How to Generate 100 Real Estate Seller Leads with Facebook Ads in 2 weeks

Generating Leads Using Facebook Ads Just Got Easier

 
Looking for sellers? You may want to create real estate seller leads with Facebook ads.

 “Facebook has made it clear that to reach anyone who has “liked” you on its platform, you’ll have to pay for Facebook ads.” ~ BY DAVE KERPEN @DAVEKERPEN

What does that mean?  When Facebook started they launched a product called “Fan Pages”.  These were essentially micro websites for brands, personalities, products, etc. hosted on Facebook. The goal was simple.   Get as many “fans” as you can.   Why get fans?  Back then, anyone that “liked” your page, or became a fan, would see content that your business posted on its “Fan Page”.

Read:  FREE ADVERTISING  (of course it was only free as the amount of time you invested in building up your “fan” base)

What has changed?  Facebook is no longer showing the posts you enter on your page to your fans!  (currently it is an average of 2% of fans, but is dropping all the time, and will probably be Zero soon)

Are all those fans you spent time accumulating worthless?  Depends.  You can still reach them with your Marketing if you Pay-to-Play.

For the record:  I have told my clients for years to not worry about how many “Likes” or “Fans” their business page gets.   (can you see me patting myself on the back?)

So is Facebook useless to us as Growth Hackers trying to get more exposure to our businesses?  Nope.  Just have to pay for it directly now.
 

How to Generate 100 Real Estate Seller Leads with Facebook Ads

I recently ran a Facebook Ad Campaign for a Corporate Real Estate Firm.  My goal was to generate real estate seller leads with Facebook. Using a proven strategy of Lead Magnets,  Landing Pages, Engaging Imagery, Lead Capture Form, & Facebook Ads!

I was able to produce 100 Seller Leads in 2 Weeks.

This number could have been significantly increased if we were only capturing email addresses.  This campaign we were capturing, Name, Email, Phone Number, Location, and whether they were a buyer or seller.

Lead Magnets

Examples of Real Estate Lead Magnets:

• Listings
• Home Buyer’s Guide
• Home Seller’s Guide
• Relocation Packet
• Neighborhood Market Report
• Email New Listings
• Property CMA
• How To eBooks or Videos – How to Stage Your Home, How To Increase The Curb Appeal, How To Buy A Foreclosure, etc.
• Reports – Neighborhood, School, Crime, etc.
• Lists – Bank Owned, Short Sale, 203k eligible, etc.
• Real Estate Related eBooks or Videos – Landscaping, Remodeling, Investment Opportunities, Flipping A House, etc.

If you want to get started generating real estate seller leads with Facebook campaigns like this and need a Lead Magnet, you can use this

Powerpoint Template to Create an eBook,

to get started.  Once you have created the Powerpoint template you simply Print to: .PDF

Once you have printed the template to .PDF you now have a digital e-book that you can use as a Lead Magnet. In order to print to .PDF you will need a .PDF driver on your computer.  I use Primo PDF it works well and is free.

How to “Print to PDF” from Powerpoint:

In my example I used a Market Report as the “Lead Magnet” because I was trying to attract Sellers.
 

Landing Page

A landing page is just a single page of a website that is dedicated to 1 single purpose.  Generating a lead!  And 1 single Lead Magnet. In this example the purpose is to create real estate seller leads with Facebook Ads.

Landing pages should be:

• • Free of clutter
  • Have a clearly defined “Call To Action
  • Use engaging imagery or videos
  • Contain a Lead Capture Form

Landing pages can have in addition to:  

• • Social proof or testimonials
  • Text explaining the benefits of the Lead Magnet

Landing Pages should not have:

• • Pictures of you
  • Your company bio
  • Multiple messages
  • Navigation Buttons
  • Overly spammy, salesy, or wordy text

It is my experience that the Simpler a Landing Page the better it Converts!

This is a Sample of one of the many landing pages I used for the campaign.

 This particular landing page converted at 16%

(again this number could have been much higher if we were asking for less Personal Information)

I use a service called Lead Pages to create my landing pages.  There are many companies that offer easy to create landing pages:

• Lead Pages
• Unbounce
• Instapage
• Optimizely

If you are on a budget… create a clutter free page on your WordPress Website, or create a “Tab” on your Facebook Business Page using the Static HTML Facebook App.
 

Lead Capture Form

Probably the easiest way to build and/or incorporate a lead capture form into any of the above landing pages is with Mailchimp. I have written about and used Mailchimp for my business for many, many years, and love it. You can create custom Lead Capture forms with Mailchimp or you can connect your Mailchimp account to most of the landing pages above. Mailchimp is primarily an email marketing service.  As part of that service they give you the ability to collect leads (Lead Capture Forms), they store the leads (CRM), and then you can send the leads emails (Lead Incubation).

Popular Lead Capture Form Builders:

• MailChimp (Email Marketing Software)
• Gravity Forms (WordPress Plugin)
• Formidable Forms (Wodpress Plugin)
• AWeber (Email Marketing Service)
• Constant Contact (Email Marketing Service)
• WuFoo (Form Builder Service)

How To Set Up the Lead Capture Form

 
This varies depending on how you set up your Landing Page.

>  You will need a form that collects the data that you want for your campaign

>  You will need it to send an auto reply email that has a link to your Lead Magnet, or a redirect to a “Thank You” Page that has a link to your Lead Magnet.

>  You will need a way to get access to your leads for follow-up.

For this real estate seller leads with Facebook campaign I used the form that is provided by Lead Pages.  I linked it to a new MailChimp List.  I sent the user to the tool that creates the Market Report, and used the “Auto Reply” feature to send the user an email with a link to the Lead Magnet. (I know this information is somewhat vague, but there are so many ways to set this part of it up, depending on your budget, what you already have in place, your strategy, etc…)
 

Facebook Ads

So far we have talked about how to capture a lead once we get it to our Landing Page… but how do we get them to our Landing Page?   Facebook Ads is a great way to generate traffic right now.  (I say right now, because everything in this industry changes, and changes quickly.  What works good today, may just be average in a month.  In other words, if you are going to try this.. do it TODAY!)

No truer words were ever said 🙂

It has all changed and now you can start generating leads with Facebook without Landing Pages and Lead Capture Forms.

How To Create Facebook Ads

Create A Lead Generating Facebook Ad With NO Landing Page or Contact Form

Go to your Facebook “Ads Manager”:

If you will be crafting multiple Ad Campaigns you may want to try the “Power Editor”

Otherwise you can “Create an Ad”:

Your Campaign Objective is:  Lead Generation

Select Split Test and Give Your Campaign A Name

Select Your Facebook Page and Accept The Terms Of Service If You Have Not Already

Select The Split Test Variable:  Delivery Optimization

Set One Ad Set to Manual and Enter a Bid Amount and the other Ad Set to Automatic

You can test to see which way produces the best results for the best price.

Select Your Audience

Many people will suggest you get detailed in your audience setting… but that is old school.  Facebook is so good at serving its ads that it will optimize your audience.  Probably better than you can.

Select Your Ad Placement Location:  Automatic

Set Your Ad Budget

Select Format:  Carousel

Add Images, Text, Headline, and Call To Action

Here you are crafting the ad.

In this example I am using the Single Story homes (move down) lead magnet.  I added images of single story homes and asked people living around Seattle to click on the images to see all the single story homes available in Seattle. I like to use the “learn more” call to action.

Create Lead Form

This is the new features that eliminates the need for landing pages and capture forms.

Lead Form Content

Select What Information You Would Like To Collect

Name and Email address is the minimum amount of data you should collect.

You can add phone number, address, and custom questions.

In this example I am collecting, Name, Email, Phone, and a Custom Question.  Are You Considering Selling Your House… with some multiple choice answers.

*The more information you collect the lower your conversion rate will be.

Add Your Company Privacy Policy Link

Thank You Page

This is where you can add the link to the list of single story homes.

Once the visitor has completed the form they will be automatically directed to this link.

Save Your Facebook Form

Certify Compliance

Review and Confirm Your Ad

Have Your Leads Automatically Sent To Your CRM

In our case we use both Mailchimp and Hubspot so either would work… but we selected Mailchimp.

*This service is not necessary it is provided by Zapier and it is a pay to play service.

Your Facebook Lead Capture Ads

Sit Back And Watch The Leads Start Coming In

Create An Ad To Your Custom Landing Page

Go to your Facebook “Ads Manager”:

If you will be crafting multiple Ad Campaigns you may want to try the “Power Editor”

Otherwise you can “Create an Ad”:

You need to choose the type of Facebook Ad you would like to run:

With the real estate sellers with Facebook Campaign I got the best results with “Click To Website” and you may want to try this one first.  However, feel free to experiment with them and see which type performs best for you, your business, and your campaign.

Try running 2 ads that are similar using different types and see which one performs better.  This is called A/B Testing.  Then you will know for sure what works for you.

Enter your Landing Page URL:

If you use the standard Facebook Ads Interface you will get an option to enter up to 6 images into your campaign:

This is an awesome feature.  Facebook will serve your ad with all 6 different images, then start to only the serve the image that converts the highest.  Built In A/B Testing!

(It is important to note that Facebook has a Text to Image ratio of <20% of your image can be text)

You will be asked to connect your Facebook Page:

It is Important that you connect your page.  If you do not do this you will not be allowed to post your ads in the “News Feed”

Facebook Ads are displayed in 2 locations on Facebook.

1. 1. On the right hand side of Facebook as text links (these do NOT Convert!)
   2. In the News Feed, like every other Facebook Post (these DO Convert!)

Next you will need to enter the “Copy” for your ad:

• Attention Grabbing Headline
• Benefits of your Lead Magnet Offer
• Call to Action Statement
• There is a “Call To Action” setting that if activated will put a button on your ad.  I am not sure which one performs the best.

Adding a Conversion Tracking Pixel is a bit advanced but super effective for tracking your results:

(get a detailed explanation of what it is here:  Facebook Conversion Tracking Pixel)

In a nutshell you will need to create the code in the “Power Editor” version of Facebook Ads.  Choose what you want to track and create the code.

Once you have the code you will need to enter it on your Landing Page. How to add it to your Landing Page will depend on how you built your Landing Page.  But you need to put the code in the <head> section of your landing page, before the </head><body> section.

With Lead Pages there is a feature called “Tracking Code” that makes it simple to add your code:

Choosing your audience:

• This can be as general or laser focused as you want.
• You can create a custom Audience that you can use for all ads if you think you may want to target the same audience with different ads.
• You can also upload your current CRM via excel or Mailchimp.  The same way you send your leads emails for lead nurturing you can also “send” them Facebook Ads.

• Choose what Country, State, City or zip code you would like to see your ad
• Choose what Age Group you would like to see your ad
• Choose what Gender you would like to see your ad
• DEMOGRAPHICS – You can choose marital status, home owners, renters, generation, employment, etc.  (be careful here:  you may have a conflict with the EHO laws) 

Finally you have to set up your pricing and budget:

• Give your Ad a Name:  Make sure if you are going to be doing A/B Testing that you give each ad a descriptive name so you can easily keep track of them.
• You can set a daily budget or a lifetime budget.  I like to use a lifetime budget… that way I don’t get any surprise charges on my credit card.
• Bidding:  I suggest that you optimize for clicks, not impressions.  However, if you are running a PR campaign, impressions may be better.
• I manually set my “Per Click Bid” at the minimum suggested.  If I am not getting the level of traffic I need, I can always increase the bid after testing.

Place Your Order!

Track The Results

This may be the most important step.  Of course we need a place to convert leads.  And we need traffic to convert, and a tool to convert them… but if we are not getting good results then what’s the point.

We are going to track and read Analytics, and then make adjustments as necessary.

Landing Page Analytics Example:

This graph tells a story.  Such as what days of the week are the most effective for your campaign.  For this campaign the 22nd of June, a Sunday, saw a bunch of traffic, but low conversions.  Apparently, people do not want Market Reports on Sunday 🙂 This page saw an average of 16% conversion.  That is a strong number.  One I was happy with.

Facebook Ad Analytics Example:

This was one of 10 Campaigns I tested.

This was 1 of 9 Ad Sets in the above campaign:

As you may notice there are 4 ads in this ad set.  The ads were all the same but each had a different image.

The most successful ad used an image of the exterior of a home and the second best was the interior of a home: I am most concerned with Results but also want my Click Through Rate (CTR) to be good.  I was hoping for a 2-3% CTR. An interesting note is that the one Ad had 116 clicks but only half of those people clicked on form on my landing page.

Future Adjustments:

Focus More On Images Of Homes

Change Landing Page Image to Images Of Homes

Stronger Call To Action Language

All adjustment can be made with confidence backed by data and not just guessing!

Now all you have to do is convert those real estate seller leads to sales!  

Perhaps you may want to try using my:

Paperless Listing Presentation

I would love to hear what you think about generating Real Estate Seller Leads in the comments below: