Get Better Leads from Facebook

The first five steps we took to generate 8,000 qualified real estate leads in three months—just using Facebook:

1) Set Up a Facebook Business Page

Ninety-one percent of real estate agents use social media to promote their business, according to Contactually. Facebook advertising is a valuable lead generation tool, but unless you're taking a methodical approach, it can be hard to monitor, track, and optimize your campaigns for the best returns.

Onboard has developed a data-driven engagement system that includes social media marketing. Through our experience helping clients generate real estate leads from social media, we have curated some key best practices in Facebook lead generation. In this eBook, we review what we've learned and include specifics from a three-month campaign we did with a regional brokerage that yielded over 8,000 qualified leads.

You want to run your Facebook advertising from your business account, not your personal account. Most of you probably already have a Facebook business page, but if you don't, it's very easy to set up. You just need a name, profile photo, cover photo and a call to action. You also have the option of converting a profile page to a business page. This is an easy guide to get started.

2) Create Your Audiences

You can create different targets on Facebook and label them accordingly. According to the New York Times, the average American moves 18 miles from their current residence, so you want to start by limiting the geography to your area. You can then look at demographics. This is where you can enter status to limit your market. We found that engaged or newly married worked well for targeting people likely to move within a year.

Narrow your search with interests and behaviors of your target market. There is an option to pick people "likely to move," but we found this made the Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) prohibitively expensive. Our friends at Commissions Inc also advised against this tactic in our recent webinar. View the entire webinar here.

We ran several combinations to find what worked best. In our numerous tests, we found that people who donate to animal welfare were almost 300 percent more likely to own a home, and people who watch horror TV shots were half as likely. Every market is going to be a little different, though, so create several target profiles and monitor which is performing best for you.

You can also choose a feature when targeting called "Lookalike" where you take a former (ideal) client and Facebook creates a profile based on similar interests and buying behavior.

3) Set Your Budget

Your budget will depend on the size of your brokerage. This will fall in the marketing budget.

The U.S. Small Business Administration recommends spending 7 to 8 percent of your gross revenue for marketing if you're doing less than $5 million a year in sales and your net profit margin — after all expenses — is 10 to 12 percent.

4) Put in Your Conversion Tracker

This is a key step. If you're not tracking your conversions, you'll have no idea which campaigns or audience segments are successful. You'll need to test and measure diligently, especially at first. You can only do this if you've put in a conversion tracker. Here are detailed instructions on how to put in your conversion tracker.

5) Figure out Your "Lead Magnet"

Because this campaign is for lead generation, you'll need a lead magnet. This can be a property report, free consultation, neighborhood guide, or another piece of content that addresses your target, solves a problem they have, is easy to consume, and has a high value proposition.

We found that a photo of a listing alone does not drive a lot of leads. During our campaign, we used property reports as a lead magnet. You can be creative here. Remember you are trying to build a network of qualified leads for your business. What nugget of information would help build that network?

Below, see how we used a property report as a lead magnet in a Facebook ad.

These are the first five steps we took to generate 8,000 qualified real estate leads in three months using Facebook. To read the next five, fill out the form at the bottom of this page and you can download our complete ebook with all of these steps free of charge. The book includes sample landing pages, language to use (and avoid) when creating your ads, and how you can get your CPA under $2.00.

To view the original article, visit the Onboard Informatics blog.