The Perfect Real Estate Call To Action (See For Yourself)

What is a real estate call to action — and why do you need a perfect one?

In advertising terms, a “call to action” is used to tell potential customers what they should do next. Also known as a “CTA,” a call to action describes what a reader is supposed to do once they have seen your ad, landing page, or social media post.

Your real estate call to action will appear in a lot of locations. And if you don’t have a great one, your lead generation will suffer.

Let’s take a look at what a CTA is, where it goes, and how to craft the perfect CTA.

What is a CTA?

First, let’s dig deeper into what an effective CTA is. A compelling CTA includes a problem, value proposition, and next step.

Here’s a simple, compelling CTA:

“Are you selling your house? We can save you money. Call us today.”

But even that could use some improvement. When you’re dealing with marketing copy, you actually want to be as specific as possible. A strong CTA may include, for instance, statistics:

“Are you selling your house? On average, our clients make 11% more from their home sales. Call us today.“

Now someone selling their house knows exactly what your value proposition is: if they take the specific action (calling), they will get the desired result (more money).

A good CTA is designed to provoke an immediate response, which is why you might want your button text to say, “Call us today.” You might even want a secondary CTA under that, such as:

“We’re running a promotion! Call us in the next week to ask about our discounts!“

That hooks anyone who is still thinking about your CTA but isn’t sure they should call. Even if they aren’t sure they want to commit yet, they will want to find out more about that promotion and the discounts they could receive.

In this example, our CTA was to “call us.” But that also might be a little too much for someone just doing research. When someone’s buying or selling a home, they usually start researching months in advance.

Your Sales Funnel and Real Estate Call to Action

For a Realtor, your sales funnel is pretty long. Someone might become aware of you, read your eBook, wait a couple of weeks, check in on your social media, and then finally contact you in a few months when they’re actually ready to buy or sell.

Your real estate CTA is going to have to acknowledge the fact that your sales funnel is long, that you might have multiple touchpoints, and that you may have to aggressively court your client.

What is the desired action of a real estate call to action?

Every advertisement should have a CTA. But what “action” is being called to? It can vary.

We discussed a call-to-action that tells someone to call a Realtor if they’re interested in selling their home. But that’s a rather big step, isn’t it? When it comes to real estate, your target audience is taking its time and doing a lot of research.

Because of this, your desired action isn’t always the final commitment in your sales funnel. Rather, your desired action may be relative to engagement.

Studies have shown that the more someone engages with a person, the more likely they are to actually do business with them. Because the process of selling/buying a house is so lengthy, they may build an entire relationship with you and your business before they’re ready to commit.

Instead of asking the client to call, you could say:

• Sign up for our real estate emails.
• Download our house-selling eBook.
• Read our 2021 blog post about the real estate market.
• Take a look at our loan calculator.
• Read our follow-up blog.

You’re still pushing your potential client down the sales funnel, but now you’re not forcing them to immediately commit to a call. Your action phrase is giving them time to build a relationship with you — rather than just diving into getting a real estate agent.

But you also need to consider positioning.

If someone is looking into getting mortgage approval, for instance, they may be ready to commit. Or if someone is looking into what credit score they need to get approved, they may just need further information.

And if a seller is looking to see what renovations they need to sell their house, they may be ready to sell already (they may just not know it). On the other hand, if the seller is just looking at “when is the right time to sell,” they’re still at the top of the funnel.

Understanding where someone is on the buyer journey is critical when developing your marketing strategy. It’s how you know how to advertise to them and what CTA to use.

Where does a CTA go?

You also need to think about the fact that real estate marketing occurs over multiple channels.

A website’s CTAs will differ from Facebook, paid advertising, and even a targeted landing page on that same real estate website.

Real estate website CTAs

On your website, you’ll usually have a CTA button on every page. That could lead to a link to your newsletter, a link to email you, or even a phone number. Your action button should be tailored to your content, but should appear everywhere.

Facebook or social media CTAs

Usually, a Facebook or social media CTA will come after a post. So, the CTA will be related to the post itself. For instance, you might have a post about home renovations that ends with: Are you renovating your home to sell it? Find out more about the renovations that improve your ROI by contacting us.

Paid advertising CTAs.

Paid ads are directly targeted toward demographics that could be interested in buying or selling a home. But they might not be. Because you have a broader demographic, you also need a broader CTA example. You might ask your website visitor: Do you want to learn more about buying a home? Download our eBook.

Your click-through rate will vary depending on where your ads are. On your website, your CTAs may be more effective; someone has already looked you up and is interested. On paid ads, there may be only so much your CTA can do to provoke the desired action.

How can you identify an effective CTA?

It’s not always obvious what the best CTA is going to be, depending on your audience. A potential buyer may react more viscerally to one CTA rather than another.

To that end, you can test different CTAs and determine which have the better conversion rate. Write multiple versions of your ad copy, run them at the same time, and see which ones end up being the best. You may find that the most compelling calls to action are sometimes the simplest.

FAQs on Real Estate Call to Action

What should you avoid in a CTA?

In digital marketing, you should avoid seeming too sales-pitchy or applying too much pressure. While you want to direct your site visitor to a specific action, you also want to tell them why. You should avoid claims that sound too broad or outlandish.

How can you improve the effectiveness of your real estate call to action?

Do some research on your audience. Understand what stage of the buyer/seller journey they’re at when they visit your page, post, or ad. Target your CTA and action verb based on what they would be doing next. Would they be conducting more research? Maybe comparing prices? Or would they be ready to commit?

What’s special about a CTA for real estate professionals?

Real estate professionals are dealing with high-value sales. When someone is looking for a Realtor, they are more likely to sit down and carefully consider their options than find a one based on impulse.

Because of this, your marketing strategy may be directed more toward indirect calls to action rather than direct calls to action.