I get asked all the time: ‘What kinds of things should I post on Facebook to generate leads?’
The answer is: ‘I don’t care.’
OK. That’s a little over the top. My answer is supposed to unfreeze the questioner, to get them off the notion that posting on Facebook will somehow magically generate leads. It won’t.
If you are a Realtor, you can use your personal Facebook page and/or your Facebook business page to keep in touch with people who know you – at least a little – and to remind them that you are in the business. Of course this is important! We want everyone who knows us – even those who know us just a little – to know we sell real estate, are active and successful. That’s why we post our new listings on Facebook, our photos of happy clients after closing, our open houses and relevant articles about the market.
But the audience here is people who know us. It’s not strangers. Leads – which are the things everyone wants to generate with Facebook – are strangers who call us to help with their home buying or selling process.
If you want to generate LEADS with Facebook, you’re going to have to go about it the old fashioned way: you’re going to have to market on Facebook.
Marketing is the careful planning, creating, executing and monetizing of a strategy aimed at reaching a specific target audience with potential for needing your services. With Facebook, your tool for accomplishing this is Pay-Per-Click advertising.
When you open your Facebook page, you’ll see a column to the left of your Newsfeed that contains Pay-Per-Click ads that have been targeted to you based on your profile and Facebook behavior. That’s where you want your ad to be. The small teaser ads lead to a Landing Page of some kind that gives the clicker the information hinted at in the teaser. Sounds simple . . . and it would be if we were in the giving information business. But we are not. We are in the real estate sales and marketing business, so that simple process of Facebook Teaser ad and Landing Page becomes a little more complex.
At Help-U-Sell, we market for one thing: Sellers. So your teaser ad needs to appeal to home owners who are thinking of selling. That part really is easy. The logo, all by itself, speaks to them. But so do phrases like: ‘Never pay 6% to sell your home again!’, ‘You paid HOW MUCH to sell your home?’ , ‘How to save thousands selling your home,’ ‘Sell your home for $4,950!’ and so on.
But once a potential seller sees your ad and clicks on it, where do they go? To you Help-U-Sell website? I don’t think so. Your website is geared toward buyers (and it should be). Your website is a place where we connect with them via home search and other tools. Instead, you need to send people who click on your teaser ad to a very specific Landing Page, absolutely focused on your offer to home sellers, sizzling with just enough information to motivate the clicker to contact the office.
That’s really important, so I’ll repeat it: You need to send people who click on your teaser ad to a very specific Landing Page, absolutely focused on your offer to home sellers, sizzling with just enough information to motivate the clicker to contact the office.
Your landing page should say nothing aimed at buyers, mortgages, credit repair, or any other aspect of the business. It should be short, simple and razor focused on what you do for home sellers and how much they can save. It should also be packed with Help-U-Sell credibility boosters: Sold and Saveds and Testimonials. In other words, your Landing Page should look like an ETM . . . because that’s what it is: an electronic ETM, delivered via Facebook as opposed to the old fashioned one delivered in the mailbox. It should have the same structure and encourage the same event: a call to the office to find out more about your program for home sellers. Click HERE for an example.
I love Facebook pay-per-click for Help-U-Sell brokers for several reasons:
- It is highly targeted advertising and fits perfectly well with our own geographical targeting strategy.
- It is surprisingly inexpensive. And effective campaign can be mounted for $200 a month, more or less.
- It is wonderfully flexible. You can change up your campaign in mid stream, start and stop it at will.
- It is trackable. Facebook keeps track of the clicks so if you install office systems to track resulting inquiries, you’ll know what the program produces.
I have created Facebook pay-per-click campaigns for my Blogging clients (you know, I create, manage and feed blogs for a handful of Help-U-Sell Brokers). This past week I offered the same service – which includes creation of the Landing Page, the Teaser Ad and managing the setup process – to Help-U-Sell brokers in general. I’d be happy to help you jump into this exciting process, too. Just send me an email (jamesdingman@gmail.com) and we’ll explore the possibilities.
We know that today’s consumer of real estate services is online. We know he or she is into Facebook almost daily. THIS is how you find that person. THIS is the next step in the evolution of Help-U-Sell marketing and I urge you to get on board.