Despite the public relations beating Facebook has taken over the advertising scandal this year, Facebook ads remain one of the best, lowest cost advertising options for real estate professionals to tap into a steady stream of qualified prospects.
While most real estate agents are interested in tapping into Facebook ads, many remain unsure about the best ways to use Facebook for lead generation. This two-part series will address all of your concerns and will put you on the path to attracting highly qualified, properly targeted prospects that can help you grow your real estate business.
Do this before deciding to use Facebook for lead generation
The decision to use Facebook for lead generation is a big one. By choosing to use Facebook’s advertising platform, you are betting that you’ll earn much more from closings than you’ll spend on advertising. Fortunately, you’re in an industry where commission checks in excess of several thousand dollars per closing are the norm, so there’s a strong likelihood that you’ll be able to fund your Facebook marketing efforts without breaking the bank.
While there is a ton of upside potential from advertising on Facebook, it’s vital that you set a spending level you can live with while you’re learning how to advertise on the platform. You can set ad budgets of as little as $5-$10 per day while you’re testing ads, and you’ll be able to scale up your spending budgets as you create profitable campaigns.
The main thing to keep in mind is that you’ll need to budget for a certain level of advertising spending over a period of time. Success with Facebook advertising is possible, it is attainable, but you’ll have to commit to spending some money as you hone your advertising skills. How much you invest should be a combination of comfort level and results as you learn more about what works and what doesn’t.
Pop Quiz: How fast should you respond to Facebook leads?
Whether you’re brand new to real estate or you’ve been in the industry for years, it is vital that you establish a system for immediately acting on leads generated from your Facebook ads.
This is common sense, you say? No problem?
You might be surprised to hear this, but one of the chief complaints of real estate clients is that their real estate agent keeps them waiting for a response. This is unacceptable for Facebook lead generation. Facebook advertising fits pretty neatly into the category of interruption marketing, meaning your prospects will almost certainly be doing other things when they see your ad. If you’re going to interrupt what someone is doing to show them an ad and ask them to click on it, it is vital that you respond quickly to their inquiry.
Dan Henry, founder of getclients.com, puts it this way: “If you can get back to your leads in some fashion within 15 minutes, you will outperform everyone in your market. Make sure you get ahold of your leads while they’re still hot, not three hours later when they’ve moved beyond the emotional reasons they had when they clicked on your ad in the first place.”
Following Dan Henry’s “get ‘em while they’re hot” advice is rock solid for more psychological reasons than I should need to mention here. Suffice it to say, this is one of the most powerful things you can do for your business and your financial well-being. An immediate call or text is preferred, although in some markets you might be tempted to point a drone in their direction to let prospects know how responsive you are.
Whether you personally respond to each inquiry you get or you assign a member of your team to do it, make responsiveness your top priority. Don’t waste money on qualified leads just to squander the opportunity you’ve earned. The reality is, you’re auditioning for the role of real estate agent. If you don’t look the part, you’re not likely to get the role.
Remember, there is a learning curve
Facebook ad campaigns have a lot of moving parts. You can do this. But there is a learning curve. I can’t tell you how many real estate agents I’ve talked to who are excited about Facebook as a lead generation tool, then throw in the towel when they face their first challenge.
This article series will do a good job of setting expectations while showing you how to generate leads, but I need you to lean into the learning curve, so you can reap the rewards of the process. If you don’t, you’ll flame out and give up before you’ve started. And this would be a tragedy.
Should you handle your own Facebook lead generation or should you hire a pro? The answer may surprise you…
Many real estate agents wonder if they might be better off simply hiring a professional to manage their Facebook lead generation. As the story goes, a pro will get much better results than you can, right?
Maybe, maybe not.
Because of the explosive growth of Facebook as an advertising platform over the last several years, thousands of budding entrepreneurs have launched Facebook advertising companies. Who can blame them? The money can be good and there are no professional requirements to speak of requiring anyone offering Facebook marketing services to have any real knowledge, experience, or ability.
Please don’t interpret this as a dig at Facebook marketing agencies. Most of the agency owners I know are honest, hardworking, and creative, and are committed to providing great marketing results to their clients. The biggest complaint I hear about Facebook marketing agencies is that they often lack real estate marketing experience. While there are undeniably some bad apples, the overwhelming majority are professionals in every sense of the word, folks with a desire to help others.
Even though there are many fantastic freelancers and agencies who could help you grow your real estate business, I think it is vital that you know how to do it yourself for the following reasons:
- Nobody is as committed to your success as you
- By learning how to run your own ads, you’ll develop a deep appreciation of the skill needed to create ads that work
- You’ll be able to analyze the numbers, so you’ll know if anyone you hire in the future is giving you decent results
- You’ll gain a much more refined understanding of the client acquisition process from one end to the other
What a winning Facebook lead generation campaign looks like
There are several ways of creating winning Facebook lead generation campaigns. I’ll show you two here (the main difference is that one relies heavily on video and the other is more image focused).
The easiest Facebook ad you can run is likely the image-based Facebook ad. Here’s an example of what your prospect will see when an ad is displayed in your prospect’s news feed:
Example of the process using an image:
- Image of your ad with or without a headline
- Expandable section to read expanded copy
- Call to action in text (with link)
- Once clicked, your prospect will be taken to a landing page
- Once on landing page, your prospect will be asked to enter their details (usually no more than name, phone number and/or email)
- You (or a member of your team) will immediately receive a text and email letting you know you have a new lead
- You (or a member of your team) should immediately call or text the lead
Example of the process using video:
- Video with or without a headline
- Expandable section to read expanded copy (optional)
- Call to action in text (with link) below video
- Once clicked, your prospect will be taken to a landing page
- Once on landing page, your prospect will be asked to enter their details (usually no more than name, phone number and/or email)
- You (or a member of your team) will immediately receive a text and email letting you know you have a new lead
- You (or a member of your team) should immediately call or text the lead
Even though you’re entertaining the idea of using Facebook for lead generation, some of the process may not be clear to you yet. This is especially true if you’ve been living under a rock or haven’t spent much time on Facebook. Either way, your blurriness about the process will come into sharper focus as we go through the process.
The Technology and Other Tools You’ll Need
Before we dive into the specifics of building real live Facebook campaigns, it’s important that you know all of the technological tools you’ll need at your disposal as you prepare to get started. You’re welcome. You can thank me later.
A Domain – Whether you purchase a custom domain for Facebook lead generation purposes or you use a subdomain of your main website is up to you. The
Landing Page Software – You’ll need a subscription to landing page software when you create different versions of your landing page. There are a number of fantastic solutions on the market including LeadPages, ClickFunnels, among others. The monthly cost of landing page software will vary. You should generally expect to spend around $50 per month on landing page software.
Autoresponder software – Even though you’ll need to immediately contact leads as they come in, you will need autoresponder software so you can add prospects to a permission-based follow-up sequence. The reason is simple: you want to be able to contact prospects in the future using something other than a telephone, especially if the prospect doesn’t immediately become a client. This ensures that the value of your leads doesn’t completely diminish if for some reason you are unable to touch base with them right away.
Attention-grabbing image(s) – You’ll need access to attention-grabbing pictures or other images – over time, a number of them. If you don’t have Photoshop skills, you can find low cost freelancers to help you at Fiverr.com or Upwork.com (formerly Elance).
A Facebook page – More real estate agents than ever before are active on Facebook (and other social media sites). I’ll show you a couple of ways you can use your Facebook page as you begin running ad campaigns.
Something to offer prospects – The purpose of your ads will be to get people to stand up and say they’re interested in working with you. So you’ll need to decide what you’d like to offer your prospects. Whether it’s a property list, a checklist, a heatmap of the hottest areas, etc., the main point here is that you’ll be offering prospects something that fills their immediate need (and that they will actually want).
Limited copywriting skills – Even though you aren’t a real estate copywriter, I’m betting you can test some headlines and copy that will get you started.
In part 2 of this series, I’ll show you how to create your Facebook ad account and your very first ad.
Ken Speegle is Realty ToolKit’s resident real estate industry expert. Every week he writes insightful, in-depth articles about topics related to real estate marketing, each designed to help make you a better, more profitable real estate professional. Ken is the founder of therealestatewriter.com and has been a real estate copywriter since 1994.
