5 Ways to Use Facebook to Drive Real Estate Leads

How do you use Facebook? Are you focusing on getting people to like your page? Are you running targeted ads for particular zip codes? How is that working for you? Are you generating leads?

Many real estate agents treat their Facebook page like a brochure. Sure, it's great for branding, but it's probably not helping you with what you really need—and that is leads, leads, leads!

Shift your focus. Your page is not about engagement, it's really about inbound marketing. That's what is needed for lead generation.

Many businesses, not just real estate companies, make the mistake of force-fitting their new Facebook page into the old outbound marketing techniques. We all know outbound marketing. It's the traditional ad buy and email list buy we use for leads. We make the mistake of using our Facebook pages to nurture leads rather than to generate leads.

Inbound marketing is completely different. It's about creating quality content that is so compelling, it literally attracts customers to your real estate company.

To be effective, you need to know your customers' interests, then align your content accordingly. It's the concept of moths to a flame. They're naturally attracted to your Facebook page, and it's low hanging fruit to convert them from leads to customers.

So what are they interested in? Home values? Land purchases? Neighborhood and community details? It is imperative that you know this.

As real estate agents, we also are fairly siloed and we typically don't look to other industries to see how they're successfully using Facebook to do what we're trying to do, and that's generate leads.

It's also easy to make the mistake of not really "counting" Facebook as part of your advertising/marketing budget. After all, you're probably spending a pittance on Facebook ads (if you're even doing ads at all), so it's no big spend to worry about. You're not spending money to get post comments, you're spending money to generate leads.

Real estate agents who have figured this out don't have a lot of Facebook "Likes." If you look at their page, it may not even appear successful to you. But it is successful. These agents spend maybe $2 per day and in return get dozens of high quality leads for their specific niche. Over time, this adds up to a lot of new additions to your email database.

And once you have the information, you can develop a strategy to nurture those leads and convert them into clients that close deals.

So how do you join the bandwagon? Here are some tips on becoming successful at Facebook online lead generation.

• Stop focusing on "Likes." Go for relevance. You can have 1,000 likes, but if you don't get any click-throughs, you don't get any leads.
• Run Facebook targeted ads. Facebook has a tool called Power Editor that will help you do this. Target the demographic that makes sense for your real estate business: zip code, income level, or whatever works for you. Be sure to include a link to direct the lead to your website's sign up form, and include a strong call to action to make sure the lead visits your website. Run similar targeted ads focused on website conversions and on page "Likes." Resist the urge to ask everyone you know to like your page. You want to keep this list pure and limited to true potential clients only (not Aunt Mary!).
• Facebook has a "real estate space" on your business page, so use it to run targeted campaigns. Use a strong call to action that sends leads to your website. Moth to a flame, remember?
• Regarding your content, only post content that is relevant and valuable to your customer base. Don't waste people's time. And don't forget to mix it up. Real estate agents make the colossal mistake of only posting photos to Facebook. Post lots of different things. Be sure to post content frequently. Really, you should be posting three times a day, at a minimum. Ideally, five posts are best. Schedule your posts to occur periodically throughout the day, even in the middle of the night.
• Don't be afraid to promote yourself. It's not bragging. Home purchases are the most major purchase a person will likely make in their lifetime, and they want a trusted and knowledgeable agent. Highlight your listings. Even better, post customer testimonials. Only do this a couple of times per week to avoid overkill. This schedule will provide value without being blatant.

Try this for a while. You have absolutely nothing to lose. You'll be glad you did. Just focus on your primary goal of using Facebook to add people to your email database.

To view the original article, visit the WolfNet blog.