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Get Off the Hamster Wheel and Perpetual Cycle that Most Real Estate Agents Live in and Start Utilizing Facebook for Generating Real Estate Leads

Featured Download: The Facebook Page Setup Checklist – specifically for real estate agents – get your Facebook page setup to capture real estate leads.

Are you still spending $100 on an ad that generates just one closing?

For the most part, I see two tactics among real estate agents when it comes to using Facebook:

They either ignore Facebook, dismissing it as a nonviable source for lead generation, seeing it as a time suck …

They spend all of their time on Facebook, trying every conceivable tactic they can find, without learning anything about how Facebook works, and most especially, how it really can work for the real estate industry.

The problem is that real estate agents tend to have a shortsighted view of Facebook. Well, of anything for that matter.

Their focus tends to be all about “who wants to buy or sell right this instant.”

Why is this a problem?

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Low-Hanging Fruit

In one sense, it’s not, as picking the low-hanging fruit gives an immediate cash infusion. But it also gives a false sense of satisfaction. A false sense that your business is generating leads and doing just fine.

At the same time that you are in the middle of a transaction from low-hanging fruit, you are also worrying about where your next meal is going to come from. Who’s going to be your next transaction?

It’s the perpetual cycle most real estate agents live in their businesses. This cycle is the reason we took the leap and hired a real estate coach in 2010. We were tired of always hunting for our next transaction. He changed our whole view of our business and it changed our lives.

Until you change your view about “leads,” you’ll never be able to see Facebook (or any lead-generating method for that matter) as anything other than a shortsighted, low-hanging-fruit option.

Facebook is a fantastic resource for generating leads. You can approach it by trying all of the different “tricks” that people are “preaching” at you. Many of them work.

You can approach it as only a short-term solution but I find that to be a waste of time and money.

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Scale Your Time and Money

Why on earth wouldn’t you want to scale your time and money?

In other words, if you do something today that takes you two hours and costs you $25 and you get one transaction from it that closes in 30 days, why on earth wouldn’t you want it to also bring you transactions over the next 36 months at no more cost or time to you?

The only way it’s going to do that is if you step outside of the shortsighted view of Facebook and see Facebook as a lead-generating funnel. A true funnel. One that brings in all kinds of leads, that brings them into your nurturing process.

You do have a nurturing process, right? One that spans months and years?

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Facebook is the “HUB”

Until you see Facebook as being a “hub” of its own with a whole heck of a lot of “spokes” pointing into that hub and that hub being a funnel that goes into your nurturing process (that is not on Facebook), you’ll always be scrambling for all of the “tactics” and “tricks” people are trying to sell you about using Facebook.

BOX

There are dozens of different ways to generate leads via Facebook. Some include (but are not limited to):

Utilizing your personal profile on a daily basis by integrating your personal life and your business.
Engaging with your friends on their profiles rejoicing in their life events.
Creating a business page.
Creating and posting content on your business page (minimum of four to six times every day).
Utilizing headers and profile photos on your business page with solid call-to-action captures.
Running ads targeted towards your niche getting them to connect to your business page.
Running ads targeted towards your niche getting them to connect via your capture points.
Running ads targeted towards your business page fans getting them to connect via your capture point.
Running ads targeted towards your business page fans getting them to like, share or comment (this pushes your content into more fans’ news feeds).
Running ads targeted towards your email database getting them to connect to your business page.
Running ads targeted towards your email database getting them to connect via your capture points.
Running ads targeted towards cold and/or warm audiences getting them to engage/connect to your business page.
Running ads targeted towards cold and/or warm audiences getting them to connect via your capture points.
Running “burst” ads focused on short-term events, offers, etc.

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Facebook Ad Success

Notice something here? Ads are very important on Facebook. However, most agents are blowing up their targeting options by diluting the likes on their business page with every colleague they can convince to “like” their page.

Your Facebook ad success is directly dependent upon the quality of your page likes. If those page likes are colleagues around the country, don’t bother running ads, and don’t bother building your likes further.

Start a new page, and this time start it right. Without a page that you’ve highly targeted your likes/fans (in other words, not a page that you’ve asked everyone and their uncle to like), your ability to target and run effective ads is just about useless.

Stop focusing on the short term, on the number of likes, on an ad you spend $100 on and get one closing from.

Start focusing on the long term, on the quality of the likes, on the number of those likes that step through to your capture points, on the $100 you spend on ads that gets you one closing now, another closing six months from now and closings every three to four months over time.

From that one little ad.

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Featured Download

The Facebook Page Setup Checklist – specifically for real estate agents – get your Facebook page setup to capture real estate leads.

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by Christina Ethridge Leave a Comment

So you’ve got a brand new page and want to run page like ads… do this first!

I know that our first instinct once we create a page is to jump right into getting those page likes.

The thing is, there are a few key elements you must do BEFORE you start driving people to your page. Miss them or mess them up and you’ll negatively affect your page… in other words, you won’t get the leads you want to get.

The first major step that most agents mess up is their page setup. Now, this is NOT your fault. Seriously. Most people don’t know how to setup a Facebook business page for end results. We kind of just jump into it and do it. Then, we wonder why it isn’t working like we hoped.

So your first step is to download the Facebook Page Setup Checklist I made specifically for real estate agent Facebook business pages.

Ok. Now that you’ve downloaded the checklist (make those changes!!) – it’s time to start getting page likes… right?

NO!

Now it’s time to get your content on your page. Relevant content. Valuable content. Content your future home buying and selling clients need.

I go into this in more detail in this short video:

Just remember, your focus on your page is not you, it’s your future client. You need to give them a valuable reason why they should connect with your page – which means you’ve got to have good, solid content on the page before you start driving traffic to like your page.

Get your Facebook Page Setup the RIGHT way. Click here to download my Facebook Page Setup Checklist for Real Estate Agents. It’s FREE!

by Christina Ethridge 10 Comments

What’s the perfect Facebook ad budget for real estate agents?

Do you know how much you should spend on your ads?

You are not alone.

A question I was asked recently was “how much should I be spending on Facebook ads” and I actually modified the question just a bit because I wanted to cover a little more area on this in order to help you.

So what is the ideal Facebook ad budget for a real estate agent?

I answer that in Episode #55 of The #RIBBIT Show:

Get your Facebook Page Setup the RIGHT way. Click here to download my Facebook Page Setup Checklist for Real Estate Agents. It’s FREE!

So when you are running Facebook ads, if you want results, you need to be focused on the long term strategy and bang for your buck. Budgeting what you have to spend over the course of a length of time, not a one-and-done methodology.

What Kind Of Budget Should I Run?

Real estate agents are always wondering what kind of ad budget should I run, how much should I spend on my ads or what should I expect or what should I plan for? Things like that.

So I want to talk a little bit about your Facebook ad budget today. Kind of on the concept that “what is the ideal Facebook ad budget?” And there is an ideal Facebook ad budget depending on the type of ads and things like that so we’re going to talk about that today.

We’re going to talk about your Facebook ad budget, what’s the ideal Facebook ad budget for a real estate agent.

Now if you’re in another industry or anything like that your ad budget is going to vary because it depends on what you’re running, what you’re doing and how you’re doing it all but for real estate agents we have a couple of metrics that we can use for our ad budget.

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The Four Things To Review

So here it is basically you need to have and there are four kinds of things I’m going to review today.

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A Sustainable Budget

The first one is when you are establishing your Facebook ad budget you need to have a budget that is sustainable. In other words you need to have something or you need to set a budget for yourself that you can sustain over the long haul and by over the long haul I mean months at a time.

I don’t mean “oh I can do it for ten days or I can do it until my next commission comes in or I’ve got a little bit now.” You need something that is sustainable just like direct mail. The success that you’re going to have is based on your ability to be consistent, sustain it and to keep doing it.

That’s the exact same thing. A lot of people don’t have success via direct mail is because they do these “one hit wonders.”

Well it’s the same things with ads. We have $500 so we run an ad and we don’t get anything from it and then we don’t have any more money.

So take what you have available right now and figure out how you can make it last until your next closing so two, three, four months.

It needs to be sustainable. Your ad budget needs to be sustainable.

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Getting Traction in the Facebook Algorithm

The second piece is when you’re running an ad you have got to run an ad long enough to get traction in the algorithm, in the Facebook algorithm and to see what the results are.

A lot of us do an ad and within 24 hours we’re looking at the ad and going “I’m not getting this or it’s not getting that” or we run it for 24 hours or 48 hours and we think “boom that’s done.”

Here’s the problem. In order to have a successful ad on Facebook, to get it into the algorithm, to allow Facebook to get it out there you have to run your ad for multiple days at a time just to see how it’s going to perform.

Typically here’s what I recommend. This is number three. Here’s what I recommend for real estate agents.

When you are running your ads to your audiences the first time you run that ad you need to run it for $10/day for 10 days.

Now why $10/day and why the 10 days?

Well based on your…I’m estimating your audience size to be since most of us are not looking at the entire country, since we’re not looking at the entire state we’re going to have audience sizes anywhere from a couple thousand to maybe ten or fifteen thousand.

If our audience size is bigger as a real estate agent you didn’t do good enough targeting. You’re doing too much. You’re trying too much so that’s a whole nother subject.

So your audience size is going to be anywhere let’s just say five to twenty-five thousand okay so in order to get it out there you need to run it consistently over time $10/day for 10 days.

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Run Your Ads For Several Days

The other piece is you need to run your ad for several days and some places say “oh three days is fine” or five days is fine.”

Here’s why I say ten days.

Number one experience.

Number two because that gets you through all days of the week, all potential weather changes, all potential holidays going on. Things like that.

When you run it for ten days you’ve gotten through potentially two weekends or potentially a couple different days of the week that overlap so you can actually get a decent average set up to figure out what’s going on.

So $10/day for 10 days.

If your ad is producing, if it’s bringing in the clicks or the leads that you want it to bring in then you either need to scale it up or scale it down and you’re like “Why would you scale it down if it’s working?”

Well if you have other ads you want to run and you can’t sustain $10/day for 10 days on one you need to scale it down and adjust it slowly so you can try other ads but keep that ad working.

If an ad is working for you do NOT stop it! Do NOT pause it.

When you stop it, when you pause it, when you change the text, when you change a picture when you change anything it pulls it completely out of the algorithm and you have to start over completely with that ad.

So once the ad is out there if it’s working don’t change it! Leave it, leave it out there. Just reduce the budget slightly a little bit at a time so that it keeps getting pushed out into the algorithm and it keeps staying out there working for you.

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You Can’t Hop In or Out of the Algorithm

And then that’s the big thing. That’s kind of number four. You can’t hop in or out of the algorithm.

It doesn’t work like that. Once you’re in it you want to stay in it.

You want to keep your budget high enough that Facebook is going to keep pushing it out to the algorithm so that’s why after 10 days you should be able to determine “Well okay if I’m spending $10/day and it’s costing me $.50 per click then you know that you can reasonably bring that budget down a little bit and still keep getting the clicks through to what you want to do.

So there’s the four main things you want to know and think about when you’re setting your Facebook ad budget and I gave you the ideal ad budget for real estate agents.

So first of all you need to make sure your ad budget is sustainable over the long term.

Two you need to make sure you’re running your ads long enough to get traction and get results, to check the average of those results.

That means number three you need to run your ads for $10/day for 10 days and then if the ad is working, do not stop the ad. Don’t pause it, don’t change it, don’t tweak it. Just leave it working but reduce the budget slightly. Reduce it down so you can try other ads.

And then you don’t want to ever stop it or pause it because you can’t hop into or out of the algorithm. You just wasted basically if you run an ad for $10/day for 10 days and you just spent $100 testing that ad and it’s working and then you pause it, you just wasted that $100.

It might have gotten you a couple leads but over the long term you wasted it.

You have to start it back over again whereas if you had just gone through and taken the time to slowly bring it down to $3 or $4 a day or $2 or $3 or $4 a day it would still be out in the news feed and then you can slowly bring it back up again based on your budget.

This is why you don’t want to pause, you don’t want to stop, you just want to reduce and increase the budget according to how Facebook recommends it of course so that you keep it out there in that algorithm.

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You Only Need to Spend $100 or $200 a Month Overall

So this was actually a really short #RIBBIT episode. I just wanted you to have access to the ideal ad budget for a real estate agent.

No you do not need to be spending $500 a month to actually get leads if you’re doing your targeting right, if you’ve got your verbiage right, if you’ve got your picture right, if you’ve got the landing page right, if you are targeting people that are warmer vs. colder and you really know you’ve got that all dialed in, you only need to spend $10 a day for 10 days.

You only need to spend $100 or $200 a month overall. You don’t need to spend a minimum of $500 a month. That’s just a ridiculous amount, That’s when you’re layering ads but if you’re doing that on one ad not such a great idea for real estate agents.

Anyway so hopefully that helps you. Let me know if you have any other questions and let me know what you think.

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Featured Download

Get your Facebook Page Setup the RIGHT way. Click here to download my Facebook Page Setup Checklist for Real Estate Agents. It’s FREE!

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