Generating Leads Online

[Lissette Deleon]

Hi BP Community!

My husband and I are trying to create our own brand for real estate under a brokerage, and we are having a hard time getting anyone to reach out to us through our facebook business page. I was wondering if anyone can provide tips to improve our page and strategies to build a strong online presence? If you are interested in taking a look at our page for feedback purposes, I will inbox you the link (Since its not allowed on the forums) . We do have a few buyers but we would love to start getting listings. Any information would be appreciated.

Thank you!

[Antoine Martel]

Does your brokerage have some tips and tricks to get buyers?

Have you thought about doing door knocking? 

Taking potential clients out to lunch who might be interested in selling their homes? 

[Grant Rothenburger]

@Lissette Deleon

Not a realtor. But I do know a thing or two about branding and online presence. IMO the best thing you can do is to create content. Write some blog posts about your market/s, become the Pawtucket expert. "10 reasons families love Pawtucket", "best parks in Pawtucket", "5 free things to do in Pawtucket this weekend" I could go on and on. Keep creating blogs like that, (and you can be more RE specific "5 architecture styles unique to Pawtucket" "Pawtucket home values over the last 10 years") maybe weekly or 2x per week, sharing on your personal account & your page and people will associate you with Pawtucket, and you'll be top of mind when it comes time for them to buy or sell. This is more of a long play, but it works! You'll also want to have a simple website for the blog posts, or if you can put them on your website you have through the brokerage. You should have somewhere the blogs are posted that you send people to (through your sharing on social media) and try to capture their email. Boosting your posts and targeting your market heavily will help get traffic to the website. 

If you don't like writing, do a podcast. If you like video do a VLOG, as long as you are creating content and sending people to your website. Of course when they're on the website for the article/podcast/vlog they'll also learn that you're an agent in Pawtucket and would love to help them with their real estate needs.

Start a local meetup for real estate investors and/or agents. Who sells houses more than investors?

[Richard D.]

The average realtor's page on Facebook has about 130-140 followers. Rock-star realtor's might have 1000-5000 followers. Most realtors value their time to much to do what is needed to build a modest following. To get the type of ROI's for time spent, most "rock stars" pay either a social media marketing management company to handle their social media posts or they spend 15-18 hours a day posting, responding, and building their image. I really don't think that they will spend the necessary time to for years to build their brand. @Grant Rothenburger nailed a small starting point, you can write some posts, but that only gets you so far... 

[Grant Rothenburger]

@Richard D. Of course you hire someone else to do it eventually, third party or internal. That is just an observation from studying those with some of the biggest online presences. I don't know if @Lissette Deleon plans on spending the necessary time, for years to build their brand. She asked how to build one, and that's what some other agents and investors with large online presences do, for sure with the help of a company or person at some point.

[Paul Wakim]

@Lissette Deleon I have run and helped run the social media marketing campaigns for a few agents and have put together proposals for many others. What @Grant Rothenburger & @Richard D. said is 100% right. I know agents that have very strong followings and generate leads all year long from their pages. Most of these successful agents spent a significant amount of money on ads and few took the time to post consistently and grow organically. Grant's advice was spot on but few agents let alone people/businesses in want to take the time to create content. Additionally, even if you do decide to spend the money and run ads on social media you still have to have some quality content. 

Long story short, content is massively important!

I can go into all the details in another post if you'd like but if you do decide to run ads you want to follow the basic framework of casting a very wide net across your market and slowly narrowing down to an audience of people who will convert from your ads. This strategy has worked time and time again, granted its much more complicated than that but it really works if you have the time and money to spend on advertising. 

[Richard D.]

Social media is exactly what it states, it's social. I was reading another media marketers blog on why real estate posts only receive a 0.45% interaction rate. I find this rate well below the marketing average for all other products of 2%. The authors reasoning for such poor interaction rate is the fact that real estate agents lack the time to respond. Remember that social media is based on being social. So if someone comments on your post, they are expecting a response; soon rather than later. I have some thoughts on paying for Facebook advertising that, shall we say are not nice.

As I kept reading the article, something occurred to me. The writer gave the reason for such a low number on the interaction rate. Ethical standards! Real estate professionals must maintain certain ethical standards that limit some of their content on social media; which is understandable and something I have learned to work with. Just to give a random example:

An agent lists a home on Facebook that is in an old run down part of town. They get a comment/question of "Are there rats in the house?" Ethically, they are required to disclose any known pest issues. Although, if they wait until the problem has been addressed by the seller to respond;, it could be several months before the agent may reply "none that is known." In one fell swoop, the agent avoids having to disclose pest control issues and thinks that the response is ethically acceptable. The reality is that they ignored a request for information about a known problem until it was corrected then responded to a request from a potential buyer. This can be viewed as unethical behavior by the licensing board.

This is why it is important to understand how you need to manage your social media marketing campaigns, or at the very least hire a company that upholds the highest ethical standards to manage them for you. 

What I would suggest @Lissette Deleon is to listen to talk radio in your area and see which agents advertise there. Then go to their Facebook page and review it to see what you like as a home buyer, what you dislike about it (take notes), then drive up to Boston and do the same thing from there. Listen to talk radio, get the name and look up on Facebook again. That way you can compare. Ruth Story and Josh Deshong are agents (Keller Williams) here where I live and I like their pages. Sorry I cannot link to their pages because of forum rules, but you can look for them by name.

[Muhammad Hayat]

Here are some tips from my experience with Real Estate industry i'm always excited to help more people as much as possible from my Real estate marketing journey. 

• Learn how to present yourself keep in mind if your online presence is bad no one gonna look at you doesn’t matter how much you spend.
•  Learn how to generate cool content for your real estate business and be constant and add value gain more audience. 
• Learn facebook ads and try it out that will allow you to reach to any group of people doesn’t matter it’s city, state or country.
• Try to use linkedin as well it’s very important for a real estate salesperson to must be using linkedin. Because linkedin is full of business people and the more you connect with people the more you are getting closer to some amazing leads. I’ve personally used linkedin for my Real estate clients and we were able to close some handsome deals. So my advice to must use linkedin.
• Try to expand your network through social media and reach to many people as much as possible.
• If you have not used Google adwords you are still missing out. Google adwords is one of the best way to reach to targeted buyers and make yourself visible to people who are looking for you.

Hope this help you out

Thank You

Muhammad Hayat

[Rob Lawrence]

I am working on the same thing. I am finding that I am making the most happen through real life conversation. Seems like there is too much noise online.

[Richard D.]

Last night I obtained 2 leads in twenty minutes. The problem is people will wait an average of 120 days before they will contact an agent for helping them purchase a home. However, they will discuss the process with their friends from day 1. Customers aren't looking to agents or REIs for answers; they are looking at their friends who have gone through the process for answers. For example, one lady I chatted with last night has a countdown clock on her social media feed for her to buy a new home in a new area. Not a single person had commented on the clock or about her moving. Our conversation started with welcome to Texas...two things you we need; cowboy boots and sunscreen. I did not start with, let me sell you a home. People are tired of being bombarded with let me do this, let me do that, I can help you. No-one is building a raport or value before they say, hey let me help you. So I built a raport, I told the person, I am not a RE agent, but I could recommend one. BOOM they were hooked. I passed them through to a person who will sell them a home. But only after I built the raport, did they asked me if I knew of a good agent to work with. The leads did not generate from Facebook. Remember social media is a place to be social. Believe me, that I will follow up just so they don't think I am an agent also.

[Veronica Frieling]

As a real estate professional and digital marketer, the best strategy I have found is to have an active Facebook page with great content that can validate your work, and work more as a landing page of content rather than an actual lead generator, and then doing lead gen/ prospecting with actual people either through Facebook Messenger, online forums or in real life. 

The content on your page should be engaging enough to position you as THE go-to person in your neighborhood/ area. And be sure to create content AROUND real estate, not just real estate itself. That tends to get boring.

[Marvin Ong]

Originally posted by @Veronica Frieling:

As a real estate professional and digital marketer, the best strategy I have found is to have an active Facebook page with great content that can validate your work, and work more as a landing page of content rather than an actual lead generator, and then doing lead gen/ prospecting with actual people either through Facebook Messenger, online forums or in real life. 

The content on your page should be engaging enough to position you as THE go-to person in your neighborhood/ area. And be sure to create content AROUND real estate, not just real estate itself. That tends to get boring.

Are you talking about personal or business page? Cause it seems business page makes it very hard to get traction and engagement unless its paid. 

[Christopher Finn]

Sharing short & informative content that provides your target audience with valuable information will go a long way in getting people to visit your page. The way you can publicize it is by sharing your page within various real estate group pages on facebook and inviting people to 'like' your page. If your content is good, people will come.

Best of luck to you in all your endeavors!