So You Want to Generate Leads...

Over the past few weeks, we've written about the various marketing strategies and tools you can use to promote your real estate business. We've discussed turning millennial consumers into repeat customers. We've shared under the radar tactics for driving foot traffic to your open houses. We've even chronicled the best practices for boosting your online presence and reputation. But, we get it...

...nothing is as important as those leads.

Of course, every agent wants lead generation — and not just lead generation, but hot lead generation. But the simple truth is, you're going to miss valuable opportunities to attract new clients if you ignore anyone who isn't ready to buy or sell in the next 30 days. Instead, a volume play—in which you capture and nurture a sizable number of potential leads—is a more viable long-term strategy. And with 2.38 billion monthly active users, nothing beats Facebook in terms of sheer audience size and volume of leads.

Running ads on Facebook means you have access to a vast amount of user-submitted demographic data, allowing you to target your ads from the get-go at a very granular level. You'll be able to pinpoint users by location, interests, previous activity, and more to reach the exact audience you're trying to access.

That said, not every single one of these leads will be high-intent — and that isn't a bad thing.

As users are not usually actively looking for a property on Facebook in the same way someone who types "homes near me" in Google is, Facebook leads are generally more passive than those on other platforms. But the beauty of Facebook is that the platform enables you to zero in on these types of users and nurture them. You can easily serve these audiences several, dynamic ads (more on that below) over time, creating multiple touchpoints and refining your messaging with the intent of being top of mind and easily contactable when they are ready to hire an agent.

Additionally, you can take attributes of these more-responsive groups and use them to pinpoint similar users, a feature Facebook refers to as Lookalike Audiences. Think of each Facebook advertising campaign as an exercise in calibration to help you hone in on new quality leads, and reaffirm your expertise with existing ones.

Aside from Facebook's retargeting capabilities, the platform also offers two big advantages for agents:

Facebook's ads are effective and malleable

Want video or photo ads? You got it. Info tease ads? Comin' right up. However you want to dress your ads up, Facebook offers functionalities to display it to your target audience and the reporting tools to allow your best-performing ads to use more of the budget.

Facebook has an ad type that's expressly dedicated to help you pinpoint leads

Facebook lead ads smooth out the processes that often turn potential leads away. That's because part of having a Facebook profile is inputting data about yourself, which allows Facebook to auto populate lead capture forms.

Why is this so important, you ask? When a user clicks on an advertisement on most online platforms, they are taken to a landing page where they must manually fill out a form and press submit to indicate their interest. Many, many users drop off at this point, for a variety of reasons. Maybe the form requires too much time to fill out; maybe their browser is too slow; maybe they got distracted. It really doesn't matter. The point is: An extra layer of friction drastically affects the amount of information an advertiser (in this case, you, the agent) can collect.

How Homesnap Pro Ads can help

Creating an ad from scratch is tough. Creating a Lookalike Audience is time-consuming. Homesnap Pro Ads on Facebook not only save you time by creating customized ads on your behalf, but you can sit back and relax knowing that our professional marketing expertst have tested thousands of ads, and we know what resonates and what doesn't. We'll automate your ad publication calendar and make sure you're getting the bang for your buck that you deserve, even retargeting your sphere so you're always top of mind with them.

Bottom line

When it comes to effective lead generation, look no further. Advertise with Homesnap Pro Ads on Facebook, and you'll have all of our tried-and-true marketing tactics and all of Facebook's proven marketing optimization.

And a lead or two…or three.

To view the original article, visit the Homesnap blog.