facebook marketing

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.

by Christina Ethridge 6 Comments

How To Talk Business On Your Facebook Personal Profile

As a real estate agent, it’s tempting to want to post your listings on your Facebook personal profile.

Tempting.

Maybe you know Facebook’s usage guidelines.

Maybe you don’t.

Maybe you see just about every other real estate agent in your area posting their listings on their personal profiles.

Maybe you don’t.

Maybe you are willing to risk losing the Facebook tribe you’ve built up with your personal profile.

Maybe you aren’t.

Ok. Let’s assume, for the sake of this article, that you want to comply with Facebook’s usage guidelines but you also want to reach your personal tribe.

Here’s how to post your real estate business to your Facebook personal profile without violating Facebook’s terms and without annoying your friends and family…

“SHARE” from your business page to your personal profile. This is the ideal way to directly post a listing onto your personal profile. First, post it on your business page, then use the “share” link to share it to your personal profile.If you want it to generate leads, don’t just describe the listing and don’t just say “here’s my new listing”. Be interesting. Be engaging. Describe something unique about the property. Include a call to action. Include a link to a capture page of some sort (whether it is a login required for the IDX listing or a landing page that asks for an email address).
Share by clicking on what you want to share (on your business page) and clicking the share link.

Say something engaging, inviting, that compels people to want to see or engage with what you are sharing.
While you are at one of your listings, “CHECK IN” on Facebook. Use the check-in feature to bring awareness to your friends. Hosting an open house? Ask people to come visit you on your check in. Showing it to buyers? Don’t announce that, it creates competition for your buyers and could be violating any potential fiduciary responsibility you might have to them. Installing a sign? Capture it with a photo and upload that to the check in. Visiting with the sellers? Say that. Give a reason why the sellers love their home (which could be a reason why someone else would love it also).
Post a photo of a feature of your listing. Does it have interesting architectural features? Post a close up of the features and briefly talk about it. Does it have a view? Show yourself (or your feet, or something) enjoying the view. Is it in a great neighborhood? Share a photo of why it’s such a great neighborhood.Remember, pictures are worth a thousand words. Use them well. Also remember, less is more. Don’t try to capture everything, instead, capture a specific thing. Be brief but descriptive and engaging when you post the photo.
Share YOUR thoughts about the property, not an advertising pitch. If there is something you like, say it.

What do you like most about a property? Don’t always assume that something is a negative, it isn’t to everyone.
Let’s go beyond listings. In your errands as a real estate agent, check yourself into places throughout the day – but always remember to include something engaging. Meeting a client at Starbucks? Check in! Don’t just say “meeting a client at Starbucks”, but be unique. Going to a closing at a title company? Check in! Share a quote from the client in your check in.
Again, beyond listings. Are you door knocking? Check into the neighborhood and then randomly show photos of the neighborhood throughout the day.
Another way to post business on your personal profile is to be thinking “real estate” but not “selling”. For example, something happens in your day. It perplexes you why buyers/sellers do this. Ask your sphere. For example, I’ve these sellers: they installed a new roof the previous summer and think that the value I place on their home today, to sell it, should be increased by the cost of the new roof.Why sellers think their home is worth more than today’s sellable value because they’ve installed something that is required to sell and the value is already implicit in the listing price, is beyond me. Well, truly, I get it. They want their money back. So ask this: “Do you, as a home seller, think that the cost of putting a new roof on your house before you sell it, should be added to the listing price? ” or a question along a similar vein. Get their thoughts on it. Help you to understand them.I happen to do this a lot on my personal profile. It’s just my thought process. You are welcome to “follow” me on Facebook (most of my posts are public).

Here’s the thing. If you focus too much on your personal profile, you won’t grow your business page. You definitely want a nice balance between the two. Do the check ins on your personal profile and post the photos and such (without check ins) on your business page and share a select few to your personal profile.

You want to cross over. But always remember, your connections on your personal profile are there for personal connection, not business connection. You can, and will, annoy them and cause them to either hide, unfriend, or block you if you put too much business on your profile.

I’ve unfriended a multitude of agents because it’s all they do – post their listings, talk about what great agents they are, provide “forced” commentary about their real estate day. Bah. SOOOO not interested. Be selective. Be engaging. DO NOT BRAG, even subtly. Just, don’t. No one is interested. Let your actions, and the words of others, be your testimonials.

Ok, with all of that, do you have ideas on ways you can include your business on your personal profile without violating Facebooks usage guidelines?

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

by Christina Ethridge 29 Comments

The Facebook Funnel – The Real Estate Lead Generation Process Using Facebook

Sometimes I think that real estate agents think that if they build a Facebook business page, the clients will just pop out of the wood work. And, when they don’t, they insist Facebook doesn’t work for real estate lead generation.

Well, I’m here to tell you that no, clients probably won’t pop out of the woodwork and that yes, Facebook is a breeding ground for generating massive real estate leads.

Featured Download: The Facebook Page Setup Checklist. The step-by-step guide you need to get your Facebook page up and running and bringing in real estate leads. (Download Now)

However. In order to generate massive amounts of real estate leads using your Facebook business page, you’ve first got to understand the Facebook funnel. The real estate lead generation process using Facebook.

First, let’s look at the real estate lead generation process . . .

There are 4 main steps to the real estate lead generation funnel.

Step 1 – Capture
Step 2 – Convert
Step 3 – Close
Step 4 – Cultivate

Let’s break down each one and put in all the right ingredients…

Step 1 – Capture (Facebook)

This is where Facebook comes into the funnel. The Facebook portion is where we’re going to leverage the absolute best source of highly targeted traffic and drive it into your database, aka capture it.

There are several steps in this process including:

Step 2 – Convert (Database)

This is where your email marketing comes into the funnel. You need to treat your email marketing with just as much, if not more, importance than you would your phone calls. You’ve got to leverage your email marketing to build know, like and trust relationships.

There are several steps in this process including:

Step 3 – Close (In Person)

This tends to be where most agents (and brokerage trainings) give their highest energy and focus to… getting people who you have face to face or phone contact with into a position to close them.

The thing with this is that if you do Steps 1 and 2 the right way, Step 3 is insanely easy. In fact, you’ll close even more in Step 3 than if you just focus on Step 3 in all of your trainings.

There are essentially two steps in this process:

You’ve got to compel your prospect to sign a contract with you. Conversion.
You’ve got to guide your client to closing. Close.

Step 4 – Cultivate

Something like 75% of real estate agents completely toss this step into the trash. They don’t do it. When 70% of sellers say they would definitely use the same real estate agent again, and yet only 25% of them actually do use the agent they previously worked with… this isn’t the fault of the seller, it’s the fault of the agent. They haven’t been doing the fourth step in the real estate lead generation funnel.

You must focus on the long haul. If you want a solid, consistent real estate business, you absolutely must have a way to continue to deepen your relationships with your closed clients. 64% of sellers used an agent referred to them by friends and family. If you aren’t cultivating your closed clients, you are going to fail in the real estate business.

There are basically two steps in this process:

You’ve got to encourage your client to refer others to you. Action
You’ve got to compel your client to use you again. Conversion.

Take a look at that process again.

The real estate agent mantra can be summarized into: Capture * Convert * Close * Cultivate. That’s easy enough to remember. It’s just not seemingly easy to implement.

At every point in the capture, convert, close, cultivate process, real estate agents freeze up. Some aren’t sure how to capture, others aren’t sure how to convert, others aren’t sure how to close and then, most don’t know how to give enough value after the closing to cultivate more business. That’s ok. Each step in the process can be learned and implemented in your business.

The most important thing is to understand the process.

Understanding the process is the first step in knowing how to capture, convert, & close real estate leads with your Facebook business page.

I want to help you do this! What’s why I created the Facebook Page Setup Checklist. It’s the step-by-step guide you need to get your Facebook page up and running and bringing in real estate leads. You can download the checklist here.