Facebook Ads are all the rage right now, and for good reason... they work! However, when moving to the next shiny marketing object, it's important to know how to best utilize new tools and strategies. Learn how to generate real estate leads on Facebook with the 8 tips below.
Organic Posting
Captain obvious says, "be sure to update your social media channels regularly and engage with your audience." By now, this is nothing new to you hopefully. However, to get the most bang for your Facebook lead generation time, be sure to align your content strategy with your social media posting. Know your audience and market and give them the kind of information they're searching for and genuinely want to know more about.
Boosting Posts
Speaking of your content strategy, make sure to set aside about twenty bucks or so to Boost each blog post you write on Facebook. This will enable you to increase your reach and get your new post more exposure. Be sure to put some thought into your targeting including location (for example, your local market), demographics etc.
Also, start planning ahead when you blog and put some thought into the image you're using for your post. Facebook will pull-in your blog image so pay attention to:
- Image size - Choose an image size that fits within Facebook Ad image size recommendations.
- Image text - Most of the time it's good to include text on your image. For example, your blog post title. Just be sure that the text is 20% or less of the total image to stay within Facebook Ad guidelines.
- Grab attention - In any given Facebook feed, you have a very short amount of time your ad will be seen by a user as they scroll. This being said, I normally get better results with bright, contrasting colors. This will help your ad stand out.
- Use action oriented copy - Give your post a quick elevator pitch as to why someone should read it. Quickly explain the value your blog post brings and why someone should read it.
When boosting blog posts, be sure to end your post with a call-to-action so you can convert some of your new visitors to real estate leads.
Lead Generation Ads
Lead Generation Ads are great to promote content offers such as eBooks, reports, whitepapers etc. If you're not familiar with Lead Generation Ads you can learn more about them here.
From my experience, if you're going to run Lead Generation Ads, try to set aside a decent ad budget and let them run for at least two weeks. Facebook does an excellent job of optimizing your ads to increase conversions, but their algorithms need time and data for their optimizations. Sometimes these campaigns can get off to a rocky start, but after they're up and running for a while, they'll improve their performance.
Lead Generation Ads are great, but they do have one drawback, the experience is not completely seamless in promoting your offer. What I mean by this is once someone opts-in for your offer, their email isn't automatically added to your marketing automation contact list. This means that unless you're using third party software to integrate Facebook Lead Generation Ads with your marketing automation, you have to export your leads from Facebook and import them into your marketing automation tool. This is a manual process at the moment and can be tedious. It's important to ensure this type of ad has a high enough performance to justify the time spent exporting leads. Also remember, Lead Ads are just for mobile and will not be shown on desktop.
Promoting Offers
You can run Facebook Ad campaigns (regular campaigns that show on both mobile and desktop, not Lead Generation Ads as mentioned above) to promote offers such as eBooks, whitepapers, market reports etc. You can use a value exchange, meaning someone will trade their contact information to download your offer. Remember that the amount of information you ask for should match the value of your offer. For example, someone may not be willing to provide their phone number to download an eBook.
The success of promoting offers lies in your strategy. Make sure your offer speaks to your audiences goals, challenges or pain points so that there will be real interest. Follow best practices for your ads and send visitors to a landing page to download the offer. Be sure to have a marketing automation campaign ready for those who sign-up for your offer so you can nurture those leads to sales.
Also, make sure you're targeting to the right audience. For example, unless you're intentially trying to target out of town buyers, you should stay within your geographic area with ad targeting.
What's My Home Worth
For seller leads, promoting "What's my home worth" tools can be effective. However, this is gaining popularity so the effectiveness of this tactic could vary.
Listings
The experience on Facebook is very visual, so naturally, promoting houses can be effective. People love looking at houses! Promote your listings to increase exposure and generate potential buyer leads. Since you'll be paying for this traffic, be sure to have a way to convert visitors such as MLS search registration or an offer to watch a premium listing video, eBook download, report, schedule showing etc.
Video
Video ads work very well on Facebook. The video movement attracts the eye and easily stands out in peoples Facebook feed. Like the other ideas listed, be sure you have conversions in mind and use some type of call-to-action to drive visits to your website for some type of opt-in.
Facebook Marketing Funnels
The real magic to generate real estate leads on Facebook is by setting-up strategic marketing funnels. Often times, the initial leads you generate on Facebook are top-of-the funnel prospects as you'll only get name and email contact information. This is why you should have a marketing funnel ready to go to help convert prospects into hot leads.
To create a marketing sales funnel, you'll want to think about the various types of calls-to-action you have at your disposal. For example, eBooks, reports, schedule a showing, watch a video etc. Once someone opts-in for one offer by trading their name and email, you want to continue to provide content, value and education while promoting your next offer where you'll trade for a phone number.
You can build these funnel sequences from both email automations and Facebook retargeting ads. Think of the buyers journey and include the right information at the right time for your funnel to nurture prospects to leads and leads to sales.
By now you should have some great ideas to generate real estate leads on Facebook. Remember, the success of your campaigns will always come from your strategy. Don't just run ads to run ads, step back, and plan out your strategy first.
Need help generating leads from Facebook? Check out our lead generation services!
