All Forum Posts by: Michel Moubarak

Hey guys! I am colleague of Alex.

I just want to clear some thing before answering some of the questions here. 

- The leads included renters and buyers mostly, with a few sellers. The cost per lead for a renter was much cheaper than a buyer for obvious reasons.

- The leads we got were passed to realtors to close. We weren't/aren't licensed realtors to handle the leads.

-  The main purpose of the experiment was done to train our chatbot and make it familiar with the way people look for houses to buy, rent or sell.

@Ross Turner  we weren't using lead forms. We were routing people to our messenger to interact with our chatbot directly.

We did advertise on Instagram, but as @Kristen Rosaio mentioned it is more expensive than FB. And 100% right for mobile versus desktop.

@Anthony Gayden this shows you the potential that is present on Facebook. You just got to find what works for you and your industry. 

Hope this helps!

What are your top 3 issues when it comes to Facebook Advertising?

Maybe I could help solve some of them :)!

@Chris Hendricks Very valid points Chris! I agree that hiding the fact that it is a chatbot is disadvantageous to the client and the bot. In fact when it is clearly stated that you are interacting with a bot, it sets certain expectations in the client's mind where they know they cannot really ask a real estate chatbot "how is the weather like?" 

They will not get disappointed if the bot did not have all the answers. And in a situation where the bot doesn't know the answer, as you mentioned, it is important to have the option to talk to a real human being at any time during the conversation!

@Chris Hendricks None effective for real estate. Passing the turing test is extremely difficult, to my knowledge only one artificially intelligent bot somewhat passed it, some people deny that. 

Passing the turing test, in very simple terms, means a software convincing a certain number of judges that they are actually talking to human being. You can imagine how hard that is.

@Christopher Morin I am writing a blog post about how we used the chatbot and the results we got from should be up in a couple of day on our blog. (Unfortunately, sending a link to the blog is prohibited here, even though it's for educational purposes). 

Basically, we plugged it in on our Facebook page and on an SMS number. We did some advertising on Facebook and started getting leads to interact with the chatbot. It successfully gathered their search criteria and sent out respective listings that matched that. 

Our website can also give you an idea of how and where the bot works. I guess you can check it out from my profile.

@Trevor Ewen You are right when you say RE tends to run about 20 years behind the larger business cycle, I am with you on that. As for real estate investing, or any other real estate 'sector', bots can be great at providing information to the consumer, such as market analysis an example you mentioned. Many people are online for that specific reason, gathering information. People can interact with a bot to get the info they need, it's a non-threatening way to get valuable information, as compared to 'give me your email...'. It provides value instantly and at scale!

@Jeff B. Jeff very valid point, there is no point of automating if you are not going to continue what the bot has already achieved. Thinking of it from a single agent perspective is not the optimal way to utilize the technology at the moment. However, think of the costs automation can save the big brokers out there who already hire people to answer their emails/texts/calls...

@Christopher Morin Although some bots have already passed the Turing test, I think it'll be a while till a bot can do the things you mentioned. But I don't see it as either a bot can do that to be good or if not, then it's not a great technology. As you mentioned bots can be great at accelerating the dissemination/collection of information! 

We built and used a bot in high frequency transactions (renting/buying), emulating buyer/seller/renter scripts. The engagement and conversion rate we saw were amazing! 

Hey everyone!

I attended Inman Connect New York 2017 this January. A lot of the tech talks revolved around automation and chatbots. It was very interesting to see the different opinions surrounding that topic.

A lot of forward thinking professionals welcomed this new technology, although still in it's infancy. They acknowledged the huge potential it offered.  

What do you think of chatbots/automation in general? Where you see it play a role in your current business model? What would you like to automate? How likely are you to adopt such technology at this point in time?

I'd love to hear your opinion on the matter!

Thanks!

@Sean Dolan Thank you for your insight, true it might have sounded promotional. However, I am not selling anything really :)! The reason why I want to start this discussion is because I've been doing research on Online Leads and I read a lot of mixed feelings on that topic. Some people say that online leads are a waste of time while others have built their businesses on them. 

A lot of real estate professionals want to be online and have a website, but many of them struggle with:

1- Converting web visitors or social traffic into actual leads.
2- Nurturing (following up) those leads fast enough in order to convert them into potential clients.

(I don't want to mention attracting web traffic because that's another topic all by itself).

I am interested in conversion. Your marketing ROI.

I see many agents/agencies doing great on the 'attracting traffic' part, only to convert about 3% of that traffic. I see a lot of amazing content being put out and social media profiles with a lot of followers however not much being done in terms of capturing and converting visitors into sales leads. A lot are focused on getting the traffic, few are focused on converting that traffic. Do you agree?

Products such as Live Chat and automated response (ex: FiveStreet) have emerged. Have you used such products/services? What do you think of them? Did they help in increasing your conversion rate?

To sum up, how are you converting your online traffic?

Hello

I saw many discussions related to building websites. However, I am curious to know how well those websites are performing you. I would love to get insights on the following questions:

What is your website conversion rate? Are you satisfied with this rate?

What percentage of your leads are digital?

If you are active on social media, have you seen significant results/conversion from that channel? 

Are you actively looking to increase the effectiveness of your digital strategy? 

It'll be great to have a discussion going around that topic and bounce some ideas off of each other. 

I've been working in the field as a marketing consultant for 3 years now and I am constantly working on ways to maximize the ROI of various digital marketing channels. If you have any other questions too, feel free :)!