partially solve their problem
- Desire: Create a desire for your actual product
- Action: You are good enough in step 3 to convince them to take action on your offer
Since I am a fan of fractals, I see them everywhere. Again, this is a fractal (a topic I already mentioned in this article.
You can also apply AIDA in variations to each funnel step above.
Well, theoretically, I could end the article here because this is already the basis from which you could create any (real estate) marketing funnel.
Still, I will give you some templates to clarify the funnel basis.
A Broad Overview Of 17 Funnel Examples, Applicable to Real Estate Marketing
1) The Sales Letter Funnel
With a long-form sales letter, this funnel sells your front-end product or service (usually the entry-level product at a low price).
On the backend, you have several upsells and downsells immediately after the first sale.
Example of A Real Estate Marketing Funnel:
- Selling a local one-day tour guide and upselling an appointment for a showing
- Selling Rent-To-Own Contract Templates to sellers and upselling an offer to buy their home
2) The Squeeze Page Funnel
This is a simple two-page funnel. The goal here is to get an email address from your visitor.
You don’t even need a lead magnet, such as a free eBook or something else.
After the visitor enters her email address, you can give her access to any unique real estate content, such as an article, a simple video, or something else.
The squeeze page has to create enough curiosity for your visitor.
Example of A Real Estate Marketing Funnel:
- Offer a how-to video to find the right price to sell a home within 30 days
- A very long article about any of the content ideas I already mentioned in this article
3) The Membership Funnel
The first page is usually a video sales letter. A visitor can sign up for a trial of the membership site.
On the thank you page, they receive a link to create an account in the member’s area. Then the exclusive content is unlocked.
Example of A Real Estate Marketing Funnel:
- A membership area for wholesalers with the most recent and hottest local deals under contract
4) The Survey Funnel
This funnel can be highly effective for cold traffic from PPC advertising because the first page is a simple survey to engage the visitor.
The survey itself helps to segment the visitors.
According to the visitor’s survey results, different sales messages can be suggested (e.g., a sales page or a video sales page).
Example of A Real Estate Marketing Funnel:
- Survey retail buyers, which price range, house type, and location they are looking for, and the results page is a downloadable PDF of current listings.
5) The Video Sales Letter Funnel
This one is basically the sales letter funnel in video format. The video will often hide the “add to cart” button until after the video has revealed the price.
Like in the sales letter funnel, you can have several upsells right after the initial purchase.
Example of A Real Estate Marketing Funnel:
- A home staging guide for your local area and upselling your realtor services to sell their home
6) The Reverse Squeeze Page Funnel
Here you first give value and then ask for an email. You usually share your best information and items before you ask for an opt-in.
The conversion rate will be lower, but the lead quality will increase.
Example of A Real Estate Marketing Funnel:
- You create an extensive long-form guide about putting together a creative real estate deal (sandwich lease option, a standard flip).
- Then, you ask for their email address to make an appointment with you to put the deal together and market it to investors or retail buyers.
7) The 2-Step Tripwire Funnel
This is a variation of the sales letter funnel, focusing on breaking even on ad-spend by using a much lower-priced, almost irresistible front-end product.
After the initial sale, you can upsell higher-priced products immediately or downsell lower-priced products depending on user behavior.
The higher-priced products or, depending on the user’s decision, the lower-priced products are usually offered on the thank you page after the initial purchase.
Example of A Real Estate Marketing Funnel:
- An initial irresistible interior design plan and then upsell rehabbing services or down selling a fixed-price rehabbing consultation.
8) The Live Demo Funnel
This funnel is trickier for a real estate business because you demonstrate a product or service to your potential customers.
It could also be a live show regularly where visitors can get the product you are presenting.
Example of A Real Estate Marketing Funnel:
- You develop a real estate tool for marketing purposes, such as a real estate tax savings calculator for your local market. It must be good enough to charge for and that you show in a live demo.
9) The Invisible Funnel
This funnel is like going to your favorite ice cream store and only paying if you like your ice cream.
You sell access to an event but charge them only if they liked it after it has ended. Here you give away a lot of value for free.
The visitor registers their seat after a sales letter (ideally a video sales letter) and enters their credit card information, even though no money is charged.
Then, after they receive the value, a one-time offer (OTO) is presented with an additional up and/or down-sell on the thank you page.
You can structure it so that if they liked the free value product, they don’t have to do anything, and their credit card will be billed after X days.
If they dislike the “free” product, they must inform you, and the credit card won’t be charged.
Example of A Real Estate Marketing Funnel:
You offer a “free” group consultation for real estate wholesalers to find distressed properties for $97 if they like it.
Then, you upsell to one-on-one coaching or a down-sale to a list of private money lenders with the best interest rates in the local market.
10) The Lead Magnet Funnel
This funnel might be the most well-known to you. You offer something of value for free (e.g., a report, eBook, a video series, etc.) in exchange for an email address.
Example of A Real Estate Marketing Funnel:
- You offer a free market report in exchange for an email address for your local market.
11) The Webinar Funnel (live and automatic)
This one is ideal for products and services with a higher price tag.
Visitors first register for the event with their email addresses on platforms like GoToWebinar or Zoom.
Visitors can attend live and watch a replay if they can’t make it at a suitable date and time.
The first half of the event gives some free value and success stories.
The second half sells the product or service.
The participant can buy the service or product you promote at a special price for a limited time.
Most webinars are about an hour long and allow you to handle objections or false beliefs about the product or the service.
The best approach is to start with live events and improve or change your webinars until you find the one that converts best.
You can convert the winning webinar into an auto-webinar and use it to sell around the clock since it’s no longer a live event.
Example of A Real Estate Marketing Funnel:
You create a webinar about wholesale lease options, giving away a snippet of the online training that you are actually selling in the webinar.
12) The Main Website Funnel
This one is rather complex since it can involve several points where visitors can opt-in to the funnel.
A traditional website pushes visitors in your core sales funnel from several points.
It can use different opt-in pop-ups on your main page, the blog, the about page, etc., and/or additional opt-in forms on these sub-pages.
This can involve several combinations of the funnels that have already been mentioned.
Example of A Real Estate Marketing Funnel:
As a realtor, you have a website with the usual pages, such as the main page, the real estate about page, a blog page, and the contact page.
On the main page, a pop-up is triggered after the visitor scrolls a certain percentage down where you offer a lead magnet, such as a report.
On the blog, you have an opt-in form under each article where you offer the same report or different lead magnets depending on the article’s topic.
But all collected emails from different pages get funneled in the same email marketing autoresponder campaign.
13) The Ask Funnel
This one is tricky since you don’t have any product or anything to give for free.
An example would be an exit survey triggered once the visitor wants to leave your site.
In this short survey, you ask him, for example: “What’s your most important question about XYZ?”. He can optionally enter his email address to receive a solution or answer his problem.
Once you have collected enough answers and interpreted them correctly, you can create products, services, and/or free products of value.
Example of A Real Estate Marketing Funnel:
On a realtor website, the survey could ask: “What’s your most important question about selling duplex homes in New Jersey?”
After 100 replies, you might find that 80% points toward this state’s correct tax strategy problems.
So, you could produce an eBook or online training specifically to offer different strategies to reduce the tax burden in New Jersey for duplex home sellers.
14) The Application Funnel
The application funnel uses some of the many psychological triggers humans have, which can be used to your advantage in copywriting. It’s scarcity or exclusivity.
It presents your offer in a way that not everybody can buy it. This one is most suitable for high-end products or services or luxury segments.
A visitor needs to enter his contact information on an application page. By doing so, he gets added to your funnel.
Example of A Real Estate Marketing Funnel:
Luxury home sellers can apply to get listed with you.
Why? Because you are the fastest luxury real estate broker in your area and usually sell luxury homes within three weeks or less.
15) The Launch Funnel
The launch funnel is not an evergreen funnel since it is usually used temporarily for a specific product or service launch.
It helps you build anticipation before customers can buy the product or service.
During the pre-launch phase, you send “previews” of the product until you open the card on launch day, where the product or service can still be bought at a discount.
After several days of the launch, you close that special shopping card.
Example of A Real Estate Marketing Funnel:
A real estate developer could use the launch funnel to pre-sell a new building project.
16) Daily or Regular Deal Funnel
You have to create special deals regularly, ideally daily, by applying this funnel. You may know this funnel from websites such as Groupon.
People subscribe to this funnel to get informed regularly about special offers and bargains.
Example of A Real Estate Marketing Funnel:
This funnel requires a specific size for a real estate pro since it’s not candy or smaller e-commerce products sold.
As a local wholesaler, you could have a special deal opt-in page that informs investor partners about outstanding deals that are under contract for more than the average below-market price regularly.
17) The Summit Funnel
This summit funnel brings the typical industry conference to the online world.
It’s a great way to provide value and appear more like an authority figure in your industry. It is arranged similarly to the traditional conference, and you organize several speakers you interview.
Your visitors can register for the summit for free, and you upsell them on the recordings.
Example of A Real Estate Marketing Funnel:
You organize an online summit about how technology will change the real estate market in the future and interview well-known real estate tech leaders (start-up entrepreneurs), real estate agents, developers, investors, etc.
This was a mouth full, and since this is such a critical conversion topic, it won’t be the last article about it.
I hope you got some inspiration for your business, and let me know if I have missed a funnel you have in mind.
By the way, I made the funnel graphics you saw above with an excellent tool called funnelytics. They have great pre-made templates, and you can create customized sales funnels there.
Did you like this article? Feel free to share it.
Real Estate Expert Q&A
I also asked our real expert Scott Russell from Freestone Properties, about his experience with real estate funnels. Below you will find his reply.
Question:
Are you using real estate marketing funnels in your real estate business, and if yes, which one did you have the most success with so far?
Answer:
“Maybe not in the traditional sense of the word funnel, but we do use a real estate ebook with an ongoing nurturing drip email campaign.
We also capture leads from our website’s IDX pages, and many of those leads continue to use our site for months before engaging with us.
We also send a quarterly newsletter to our clients and prospects with information about the local market.”
This article has been reviewed by our editorial team. It has been approved for publication in accordance with our editorial policy.
- The Surprising Link Between Weight Loss Struggles and Real Estate Lead Gen Success - October 29, 2024
- Performance Risks of “Marketing ROI Black Boxes” for Real Estate and other Industries - October 15, 2024
- What You Don’t Measure in Real Estate Marketing… - October 1, 2024