How To Create An Exclusive Real Estate Leads Sales Funnel Campaign Using Facebook (Tutorial)

This is a comprehensive guide, we recommend you bookmark this page so you can reference back to it as needed. Settle in and grab your favorite cup of coffee!

Introduction

You’ve probably heard that Facebook and social media are a great place to find new clients.

That is completely true.

IF you use the system in the way it was designed to be used.

Let me elaborate further.

Facebook and Instagram are where most people spend their time online, they are seeing what friends are up to, getting side tracked watching a captivating cat video or catching up on the news cycle.

Knowing how to blend in and provide value (other posts and content on Facebook) is one of the keys if your message is going to penetrate through all the noise and reach your ideal customers at the right time.

Social media isn’t as simple as just posting an inspirational quote or two and expecting to get leads and customers to flood in wanting to buy a house.

If it was, we all would be selling houses every 2 days and become millionaires.

You have to use the tools the way that they were designed to be used so reap the benefit of the different social platforms.

We are going to go over the ways you can use these platforms to your benefit.

This is a comprehensive guide so you might have to come back to it for reference, so bookmark it.

Why you need to start building a sales funnel by using real estate digital marketing strategies

In this day and age we have more data then we know what to do with, it can be overwhelming and very useful if you know how to use it and leverage it.

Below we will go over some of the main benefits of creating a sales funnel for real estate or the mortgage lending business.

There is many more reason but let’s go over the ones that our clients have had direct success with:

1) Most people don’t buy on the first go around

Lets face it, buying a house is the biggest investment most people will make in their life time.

They don’t buy on first sight, or because of a cute inspirational quote you posted on IG (Instagram).

According to Dr. Jeffrey Lant’s Rule of 7, someone has to see an advertisement 7+ times before it begins to enter their consciousness and to begin to consider making a decision.

‍Most of the time it takes even more than 7.

‍Have you ever been shopping online and you were milliseconds away from clicking the “Buy” button but you held off for one reason or another?

Two hours later you saw that same item that was in your shopping cart following you from website to website to your Facebook news feed until curiosity got the best of you and you clicked on it again?

That’s called “retargeting” it’s a feature most advertising platforms have and it’s one that is required to have success in 2020 and beyond.

That is the same type of persistence and follow up that you need to have with your own marketing plan if you want to stand a chance of competing against the big online app based companies.

2)  You own exclusive leads and information

Being able to have access to your customer’s contact information like email, phone number and other details will greatly improve your chances or converting that person to a customer and getting referrals from them down the line.

Another very obvious reason is your leads don’t get blasted to 50 other agents who are calling the same people.

If you have been in the biz for at least a few years now, I’m sure you have tried on of those real estate lead generation companies that shall remain nameless, but you know the one that starts with the zig-zag letter of the alphabet.

The real estate business is a competitive industry so we know that many people move from company to company every so often.

When you move to a new company you want to have a contact list that you can plug right into your email marketing systems that will give you a huge edge over your competition.

Setting up a value driven funnel that collects contact information in exchange for value does just that.

It lets you build a base of potential customer that you can contact and convert into a sale or a lead.

3)  More predictability in your sales cycle

Having control over predicting monthly or quarterly goals is HUGE!

How do you do that?

Again, we go back to the sales funnel approach. When you can quantify and even predict with a good level of consistency a particular result, your value goes up automatically.

The sales funnel strategy allows you to spend X number of dollars and get X number of leads at the bottom of the funnel.

That is a much more predictable way of doing business then hoping that a previous customer will remember to call you back.

Now that we’ve made a case for having a sales funnel in your business process you are probably asking yourself where to get real estate leads?

In the next few steps we begin to go over the tactical ways of doing just that:

How To Get Real Estate Leads On Facebook

The simple answer is: Be seen enough times by your potential clients so that you are top of mind when they make the decision.

You might be asking yourself “I posted on my Facebook for a few months but nothing happened.”

Over the last 5 years Facebook has slow become more of a “pay for play” type of platform, meaning organic posts and content will not get as much reach to new people as paid content will. i.e Ads

Generating leads through Facebook is a methodical approach, we will cover the step by step tactics that you need to begin implementing if you are to take advantage of the highly targeted reach of the system

I want to give you a heads up that this is not a “get rich quick” type of thing, if you are looking for a system that takes no time or effort to complete then this is not for you.

Using Facebook’s algorithms and audience targeting takes a certain level of planning and testing, let me repeat: it is NOT an overnight success system.

By applying the steps below you will have much more insight then your competition and you will at least be on your way of creating a sustainable scalable system to drive new leads your way.

Planning the different funnel stages

Before we can start building how your lead generation funnel you need to plan the different stages your sales funnel will take potential customers through.

This might sound overwhelming but stick with me, there is a method to the madness, and it WILL make sense to you with practice.

Normally a sales funnel could have up to 5 stages.

‍Sometimes those are called Top of Funnel (TOF), Middle of Funnel (MOF), and Bottom of Funnel (BOF).

These stages are running all at the same time 24x7 365. Keep that in mind for when we get to the budgeting part of the setup.

Planning For A Loan Officer Marketing Budget

When deciding how much it costs to run Facebook ads you should consider the ultimate result you are looking for.

How much does social media marketing cost? You can setup a basic two stage campaign for as little as $200 per month ranging upto $1500 per month based on how fast you want to get results.

For purposes of you being able to cut the learning curve significantly we will be using Facebook’s objective model which has 3 sages.

Which are:

Awareness (Cold Audience)

Going back to Dr. Lant’s rule of 7, remember that most people on Facebook don’t know who you are or what services you offer yet.

So how do you begin to introduce them to your business?

Here are some ideas that can be used to create awareness:

• Provide value: Make your audience aware of something they would find valuable for their current situation.
• Examples: New industry change, company branding video, new company initiative in the area.
• Preferred format: Video

Pro Tip: Most people are online for these reason: Information, Communication, Entertainment (provide one of those)



Have you ever wondered why you keep seeing a certain billboard or banner on a bus around town?

Well, the company you see on that billboard and bus is creating Awareness for their business.

Keep in mind that’s the old and expensive way of doing things.

It takes much long to achieve the same and even better effect using digital marketing.

You need to create “awareness” in the potential customer’s mind, before you goto the next you can just say “Hey wanna buy a house!” and expect them to rush to you and get a pre-approval or put in an offer on a house.

That’s what most businesses do and then they say “Facebook doesn’t work”.

It does work if you use it correctly.

Consideration (Warm Audience)

By this stage of the game, your ideal customer should be able to recognize who you are or that they have seen you somewhere before.

Remember the shopping reference earlier? Just like the big companies you will appear in their news feeds over and over and begin to build brand recall.

You might be thinking, “I don’t want to be a pest and bother people too much” trust me, most people these says have a short attention span so the more times you show up the better. (as long as you are providing value)

At this stage you want to show that you and your company are someone they should work with through valuable content and customer testimonials, just think about the reasons someone if better off signing up with you then the competition.

Put those reasons in a digital format.

So how do you create meaningful Consideration?  Through Engagement and Value.

Conversion (Hot Prospects)

This is the stage of your sales funnel when you get to have the chance to directly ask your audience to contact you about services.

Remember, you’re not trying to hard sell anyone into buying a house, this is where you start an open line of communication with your potential client.

Pro Tip: One of the most common questions we get by our client is “when should I start to run a conversion campaign?”.

We normally suggest for you to analyze your current sales and plan around that.

FOR EXAMPLE, if it takes you one and a half months to get a potential lead to become a client, then you should make sure that your Awareness and Consideration stages have at least that amount of content to run.

Sample Facebook Mortgage Ads

When you are starting to write your Facebook ads, always try to put yourself in the shoes of your target demographic.

If you are creating an Awareness ad for people who have never heard of you then try to make it more light hearted and informational than asking them to contact you immediately.

Real Estate Leads For Agents Using Facebook Messenger Bot

Leveraging native Facebook’s messenger service is one of the fastest ways you can start a conversation with your potential clients.

According to recent Facebook insights, 61% of 18-34 year-olds are open to receiving financial information via chat or messenger.



When running a messenger ad or chat bot you shouldn’t try to hard sell someone right off the bat, you should use it as an opportunity to connect and educate your potential clients.

Another Facebook IQ report suggests that consumers feel most comfortable consuming financial information via a live Q & A call.

So knowing this, one of your Ads could be giving access to a free Q & A webinar about the real estate industry or different trends that are happening right now.

Building value through your content

People use the internet and social media for 3 main reasons:

Find information or research

Finding information is now easier than ever, with just a few clicks.

This means you have to really think about what clients will find valuable.

Think of something that only industry professional would know or something that cannot be found by doing a simple Google search.

Communicate with friends

Humans are social creatures so that means they will find their way to strike up a conversion. When you are advertising on a social media platform like Facebook, keep in mind that you should make your conversations happen as naturally as possible.

Entertainment

This is the big one. People want to be entertained, that means, funny videos, cat pictures, visually pleasing posts or videos, just to name a few.

If you are someone who is comfortable in from of a camera and is willing to invest some time in creating content with a comedic effect, this strategy will work great for you.

Since you now know the top categories that drive customer behavior the content and messaging you are putting out has to hit on a least one of those categories.

What does this mean in a practical sense?

Let me give you an example..

We work with a residential lender in a small town in Texas. They first wanted to promote their conventional 20% payment products because that’s what everybody is doing.

We took a look at what the competition was doing and noticed that there was a gap in the USDA loan market they could fill so we suggested that they take a different approach because they were going to get drowned our by those big internet based lender with millions of dollars in marketing budgets per month.

Analyzing what your competition is doing and positioning your brand to have a unique value proposition is one of the key to running a successful marketing campaign.

Now we get to the hands on part of this guide.

Before you proceed keep in mind that there is many ways to achieve a desired result. The Facebook system is making updates and changes on a daily basis so please use their help and support files and supplementary materials while going through this. E.g. if you don’t know how to do something or get stuck just Google it!

What Is The Facebook Remarketing Pixel?

The pixel as its commonly referred to is one of the best things to happen for the social media marketing world since sliced bread.

Taking someone to a “squeeze” page or a landing page and expecting them to buy off the first visit has become harder and harder over the last 6-10 years.

If you have ever on a shopping website or tried to order food delivered but something came up at the last second so you didn’t press the Buy Button.

But then 30 minutes later that same company’s information magically popped up while you were browsing on your newsfeed and you were wondering, how the heck did they do that?

It was the Facebook Pixel at work.

Being seen by your market consistently is critical if you want to leverage the power of Facebook everyone keeps talking about.

That’s why the Facebook Pixel can be your best friend.

If you're interested in setting up your Facebook sales funnel just schedule a call with us below:

‍