One of the most frequent mistakes that real estate agents make when taking their business onto Facebook is focusing on the wrong aspects of their business page.
They will concentrate on getting likes on their page, boosting posts to get more engagement, using the page as a “selling” place for their business and looking for a quick winning recipe when it comes to posting.
You’re about to have your perspective shifted.
A successful Facebook business page is not about likes, post boosts or engagements. It’s more than that. It should be used as a lead generation tool and part of your inbound marketing strategy.
According to Hubspot, their take on inbound marketing is as follows, “Inbound marketing is a business methodology that attracts customers by creating valuable content and experiences tailored to them. While outbound marketing interrupts your audience with content they don’t want, inbound marketing forms connections they’re looking for and solves problems they already have. Inbound marketing is about delivering solutions and opportunities that have a positive impact on people and your business.”
While outbound marketing techniques have proven ineffective and no longer bring success, many real estate professionals still use these tactics to try to get leads that they so desperately need. Some of the biggest myths around real estate professionals still relying on outbound marketing include:
• Myth: Successful real estate agents handle their social media themselves.
Fact: You might’ve started as a jack of all trades, but it doesn’t mean you should keep going. It’s okay to be a real estate professional without having to master all things digital.
• Myth: It’s all about engagement.
Fact: There’s more to Facebook for businesses than comments, likes, and shares. All these without conversions won’t bring enough value to your business.
• Myth: Personal profiles generate more leads than business pages.
Fact: Some posts on your personal page may indeed get more engagement than those on your business page. However, family, friends, and people that already know and that are likely to interact with you on your personal page shouldn’t count as generated leads, but rather as prospects that you are nurturing and ultimately converting.
All these myths will dissolve themselves, as soon as you start treating your Facebook business page as the proper inbound marketing channel that it is.
Your current strategy might not cost you much, but as long as it doesn’t provide the expected results, it’s wasted money. The same amount of money can be directed toward getting engagement to your posts, or more wisely, to get you quality leads.
Once those leads become part of your email database, you can strategically nurture them, and eventually, convert them into clients.
It’s undeniable that targeted leads will carry more weight than hundreds of likes and comments will do in the success of your business. As a real estate agent looking to grow your real estate business online, you need to look at yourself as an online information marketer.
Check out these 8 proven ways that will turn the online presence of your business into a lead generation magnet:
1. Use Facebook Power Editor to create highly targeted ads that include a call-to-action and take the lead straight to a sign-up form on your website.
2. Use Facebook Power Editor to create highly targeted ads focused on page likes. You might be tempted to ask colleagues, friends, or vendors to like your page, but you’ll end up disappointed as this won’t get you any results since these people have nothing to do with your target market.
3. Use your Facebook page for highly targeted call-to-action campaigns and take the lead straight to a sign-up form on your website.
4. Focus on relevance rather than on engagement. Think of what’s more valuable - likes, shares, and comments on a post, or visitors going from your post to your website? Definitely the latter.
5. Create content that’s valuable, relevant, and targets your audience. Post at least three times a day – ideally, up to five times a day, even in the middle of the night.
6. Focus more on content that brings value to your audience, without “selling” yourself too much. Don’t use testimonials or posts that say “use my services” more often than every three days. Learn to provide value first, and your audience will learn you’re trustworthy.
7. Create content variety. Your audience will respond to different things, so instead of only posting articles or photos, mix them up to create variety.
8. Remember that all your Facebook efforts should translate into the increase of your email database. You will accomplish that by building trust, providing value, being helpful, and sharing your knowledge. If your subscribers are there for your content, you’ve got them locked in for the long run.
Which of these points would you be excited to start implementing?
As mentioned earlier, being a great real estate agent doesn’t automatically mean you have to be an online marketing guru too.
So, if you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed or don’t know where to start, let us know.
At Lightwalker.media, we focus on providing solutions that drive more valuable leads to your real estate business.