How to Capture Real Estate Leads on Mobile Devices

According to the latest Mobile usage reports up to 85% of Google searches happen on mobile devices, which means you’re more likely to reach people on mobile rather than on desktop. This trend creates many opportunities and challenges for Real Estate experts on how to capture real estate leads on mobile devices.

Interesting stats for 2019:

Users spent 69% of their media time on mobile devices
80% of social media time is spent on a mobile device
57% of people say they won’t recommend a business with a poor mobile website
Mobile email open rates have grown by 180% in the last 3 years
Mobile advertising represents 72% of all digital ad spend

Look at the mobile e-commerce chart below, it shows how all these trends mentioned above play together.

ecommerce mobile marketing trend — Mobile eCommerce stats

Worldwide stats

In the screenshot below you can see the stats for the most popular websites in the world. Every one of them with an exemption of youtube getting the majority of traffic from mobile devices.

semrush mobile usage stats — Worldwide Top Websites Mobile share

What the mobile usage trend means for marketing

People read your content on mobile devices
Social channel users filling your forms on mobile devices
People check email boxes through mobile apps
In many cases, people don’t have wi-fi, so in a way, they pay for visiting your website
Images will look differently on mobile devices
Usage time, people would spend less time on mobile devices
Advertising: people see more ads on mobile devices

It’s a communication revolution for Real Estate. Always connected cellphones give us a lot of opportunities to stay connected and engage with our customers. People use social media, check emails, doing shopping and send messages, receive calls.

Several years ago digital marketing was purely associated with desktop. People get back home and browse or they visit your website during lunch break. Nowadays the behaviour is totally changed and the question is how should we adapt our marketing.

That’s why we prepared 6 mobile marketing tips you have to adapt to succeed in the Real Estate mobile world.

1. Make your website mobile-friendly

General rule – If you still need to zoom in your screen to navigate the website then it’s not optimized well enough.

mobile version of a website — Mobile version of DESA.NINJA

How to check if your website is mobile friendly?

There are a couple of different online checkers which can analyze a website and give you all mobile-friendliness issues:

checker of mobile friendliness of a website — Online mobile checker

Mobile-friendly website features:

“Burger menu” instead of a navigation bar at the top
Short paragraphs
Include maps or directions instead of contact information (so people can click on it and switch to navigator on your phone)
Include social media buttons people can share content with themselves and then read later
Large easy clickable buttons
Application like interface
Keep mobile version simple
Let images speak

How to build mobile-optimized websites

This question has multiple answers depending on how you built a website.

Website builders

Wix, Squarespace, Weebly, Carrd, Webflow, WordPress

Nowadays all these platforms offer built-in features for a mobile-optimized experience. When you create a desktop version of your website, these platforms will create a mobile version for you.

Then, you can modify the mobile version separately. The drag and drop interface makes it easy to modify any element on a website.

Custom websites

If you’re paying for a website development ask your developer to show you a mobile version in advance. You have more flexibility with custom websites, you can create a separate version of a website.

Don’t forget to check the mobile responsiveness on multiple devices. Your website might perform differently on iPhone and Samsung. See that all elements work correctly.

Use Online Checkers from above.

2. Creating mobile-friendly content

A big part of your success on mobile is optimizing text, make it more readable on small screens.

How people read on the web?

The majority of people don’t really read word to word on the web and it is especially true for mobile devices. Most users scan and skim through content on the website.

How to optimize content?

Break your content into small chunks of information. Try to keep paragraphs up to 3-4 lines
Highlight important parts of your content with colour
Make content bullet-point like
Use images where it is possible

eyeball attention test example — This eyeball test of one of our articles.

From the test above you can see where people focus their attention. Anything highlighted in bold or with colour is receiving way more attention than regular text.

3. Use mobile Ads

Traditional digital banners are annoying and seem very intrusive for mobile users. We definitely don’t want to either annoy or be intrusive to people who are looking to buy or sell a home, we are not selling chocolate bars.

Use high-quality images and provide value with your ads. Don’t just run lead acquisition campaigns, mix them with branding value proposition campaigns where people can download something and get new information.

Some advertising formats to consider:

Social media advertising (Facebook/Instagram/LinkedIn/Twitter)
Mobile Native In-apps advertising – looks less intrusive and feels like a part of an interface

Facebook/Instagram ads

Native in-app ads

More articles on Facebook advertising:

4. Use SMS marketing

Do you have CRM in place? Use marketing automation capabilities. Send your prospects automated text messages when they submit a lead. Ask questions or provide them with valuable information. Create rules for SMS funnels, when following up with your leads.

The truth is that a lot of people would prefer to interact through text messages rather than a phone call.
It’s helpful to leave a text message and give prospects an opportunity to call back

5. Create Google My Business

Google my business is your registered business account on Google. It will generate free traffic to your website and help in mobile optimization.

A lot of people don’t want to visit your website to get a phone number or see an address. They rather find your business on Google and click on a phone number or address.

It would show up on the map
People would be able to click and call
People can click on directions and easily navigate your office
See reviews of your business

Here’s more info on Google my business

6. Mobile-responsive Emails

There’s such a thing as responsive emails. Responsive emails adjust to different sizes of screens.

Ultimately your email will look great on any device with any screen resolution.

Tips for responsive emails:

Use single-column layout
Use 12-24 pt font size for text, 20pt for titles
Place Call to Action at the top
Use small images
You can use services like https://litmus.com/ to test your emails

Conclusion

Not optimizing for mobile devices means missing out on the opportunity to capture potential home buyers/sellers at the moment when it’s most convenient for them.