How Master-Planned Communities Can Utilize Landing Pages

Unlike a typical website page, landing pages don’t detract from the main message about your master-planned community. Solely devoted to capturing leads, landing pages leave nothing to chance. Free from distraction, new home shoppers can easily see a main call to action on the page, thus elevating the customer experience.

But the call to action doesn’t have to scream “buy a home in my new home community.” It can be a call to action to sign up for an event, subscribe to a newsletter, download a community brochure, have a sales representative call them back, set up a home tour, complete a promotion form, or some other step in the sales funnel.

With a higher concentration on the message without the clutter of navigation and social icons, potential buyers are much more likely to act, which puts them into the master-planned community’s sales funnel.

Let’s take a closer look at how master-planned communities can benefit from website landing pages:

With a higher concentration on the message without the clutter of navigation and social icons, potential buyers are much more likely to act and work their way into the master-planned community’s sales funnel.

Why Do Master-Planned Communities Need Landing Pages?

Reduce Friction - Utilizing landing pages creates a seamless, frictionless experience for home shoppers that enhances the user experience. It is the next logical click in the buying process for ready-to-make-a-move buyers. Use language like “click here for more information” or “sign up for the VIP Interest List” to take buyers straight to the landing page to sign-up, creating a seamless experience. There is no need to land everyone on the website’s home page, where they must trek through the site looking for what they need. Instead, ensure visitors can quickly find the information they’re looking for without being overwhelmed by extraneous details. 

Different Demographics and Interests – Master-planned communities, by their nature, cater to individuals from different demographics with varied interests. With separate landing pages to address different housing types such as active adult or move up, master-planned communities deliver the same experience online as offline, giving the homebuyer a fit for their specific situation and stage of life. Ensuring the message is targeted to a specific type of buyer creates a positive experience for each of your target audiences, while increasing lead conversion.

Increase Leads and Conversions – Landing pages for master-planned communities work to secure more leads and increase interactions and conversions. By offering valuable information or incentives in exchange for contact information, real estate developers can grow their prospect list and nurture relationships with potential buyers over time. And by increasing the relevance of the information, the buyer moves faster through the sales funnel and is more likely to fill out a form.

Flexibility and Experimentation – Landing pages provide master-planned communities with the flexibility to experiment with different messaging, layouts and offers. Through A/B testing and optimization, builders and developers can refine the selected marketing messages that work to maximize the impact of their marketing campaigns.

How is a Landing Page Different from a Home Page?

Although landing pages might be on the community website, they aren’t typically within the main navigation and aren’t considered part of the website per se. Think of the website home page as the map to navigate the master-planned community’s internet brochure or website. The website has ALL the information. By contrast, a landing page is home to limited data and is focused on a single conversion goal. A landing page only needs enough information to entice a buyer to provide their contact information and take the next step.

A landing page can be a substitute website; much like a substitute teacher, this isn’t a long-term solution. Providing a landing page to buyers while the main website is under development is a tactical marketing strategy to get a master-planned community up and running online faster.

Landing pages are also critical to pay-per-click and other digital marketing strategies as a long-term strategy to streamline the process and increase conversions.

How Can Master-Planned Communities Effectively Use Dedicated Landing Pages?

VIP Interest List – The main reason developers of master-planned communities should consider landing pages is to host a VIP Interest List. Since master-planned communities are long-term projects, developers must capture leads as soon as the community has been announced, so they don’t miss out on potential homebuyers. Because master-planned communities typically don’t launch an entire community website until the community is about to open, hosting a VIP Interest List landing page helps create buzz. This gives developers a little time to breathe while renderings, home designs and amenities are being finalized. It also creates a sense of urgency with buyers who are afraid they might miss out on the first phase of the community or early pricing.

Customization - Landing pages allow for tailored messaging and a design that specifically targets the demographic and interests of the intended target audience. For example, if a master-planned community has an active adult section, the landing page for that demographic can focus on low-maintenance features, community events and nearby healthcare.

Digital Advertising – Increase paid search effort success and pay-per-click (PPC) conversions via a landing page. Buyers who click on ads are ready to take the next step, and you can speed them along with a well-built landing page.

Landing pages are ideal for promising future updates through a newsletter and providing something more tangible for sign-up, like a community downloadable brochure. In this instance, the consumer is providing the developer with their contact information in trade for additional information to help them on their buying journey.

Events – Hosting a big grand opening or a groundbreaking? Use a landing page to collect RSVPs. This tactic works for almost any occasion, from a weekend open house with food trucks to a ribbon cutting for a new walking trail.

Public Relations - A landing page extends the community’s public relations reach efforts. Incorporate landing pages into press releases and stories in local papers. With online articles, these landing page links drive the traffic directly to the landing page. So, when the developer doesn’t have all the information available to share, it is enough to keep interested buyers engaged with the community.

There are lots of ways to incorporate landing pages into master-planned community marketing. Other ideas can be found in 6 Reasons Why You Need a Compelling Home Builder Landing Page for Success.

What to Include in a Landing Page

An effective landing page for a master-planned community should capture attention, communicate value, and motivate visitors toward a desired action. Here are a few key elements to consider including on your landing page:

• Detailed but concise information, including a compelling headline.
• High quality images, videos, or virtual tours to engage visitors.
• A clear call to action that tells visitors what to do next.
• A simple lead form to capture information.
• A responsive design that works well on any device type.

What Not to Include in a Landing Page

It often surprises developers to discover that there are items that should never be included in landing pages. These include:

• Site-wide navigation options
• Other website page links
• Related offers from different landing pages
• Social media buttons

Why? Well, the answer is simple. Including these items can prevent your potential buyer from taking that next step. Set your master-planned community up for success and lots of leads. Don’t give the buyer an easy way to say “squirrel” and completely forget what they were doing!

Tracking Landing Page Results

Now that you have one or more landing pages for your master-planned community, take time to track the success of different campaigns. Make sure marketing dollars are going as far as they can by following the traffic from landing pages. With multiple PPC campaigns, banner ads, and social pages driving traffic to the landing pages, it’s important to review the effects of your efforts to discover which channels are converting most effectively. Tracking and analyzing landing page results helps savvy marketers know when it is time to change marketing messaging and revise the landing pages to increase conversions. Some of the metrics you should track include:

• Conversion Rate
• Page Views
• Form Submissions
• Session Primary Channel Group

Community landing pages are a valuable component of your marketing strategy, helping to create engagement and increase buyer conversion. Reach out to our team to learn more about best practices for creating landing pages for master-planned communities that convert qualified, interested home shoppers to your new home buyers.