Why You Need Funnels With Your Facebook Advertising

The Facebook advertising platform has taken off in a huge fashion. I would put Facebook advertising above content marketing, Google AdWords or SEO. Facebook Ads have become everything when it comes to online marketing.

This saturation has led to Realtors seeing their conversion results decline, and therefore wonder what they need to do to get the conversion rate back up. To the average Joe on the street, the "secret" to doing this might really seem like a secret, but to someone like myself that eats and breathes this stuff, it really isn't. What it comes down to at the end of the day is just applying good, old fashioned marketing practices to a high-tech marketing platform.

What are these tried and true principles, you ask? It's simple. You need to apply a sales funnel methodology to your Facebook Ad campaigns.

What Is a Sales Funnel and How Do I Apply It to My Facebook Ads?

I've been talking and writing about the need to have a strong content marketing strategy for your real estate website for years. While I could write an entire article (and I think I actually will) on specifically what a real estate sales funnel is, today let's keep things simple to make sure you have a working idea of a funnel and how it works.

Sales funnels are buckets you can put visitors into that define the different parts of the journey they are on—from initially interested in your services to becoming a client. When you are talking about sales funnels in terms of your online marketing strategy, I suggest you look at establishing three distinct funnels:

1. I breathe, therefore I am group
This group of people is exactly what it sounds like. This would literally be anyone with a pulse, and anyone that could possibly, one day, someday, do business with you. You do not want to be picky with these people. The net you cast to define these people is very, very wide.

An example of a group such as this would be all people that live in the city where your farm area is located. Sure, you may not have refined it to your exact zip code, or honed it by homeownership status, or even age, but that is okay. The idea is to get eyes on your ads and content. The offers you give these people in ads require no lead capture or landing pages at all. You simply want them to click on your ad to go to the item of value that is promised to them. An example might be a market report for the city you are farming to, or a blog post about preparing your home for sale that you recently wrote.

What? We aren't asking for their contact info? Correct. The idea is to get them to your page so you can retarget to them later on down the funnel. If you don't know what retargeting means, don't worry. I will explain it in my next article in detail. The idea is to run as many people through this first funnel so you can then narrow it down and turn your "visitor" into a "qualified lead" by serving them different, more targeted ads at a later date.

2. I'm intrigued and want more info group
This group of people will actually be comprised of two different groups of people. First off, you will add to this group anyone that is being retargeted to, by virtue of having clicked on an ad that was served up to group number one. The most important part of this group will be comprised of people that you are most interested in doing business with, or are currently qualified leads that have not yet converted to customers.

How you define your ideal clients, given the vast demographic reach of Facebook, can be done many ways. For instance, you could choose homeowners in a certain zip code, in a certain age range, with a particular minimum income. Or, perhaps you are marketing to homeowners in a certain zip code that are fans of HLN TV and like BMWs. Whatever your ideal client is, you want to clearly define it here.

The ads you run to this middle funnel are more specific. First off, every ad will define a specific item of value that you think will be deemed useful by your prospect. Secondly, to get this item of value, the visitor will have to fill out their contact information on a landing page, thus giving you a true qualified lead.

What about those that clicked on the ad, but didn't fill out the landing page, you ask? You can actually run a specific campaign for them as well, targeting only those people that visited the landing page and did not complete the capture form.

3. Let's get ready to rumble group
I purposely named this group a silly name, but that is basically exactly what it is. This group of people has been checking you and your services out, perhaps have been looking at your online reviews, and are nearing that critical stage of setting up a listing appointment with you.

The ads you run to this group will, of course, be very different than the other two funnels. These ads will be geared around making an appointment with the visitor. The ads should also make it super easy to schedule that appointment automatically. My personal favorite tool to auto-schedule appointments is a service called You Can Book Me.

The goal here is to give the visitor all the final things they may need to decide to pull the trigger to meet with you. Then, once they do pull that trigger, make it as easy as possible for them to immediately schedule that appointment with you.

So This Sounds Great. How Do I Actually Do It, Though?

If you are intrigued by this, have no fear. My next article is going to be an actual example of one of these funnel campaigns, from start to finish, with graphics and examples. Stay tuned!

To view the original article, visit the Leading Agent blog.