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.
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.
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.
David Oliver says
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.
Christina Ethridge says
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.
Eddy W Gibson says
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?
Christina Ethridge says
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.
Rombas Immobilier, Roger says
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
Christina Ethridge says
For conversing with friends and family, use your personal profile. For business, use your business page. Thanks Roger!