We’re here to answer one burning question: how can residential real estate agents get more listings on Facebook?
Do you have a weak or non-existent social media strategy?
If so, you definitely want to keep reading.
It’s time to score valuable Facebook real estate listings with these 4 powerful steps:
Identify Your Target Audience and Set Goals
Create a Strong Digital Marketing Strategy
Develop a Social Media Presence
Build Facebook Real Estate Ads
We’ll dive into each in detail, so be sure to take notes. Before you know it, you’ll be well on your way to conquering Facebook listings and growing your real estate business.
How to Get Listings and Dominate Your Market: Know Who They Are
The first step in mastering the art of Facebook real estate is identifying your target audience and setting goals for your real estate business. You can’t develop a strategy or advertise across Facebook without knowing your market: people selling homes in your area.
How to Prospect for Real Estate Listings With Facebook Marketplace
Who are these people?
You know their goal: sell their home.
But what real estate demographics characterize them? Consider the following:
Age
Gender
Location
Interests
Income level
Type of residency being sold (house, apartment, duplex, etc)
This step requires a bit of field research. Facebook has dramatically increased its number of real estate listings in its Marketplace feature. Marketplace users can now search through hundreds of thousands of listings while they’re on Facebook. The widget even has its own Housing section specifically dedicated to helping users find, sell or rent homes.
So, what does this mean for you?
As a real estate marketer, this presents another opportunity to get your property in front of potential buyers and renters. However, if you are simply prospecting for Facebook real estate listings, Marketplace is just as valuable for getting familiar with the types of people looking to sell their home.
Your homework: Spend 2-3 hours a day combing through new by-owner listings within the parameters of your area.
Make note of these individuals’ general demographics as well as who they are specifically. Once your social media presence is developed enough, you will want to reach out directly or create Facebook ads with targeting modeled after what you’ve seen in the field.
2. Create a Strong Digital Marketing Strategy
What marketing plans do you have for your own business that will help position you as the natural and most trustworthy option when it comes to listing your house? Improve your online presence with an impactful, driven digital marketing strategy.
Focus on building out these 4 important aspects:
Website: Creating a fully optimized and user-friendly website
Content: Share ideas that help your audience
Mobile: Make sure your services are easy to access on mobile
Social Media: Develop your brand’s social media presence
Check out our top real estate digital marketing strategies to help get you started. Once you’ve checked all of this off the list, come back and dive into the social media portion of your plan below.
3. Develop Your Brand’s Social Media Presence
Make your local presence known by developing your online brand.
Who are you? What do you want your brand to represent? There’s a stereotype that all agents are the same. What makes you stand out?
As a real estate agent, it is important to be genuine and establish a relationship with individuals and your community. This should be the basis for your branding strategy. Being a friend and showcasing your good intentions, in turn, gains trust and support.
Remember, you are offering a service in which it is crucial to have trust with customers. They must be convinced that you will take care of them well. Social media is a great way to build this portfolio of trust.
How Can Residential Real Estate Agents Get More Listings with Social Media?
The numbers don’t lie. According to statistics, 84% of real estate professionals today use social media and 55% are completely comfortable with doing so. Here are the top social media networks they use, listed in descending order:
Facebook (78%)
Twitter (48%)
LinkedIn (29%)
WordPress (15%)
YouTube (12%)
Now, listen up!
This is important: just because YouTube is listed last does not negate the fact that video is one of the most powerful tools a social media marketer can use. As a matter of fact, real estate statistics state 73% of homeowners say they are more likely to list with a realtor offering to do video.
This is a golden opportunity to gain an edge over your competitors, as not many real estate agents have YouTube accounts or know how to incorporate videos in their Facebook marketing mix!
Include videos in your Facebook strategy alongside your everyday posts, and utilize tools like Facebook live (which requires no editing) to show properties or client testimonials. You can even upload a video as a cover photo on your business Facebook to stand out from the competition.
Create a Facebook Business Page to Advertise Your Services
So far, you’ve identified your target person and mapped out a solid digital marketing strategy. Now, take the first step in establishing your presence on social media by creating a real estate page.
According to Facebook’s Terms of Services policy, a user is considered to be in violation of their rules if they create a personal Facebook profile to conduct business.
The solution? Real estate agents should set up a Facebook business page. Here are some things to keep in mind when creating your page:
URL: Customize it to match your website so that you’re easy to find.
Photos: Have an attractive cover and profile photo that represents you/brand.
About: Fill out this section of your page with important details for prospects, such as where you service and what niche markets you target.
CTA: Edit CTA button on your page to best suit your business (learn more, send a message, etc.)
Custom tabs: Add more content to page without cluttering feed, such as a reviews section.
Insights: Keep track of who likes your page and engages with your content with this compiled data.
Video Cover Photo: Think about adding a video as a cover photo to increase conversion rates!
Have fun: Social media means you can let your personality shine through – be real!
Just because Facebook requires you to use a business page doesn’t mean you can’t use your personal profile page to connect with contacts and find Facebook real estate leads.
As a matter of fact, the simplest way to boost your presence is to befriend your audience on Facebook. Anyone who is “friends” with a real estate agent on Facebook will likely see real estate listings show up in their news feed.
Invite your friends and family to like your professional real estate page on Facebook so that they stay updated on your listings and services. Afterall, 82% of all real estate transactions come from repeat and referral business, which means the more you build your network, the more likely you’re going to be found by word-of-mouth!
Use Competitive Advantages to Attract Facebook Real Estate Leads
Anyone can post a Facebook ad of a house they’re selling, but can they offer valuable information and resources?
Realtors who populate their Facebook pages with thoughtful and engaging content have a competitive advantage over those who don’t. The content can be original or curated (from other blogs), as long as it adds value to your users.
Keeping your target audience in mind, ask yourself the following:
What will show my users I care? (Competitive advantage)
What do I offer that no one else offers? (Competitive advantage)
How can I help potential home sellers feel safe? (Competitive advantage)
Tell your potential leads what they want to know: selling costs that are associated with closing on a home, what sellers can expect in your local market in the upcoming years, etc.
Highlight the fact that you can offer sellers a 100% transparent escrow experience directly from their smartphones or devices. Your potential clients can forget the headache of giant stacks of paperwork and e-sign everything virtually.
No matter what competitive advantage you decide to highlight, remember to always tie everything back to your brand as someone who genuinely cares about their customers.
If you don’t already have a blog, definitely consider starting one on your website and sharing your content through Facebook and other social media channels like LinkedIn and Twitter.
A quick hack is guest blogging for free on others pages to get your name out there.
Keep in mind the optimal times to post on social media for each channel and remember to stay active!
Whip Up Eye-Catching Visual Content: Real Estate Marketing Weapon
For visual content such as graphics, Pinterest is a real estate agent’s secret weapon.
Pinterest is the biggest source of traffic from social for any realtor, and because many people don’t know about, the market isn’t overly saturated yet.
Indeed, if you type “real estate” in the Pinterest search bar, you’ll be greeted by endless colorful infographics and valuable images that other real estate agents have created.
You can either post your own content on a business Pinterest account, or pull an existing graphic from the site and share it on social and/or your own website (with the proper credit, of course).
PRO TIP: If graphic and video design isn’t your forte, don’t sweat it — you’re not the only one! Check out the best easy-to-use design tools for realtors to spruce up your website and social media pages or use free, pre-made infographic templates to get started.
4. Build Facebook Real Estate Ads: Best Practices for Realtors
Now it’s time to get real estate listings fast with Facebook advertisements! Once your business page is set up, you can access the Facebook Business Manager and get to building out your ads.
Facebook Business Manager is the platform used to plan out and track your advertisements, which are organized in an intuitive hierarchy consisting of:
Campaigns: overarching plan including goal (engagement, conversions, page likes, etc)
Ad sets: more specific strategy such as targeting, budget, duration
Ads: tactical advertising such as visuals and links
All three of these tiers are integral for the creation of your advertisement.
1. Facebook Campaigns to Generate Facebook Real Estate Leads
The type of ad you choose to run really depends on what works best for your business, website, and overall situation. You can run a campaign focused on website conversions. The ad should have a strong CTA (call to action) and drop the lead right into a sign-up form on your website.
On the other hand, you can focus your ad on page likes.
Always incorporate a sign-up page on your website that ties to a CTA in order to funnel your market and score conversions (leads!). People bounce off right away if the right message isn’t in there, and bad bounce off rates can negatively affect your search engine optimization (aka lower rankings for your website).
2. How to Prospect for Real Estate Listings With Ad Sets
When building Facebook real estate ads, segmentation is key.
The targeting section allows you to get very specific and segment by several demographics. This is where the field research from earlier comes in! What is the age, gender, location, interest, etc. of your target audience? Do they mainly use desktop or mobile? Or both?
The more precise you are with your targeting, the more likely you are to hit the mark on reaching your desired audience. Sometimes this takes some trial and error, meaning you adjust the targeting based on the type of engagement you’re getting. Ultimately, you want to shoot for clicks as opposed to shares, likes or even comments.
3. Incorporate Best Social Media Practices For Attractive Ads
What will your actual physical advertisement look like to the eyes of your audience?
Incorporate the content and design tips we covered earlier to guarantee you’ll grab their attention. Sharing a link to your website’s sign up page is a surefire way to get more home sellers to sign up for your service.
Once the ads are up and running, you’ll notice the numbers start pouring in. If you got your targeting right, engagement will increase along with your list of Facebook real estate leads. If not, it’s back to the lab again!
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