Facebook is one of the most powerful marketing tools for real estate. Not only does it have billions of users, it also provides multiple methods for marketing your real estate services using some of the most advanced targeting tools in existence. Through organic and paid marketing techniques like search-friendly content on your page, audience-engaging posts, Facebook Groups, promoted posts, and targeted advertising, Facebook lead generation can be one of the most lucrative channels for generating real estate leads for your business.
Here are five ways to use Facebook for lead generation to find and attract more real estate deals:
1. Create Your Facebook Business Page
The first step in any successful Facebook lead generation strategy for real estate agents is to create a business page. This will serve as your home base on Facebook. You can establish your brand presence, share vital information about yourself and your real estate business, and add videos, photos, and interesting content to build an audience.
As well as being informative, your content should be search-friendly. To make your profile more findable, use keywords in your profile’s descriptive sections. This includes referencing the city or region where you provide services and any niche audiences you serve, such as military or veterans, executives, move-up buyers, empty nesters, and so on.
Here are the basic steps to set up your Facebook real estate business page:
- Choose your page category
- Upload your headshot and cover photo
- Enter basic information
- Add a call to action
- Create an introductory post
- Invite your Facebook friends to like your page
For a more extensive article on creating your Facebook real estate business page, take a read through How to Set Up a Realtor Facebook Page in 9 Steps.
2. Post Engaging Content
Now that you have a Facebook real estate business page, start using its many features to establish your brand, increase your reach, and market your services for Facebook lead generation. One of the primary ways to grow your audience on Facebook is by posting content that engages your target audience. This is likely to cover a wide range of potential content topics and types of posts including text (such as a few sentences) as well as images and videos.
(Source: HomeSpotter)
(Source: Facebook)
Your Facebook lead generation strategy is unlikely to be successful if you only post links to your listings or share someone else’s content. Instead, think about the specifics of your target audience (aka ideal client types and buyer personas) and create original content for your posts with them in mind. In fact, 67% of customers say it’s important for brands and businesses to provide them with personalized content and experiences.
To create personalized content that generates engagement, you’ll need to effectively target your audience and establish your tone of voice. Get inspired with more ideas for real estate Facebook content by checking out these 25 successful real estate Facebook posts.
Target Your Audience
Many new real estate agents struggle to narrow down and truly understand their audience, but you still shouldn’t try to appeal to anyone and everyone when trying to generate leads with your Facebook marketing. Choosing a real estate niche can help you quickly become an expert on a specific subset or niche client type, which in turn makes you more appealing to those clients who need specialized expertise.
For example, here are just a few types of clients you may want to target when marketing your real estate business on Facebook:
- Homebuyers
- Homesellers
- Renters
- For Sale by Owner (FSBO)
- Expired listings
- Investors
- First-time homebuyers
- Commercial real estate properties
- Vacation homebuyers or renters
You can also narrow your audience by location, stage of life, income, job titles, and many other specific qualities. For example, you may want to work with first-time homebuyers looking for a property in a specific town. You could then create targeted content that answers the questions and concerns of first-time homebuyers, like this example:
(Source: Facebook)
On the other hand, if you want to attract new listing clients, you’ll share different types of content. A great way to attract listing clients is by sharing your listing successes, such as properties that sold incredibly fast or for over asking, like these two agents:
(Source: Facebook)
(Source: Facebook)
If you’re ready to reach a real estate niche, try a company like BoldLeads to target leads. BoldLeads understands that many real estate agents need help with advertising and marketing to reach their desired audience. The BoldLeads marketing team creates automated ads, landing pages, and campaigns, and targets them to your preferred audience so you can focus on converting leads rather than creating marketing content.
Tone of Voice & Emotional Appeal
When creating and planning your Facebook content, consider the tone of voice of everything you share. All of your content should be memorable, friendly and approachable in tone, and ideally will make readers feel something—whether it’s laughing, learning something new, or provoking their thoughts. Ultimately, content that evokes emotions like these increases familiarity with and trust in you.
Here are three common ways to stimulate your social media followers’ emotions in your efforts to generate real estate leads using Facebook:
Make Them Laugh
People often come to social media to unwind, so sharing lighthearted content can earn more engagement. In fact, laughter biologically creates trust, because you don’t normally laugh with someone you’re uncomfortable with. If you can make your intended audience laugh (aka LOL) with your Facebook posts, they’ll naturally be more comfortable with you. Use these real estate memes to gather ideas and inspiration.
(Source: LighterSide of Real Estate)
Provide Knowledge
People love feeling like they have insider information. Instead of touting your skills and knowledge, share tips like the one below to give your audience context and help them more fully grasp your expertise. People may believe you when you say you’re a real estate expert, but they won’t necessarily remember or want to work with you. On the other hand, if you share examples of how your expertise can help them get a better house or make more money, they’ll reach out to you at the first opportunity.
(Source: Practical Ecommerce)
Provoke Their Thinking
In between memes and laugh-out-loud posts, you can also appeal to a different side of your audience by sharing thought-provoking content. To do this, share content that can inspire or intrigues your clients, on both personal and professional topics. For example, you could share articles or ask questions about goals, leadership, personal growth, relationships, and even mental and emotional health.
(Source: Facebook)
Pro tip: Including questions in your posts encourages engagement. For example, if you’re posting about whether to rent or buy a home, start with a question like “Are you debating whether to sell or rent or your apartment?” This builds curiosity, sparking engagement and a desire to learn more.
If the idea of curating and creating social media marketing content fills you with dread or you simply don’t have time, consider outsourcing the work. For the most impact, hire the digital marketing specialists at Artur’In. You can use Artur’In to create posts, ads, blogs, and even custom photos and videos for Facebook as well as other platforms, like Instagram and LinkedIn. Try it today.
3. Join Facebook Groups
Facebook groups should be a vital element of any real estate agent’s social media plan. Groups are the most powerful free tool for the Facebook algorithm, and they are often full of highly targeted groups of people, such as people who live in specific neighborhoods or work in a certain city or region. There are most likely many fantastic and relevant Facebook groups in your area. Look for local groups tied to specific cities or neighborhoods, or niche interests such as pets, parenting, business owners, and other local groups.
Facebook Group listing post
Local Facebook groups are a great place to share listings with a targeted audience. Even when you aren’t sharing listings, you can benefit from being a part of groups. For example, many people post asking for recommendations for local real estate agents, creating the perfect opening to introduce yourself. You can also ask friends and former clients to tag you in Facebook group posts and comment threads.
Example Facebook Group post
4. Promoted Posts & Paid Advertisements
When you have a strategy for converting the leads obtained through your Facebook lead generation efforts and are ready to amplify your reach, it’s time to start paying for promoted posts and real estate ads on Facebook. There are two different ways to do this: boosting your posts and running paid advertisements.
Boosting your Facebook posts is the more affordable and simpler option. You can pay as little as $1 per day to boost a post and increase its views to a highly targeted audience. While it’s inexpensive, Facebook ads and boosted posts can produce a massive return on investment (ROI), although it may require some time and trial and error to do so.
Example of Facebook boosted posts vs ad types and targeting option (Source: Hootsuite)
Promoted Posts
When you boost (or promote) a Facebook post, you’re paying to amplify an existing post. One of the benefits of promoting a post instead of creating an ad campaign is that it generally feels more organic to viewers. It’s also a direct and simple way to get the word out about a specific announcement, post, or listing in a short period of time.
On the other hand, when you boost a post, you don’t receive access to nearly as many placement or targeting capabilities as you do with Facebook ads. Though generally less expensive, they may not be as effective in helping you reach, attract, and convert your desired audience.
(Source: Facebook)
Paid Advertising
Unlike boosting an existing post, when you run a Facebook lead ad you’ll usually create it from scratch. You also need to allow some time to find your footing. Successful Facebook advertising requires that you determine a strategy, identify an objective, and optimize your target audience by location, interests, behaviors, age, job types, and other demographics.
Facebook lead ads have proven to be a revolutionary in real estate marketing. The extremely comprehensive targeting capabilities can completely transform your Facebook lead generation and audience-building efforts. There are very few, if any, advertising strategies that compare to Facebook ads for real estate. In fact, almost 89% of real estate agent and broker media spend goes to online ads.
The power of using Facebook ads is, however, limited by your budget, expertise, and available time to learn and use it. Since so many real estate businesses are using Facebook ads, it’s a saturated and competitive market that requires extensive testing and financial investment. Learn the steps to create real estate Facebook ads.
(Source: Facebook)
To differentiate yourself from the competition and convert more Facebook leads, consider using Real Geeks. Real Geeks customizes your marketing strategy, creating ads that target audiences using advanced data methods. Their system tracks potential buyer and seller leads to cultivate reports showing you where leads are coming from and how to optimize your results.
5. Connect With & Convert Leads Using a CRM
Unfortunately, even the best Facebook marketing strategies don’t equate to instant real estate business success. While Facebook can be an incredible tool to generate highly qualified and targeted leads, you need to know how to connect with these leads and ultimately convert them into clients.
If you don’t have a plan to connect with each new lead that comes through Facebook, leads may fall through the cracks. Don’t leave that money on the table—stay organized and on top of all your leads using a customer relationship management (CRM) tool. There are many real estate-specific CRMs designed to make it extremely easy for you to track and engage potential clients to make the most of your opportunities.
For an affordable CRM that includes email marketing, real estate integrations, and artificial intelligence (AI) to prioritize prospects, try Pipedrive. It enables you to track all your communications with a lead and view a visual history of your conversations with each contact. You can also automate email and text marketing campaigns and set reminders to personally reach out to each contact.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why should real estate agents use Facebook?
Even if you don’t use Facebook personally, it’s necessary to do so for business. Today’s consumers make few purchases without first searching for reviews and the online presence of any brand. This is particularly true in real estate when buyers and sellers need to work closely with an agent to make the largest transactions of their lives. Making sure your online presence is apparent and reputable shows potential clients you will be a valuable asset to their real estate transaction.
What kind of audiences can I reach on Facebook?
In 2020, ProspectsPLUS! reported that 84% of millennials and the next-largest group of Gen Xers use Facebook regularly. As seen in the chart below, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported that millennials and Gen Xers had the highest percentage of purchases and sales.
These combined statistics demonstrate why Facebook is a lucrative source of lead generation for real estate agents. Plus, 65% of online users stated they were influenced by their friends’ homebuying posts on Facebook and Instagram.
(Source: National Association of Realtors)
How does Facebook help with real estate lead generation?
A primary reason why Facebook helps with lead generation is that it makes you easy to reach. For example, you can add a call to action (CTA) button that enables clients to quickly and directly contact you for information about your services. Also, by using the Facebook lead generation tactics in this article, you will expose your brand to thousands of people you had no previous connection with. The power of social media cannot be underestimated—and coupled with Facebook’s tools, your lead generation potential is limitless.
Bottom Line
Facebook is a powerful channel for finding and connecting with potential clients. To optimize your ability to generate real estate leads on Facebook, first create a professional real estate business page that conveys important details in search-friendly content and appeals to your desired client types. Then consistently post engaging content, participate in relevant groups, use paid ads and boosted posts to amplify your page’s reach, and track and convert your Facebook-generated leads using a real estate CRM.
