Are you being strategic with your real estate calls to action?
A call-to-action is what helps your potential clients take the next step…and I’ve been seeing a lot of mistakes surrounding them these days.
I want to shine a light on these call-to-action mistakes I’ve been seeing on social media because I think so many agents don’t even realize what they’re doing wrong.
Intentional real estate call-to-actions are one of the most important pieces of your marketing. You’re asking people to engage with your content, to get on your email list, or book a call to work with you.
So if your call-to-action falls flat, you’re never going to get your audience to take the key actions needed to grow your business!
In this post, you’ll learn:
- What Is A Call-To-Action
- Soft Call-To-Actions
- Hard Call-To-Actions
- When To Use Each Call-To-Action
- The Biggest Mistakes Agents Are Making With Their Real Estate Call-To-Actions
Let’s go.
What Is A Call-To-Action?
Put simply, a call-to-action is when you’re asking your audience to take an action in your real estate marketing.
You’re asking your follower not only to consume the content but to take the next step. That next step might be something small, like sharing the post with a friend, or something bigger, like booking a sales call with you.
There are different real estate call-to-actions we can use, depending on your overall goal.
Soft Call-To-Action
Soft calls to action are going to be those lighter, easier actions for your audience to take.
A soft call-to-action might sound like:
- “Comment below if this has happened to you!”
- “Double-tap if you agree!
- “Save this post so you can reference it for later”
Essentially, soft calls to action are usually focused on getting engagement from your followers.
Not only is engagement key for making sure your content resonates and gains traction in the algorithm…
But soft calls to action also get your followers in the habit of taking action on your posts.
If your followers are in the habit of responding to your soft calls to action, it’s far more likely they’ll respond when you post a “harder” CTA.
Hard Call-To-Action
Your hard call-to-actions are going to be those actions that are more direct and promotional in nature.
These might sound like:
- “Book a call using the link in my bio!”
- “Send me a DM to hear more about this offer”
- Or even, “Sign up for my masterclass using this link”
Hard calls to action are usually focused on conversions – whether that’s converting a lead into a prospect, or getting someone to opt-in using their email address for a free offer.
When To Use Each Call-To-Action
The kind of real estate call-to-action you use is going to be highly dependent on the type of content you’re posting.
Check out this blog for a refresher on the best types of real estate content for social media.
For example, it always feels SO icky when a personal, vulnerable story is followed by a hard, promotional CTA.
There’s something very strange about reading a heartfelt post about someone’s family, only to have it end with, “be sure to contact me for all your real estate needs!”.
Pairing a hard call to action with storytelling, personal, or connection-driven content will always feel disingenuous to your followers.
Instead, you’d want to opt for a soft call to action. Something that drives connection and engagement – rather than promotes your services.
Whatever you do….just please don’t end your post by telling your followers, “a referral is the biggest compliment that I can get”.
When you see so many other agents posting similar things, it’s easy to get caught up thinking all of your calls to action should be promoting your services.
But just because there are a lot of people doing it doesn’t mean it’s right!
Now you’re probably wondering — when IS the right time to be posting harder calls to action?
Of course, if you’re running ads, you’ll be running them with a direct call-to-action for your followers.
But in organic content, you really want to limit your calls to action to authority content.
Authority content often looks like PR features, case studies/testimonials, or posts that outline your process/solution.
In this case, it’s totally appropriate to slap a direct CTA at the end of your post, after you’ve given some value.
The Biggest Mistakes Agents Make With Their Real Estate Calls To Action
We already mentioned how pairing a personal and vulnerable post with a hard call-to-action is a huge no. But here are a few other call-to-action mistakes I’m seeing agents make on social media.
Thinking A Call-To-Action Is A Post In Itself
Spoiler alert: it’s not!
If all you are doing is posting a picture of yourself, or of a house, with a one-sentence caption like, “Give me a call for all of your real estate needs!”…
…that’s not really a post.
That’s *just* a call to action.
There’s no value. No substance.
Posting Too Many Hard Call-To-Actions
The biggest mistake you can make is to bombard your audience with too much promo content and hard calls to action.
Remember the three most important buckets of real estate content for social media you need to be posting are:
- Personal content
- Authority-building content
- Social proof content
If you’re constantly filling those three content buckets, and every once in a while throwing in a hard call-to-action, you’ll be way more successful with actually getting your followers to respond to what you’re putting out.
Being Irrelevant To Your Audience
The other thing that’s important to remember when it comes to calls to action is that people only move once every three to seven years.
So if you’re constantly only throwing out hard calls to action, and you’re not giving a tremendous amount of value – well, you’re not giving people enough of a reason to stick around.
This is a big reason why personal content is so important to drive connection with your audience.
People will follow you for years if you’re telling good stories, if you’re showing up giving valuable mini trainings, and if you’re giving them a behind-the-scenes look at your lifestyle.
But if you’re only pumping out content that is relevant to them when they’re selling or buying a house, that’s where you lose people.
If you take anything away from this post, I want you to realize that when it comes to real estate calls to action, less is more.
If you give tremendous amounts of value in your content – even without ANY direct calls to action, you will get inbound business.
Real estate calls to action directly impact the relationship we have with our potential clients, so make sure you’re being strategic about them!
Got questions about CTAs? Leave them in the comments!
Do you want to learn more about building powerful marketing strategies that help you effortlessly attract leads and fill your calendar with appointments?
