- Look for life-changing events on Facebook, and market to those people in your sphere.
- Create valuable content to attract buyers and position yourself as a local expert.
- Utilize Facebook’s targeting features to create highly effective and inexpensive ads.
For many Facebook users, it’s not unusual to spend a significant portion of the day scrolling down the news feed or chatting on Messenger.
In fact, according to The New York Times, the average user spends at least 50 minutes per day on the Facebook company’s largest platforms.
Although many professionals view time spent on Facebook as wasted time, real estate agents should recognize that Facebook is actually an incredible platform for generating more business.
Buyer’s agents in particular have several powerful strategies at their disposal when it comes to bringing in new business via Facebook.
Here are three ways to turn Facebook into a steady source of buyer leads:
1. Target potential buyers with Facebook ads
By now, you’ve probably heard how great Facebook ads are for generating all types of real estate leads. If you’re not already using Facebook’s powerful advertising features to reach out to potential clients, you’re late to the game.
Fortunately, it’s easy to learn how to use Facebook ads, especially if you just want to start running a few targeted ads to generate buyer leads. Although we won’t go into the specifics on how to run a targeted ad campaign via Facebook in this post, we will offer a few suggestions concerning strategy.
First, carefully target potential buyers to keep your advertising costs low. Consider factors like geography, age and income when planning who to target for optimal ROI.
Second, be sure to use an attractive image as a part of your ad. You want to catch Facebook users’ eyes, and a text-only ad simply isn’t going to cut it.
Oh, and don’t forget to create an engaging landing page to use in conjunction with each type of targeted ad. You’ll never convert potential buyers if your ads send them to a poorly made, generic landing page.
2. Communicate with potential buyers in your SOI
Are you one of those people who has hundreds or maybe even thousands of Facebook friends? If so, you have access to a large pool of potential buyer leads.
Even if you don’t know much about the majority of your Facebook friends, you can still reach out to these people at opportune times.
These opportune times typically present themselves when major life changes are right around the corner.
Someone with a new baby on the way, for example, may be thinking about moving into a larger home. Don’t be afraid to reach out to people in these situations with a congratulatory message.
Yes, you can also offer your services; it’s fine.
Other potential buyers to watch for include people changing jobs and people going through positive changes in relationship status.
Life changes shouldn’t always be seen as business opportunities, however.
Death and divorce can be very painful for everyone involved, and approaching people dealing with either of these issues in an effort to increase business just isn’t a good idea in most cases.
3. Create and circulate relevant real estate content
Facebook isn’t just about staying connected with people; it’s also about sharing.
As a real estate agent, you should be sharing relevant, valuable real estate content. Not only will this help you maintain top-of-mind awareness, but it can also help you establish credibility as a local real estate authority.
Many agents produce monthly market snapshots to share with Facebook friends and other contacts. Both buyers and sellers appreciate these monthly rundowns on the market, and sending this information out requires only a minimal amount of effort.
Sharing video via Facebook can also be a great lead-generation strategy, especially if you’re looking for buyer leads specifically.
By filming yourself discussing an open house on location and inviting viewers to attend, you can create a considerable amount of buzz. If you boost this video post, you’re almost guaranteed to have a successful open-house event.
Effective lead-generation strategies, including the three discussed above, are all about reaching the right people with the right message.
You offer a valuable service to buyers. Communicate this via your lead-generation efforts on Facebook, and you’ll find that this platform can be a steady source of hot buyer leads.
Pat Hiban is the author of the NYT bestselling book “6 steps to 7 figures – A Real Estate Professional’s Guide to Building Wealth and Creating Your Destiny,” the founder of online real estate sales training site Rebus University, and the host of Pat Hiban Interviews Real Estate Rockstars, an agent-to-agent real estate podcast with Hiban Digital in Baltimore, Maryland. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter.
