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by Christina Ethridge 7 Comments

Hey Real Estate Agents! Your Facebook Personal Profile Does Not Generate Business For You, Even If You Think It Does.

Do you know what I hear every day?

Real Estate agents telling me that they get more business from their Facebook personal profile than from their Facebook business page.

Your personal sphere
Image courtesy of [dan] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Let’s set aside the fact that they aren’t actually “getting” business from their Facebook personal profile. That’s a whole other post, but suffice it to say, business obtained from your Facebook personal profile is not lead generating.

It’s called working your sphere. You already know these people. You are staying top of mind for them via your personal profile. You should be expecting them to do business with you and to refer their friends and colleagues.

You are not “generating” them as a lead. They are more than a lead. They are a prospect (if they aren’t already friends, family or closed clients). They are connected with you, even if you haven’t met them in real life, they are already in a relationship with you. That’s called nurturing and conversion, not generating.

If you aren’t doing business with people you already know, people you are already friends with, people you hang out “IRL” with and are connected with them on Facebook, then you need to get the heck out of the real estate business.

You don’t “get” a lead that you already had, from your Facebook personal profile. Your Facebook personal profile is your sphere. Your “mets”. They may even give you referrals, if they remember you at the right moment. It’s easier to nurture people you already know. It’s very important, too.

However, you can not solely rely on people you already know. You’ve been taught to add to your database. Meet people. Get their contact information. The bigger your database, the bigger your business. If you aren’t adding to your database, you’ll go out of business. It’s that simple.

Well, you don’t typically meet people on your Facebook personal profile. That’s where your Facebook business page comes in.

Your Facebook business page is not the same thing as working your sphere. It’s a step in the process. It’s a part of the real estate lead generation funnel.

Your Facebook business page is a lead generation funnel for your “un-mets”.

A lead is someone you are not already connected to and do not know.

Spokes and hub
Image courtesy of [Danilo Rizzuti] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
You must have a lead generation process. A big one. Done daily. Guess what that means? A Facebook business page for your real estate business is an excellent way to generate “un-mets” – people you do not know, yet hope to do business with in the future.

When you bring it in as a part of the funnel, when you use it thoroughly and with detailed, focused thought, you’ll generate leads. Lots of them. You’ll be adding to your database at a faster rate than via your Facebook personal profile is even possible.

There is so much power in a Facebook business page. More power than any Facebook personal profile could ever have. For one, it’s indexable. That means that the search engines “crawl” your page and share your content in search engines. That means you have yet another “finger” in SEO juice (rankings). This is a good thing. A very good thing.

The other power? You can drive traffic to the page (which is non-threatening to un-mets) and allow them to get to a trust point with you . . . enough that when you offer them something free in exchange for their contact information, they are likely to give it to you. At that point, with an excellent long-term nurturing and follow-up system in place, you are golden. They are yours.

Don’t make the mistake in thinking that your Facebook personal profile is “generating” business for you. It’s not. It’s simply filtering the business that was already there, yours for the taking. It’s kind of like being in the right place at the right time and hearing the right conversation at the right time.

You need actual lead generation. You need it constant. Some of the biggest producers in real estate already know this. Now you do too.

Christina Ethridge is the founder of LeadsAndLeverage.com, helping real estate agents capture, convert and close Facebook leads.

 

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Filed Under: Facebook Tagged With: Done, facebook for real estate, facebook marketing

Comments

  1. David Oliver says

    August 4, 2015 at 5:16 am

    I completely disagree. Yes FB business pages are the legit way to promote your business. But most sales experts will agree that people like to do business with those they like and trust. Thus FB personal profiles give the realtor the opportunity to ‘friend’ everyone they meet, get to know them and if you are good, get them to like your business page.

    However using your personal profile to promote others, share positive experiences and ask for business once or twice a month is a fantastic way to remind people that you are a Realtor. Then you use your phone to follow up and convert that connection to a client.

    Reply
    • Christina Ethridge says

      August 27, 2015 at 7:16 am

      Hi David – I think you may have missed what I was saying… personal profiles are for people you already know or have met in person. In other words, they aren’t for cold traffic and growing your “unmets.” They are extremely powerful for social connection reminders… connecting with your sphere, etc. But they fail miserably when it comes to generating brand new, unknown leads… aka scaling your business.

      That is why I say they don’t “generate new business” for you.

      Reply
  2. Eddy W Gibson says

    January 14, 2016 at 3:31 am

    I have recently started location (zip code) targeted advertising ads on Facebook. The ads are for lead generation to a website for home evaluation’s, but it appears that any engagement is from suspect low activity FB users and people from out of the zip code I targeted. Can you comment or give feedback on this observation?

    Reply
    • Christina Ethridge says

      January 16, 2016 at 12:24 pm

      Without looking at your entire funnel (the actual targeting setup, your page specifics and your analytics) it’s not possible for me to give reliable feedback on this. If you are getting results outside of what you anticipated, something is likely incorrect in your targeting.

      Reply
  3. Rombas Immobilier, Roger says

    February 20, 2016 at 12:22 am

    Hello Christina,
    Thank you for the advice. I was wondering about what should i use for my communication on Facebook, other my personnal account or my page. You convice me to use the second.
    Roger from France

    Reply
    • Christina Ethridge says

      March 20, 2016 at 8:22 am

      For conversing with friends and family, use your personal profile. For business, use your business page. Thanks Roger!

      Reply

Trackbacks

  1. You’ll Never Generate Real Estate Leads On Facebook If You Don’t Change This One Thing says:
    February 8, 2014 at 10:03 am

    […] Of those who are on Facebook on a personal level, most are just focusing on their personal profiles, their spheres. They think that’s where the leads come from. […]

    Reply

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