This post was originally published on June 16th, 2017. However, if you’re looking for a good niche to pursue for Facebook ads clients and you have experience in real estate, we want to help you out.
We’ve updated the post below with new information about FunnelDash and how we recommend getting leads for yourself and your clients. We’re republishing this post so you can use the toolkit we’re giving you at the bottom of the post to launch a campaign to get real estate agent clients, and run campaigns to get new buyer and seller leads for those clients.
Okay, you’re running a Facebook advertising agency, and you’re looking for new clients. Perhaps you used to be a real estate professional yourself, so you know the market well. You figure, this is an ideal vertical for you, because not only do you speak their language, you know exactly how busy they are.
These people are insanely busy! They spend their days showing houses, looking at houses, working with their clients, going to closings, making sure everything is in place so their deals go through. It’s exhausting.
You also know that many of them advertise on Facebook, or want to do so. Facebook’s targeting system is so advanced, it gives real estate agents a serious edge when it comes to getting new buyers and sellers in the door.
However, you know full-well they don’t have the time to learn the basics of running a Facebook ad campaign, much less the advanced techniques. You have this knowledge. So, helping your former colleagues in the real estate market would be a smart decision.
Now that you’ve made this decision, here’s how you do it:
Run a Facebook Ad Campaign to Get Leads for Your Services
Yes, this seems obvious. But you should do it anyway.
Why?
Because not only will this increase brand awareness for your agency and get you more leads, it will prove to those who opt-in that you know what you’re doing. After all, they were hooked, why wouldn’t their potential customers do the same?
In fact, your ad would look something like this:
When you look at the ad above, you'll notice it uses the Send Message button as its call to action. This is because you're going to use a Facebook Messenger sequence to get your potential clients to sign up for a free Facebook ads audit as your lead magnet (also known as an opt-in bribe).
When someone clicks on your Facebook ad, they'll be taken to this Messenger Sequence, which you can purchase inside FunnelDash (You can also build your own from our basic template.)
As they respond to your questions, your potential clients will be taken through an entire sequence that will ultimately persuade them to sign up for a free Facebook ads audit with you. (Or a free consultation, if they've never run ads but are interested in doing so.)
Most agencies that offer free Facebook ads audits just talk about theory and tactics. They don't offer concrete ideas that a business can use immediately. They "should" all over their potential clients, telling them what they should do, and never show why this will be effective or how it will affect the real estate agent's bottom line.
Instead of wasting a potential client's time blabbering about nonsense, you’re going to use the data in your potential clients’ Facebook ad accounts to come up with real, actionable strategies that you can recommend to them, to improve their current advertising campaigns. For more information on how to do this, check out this post.
You’ll get all this information when you connect your prospective client’s Facebook ads account to your FunnelDash account. You’ll look at the Facebook Audience Audit Dashboard to see how your clients’ current campaigns are working, so you can make recommendations on improving those campaigns. For more on how to use this dashboard, read this post.
Finally, you’ll focus more on what real estate agents can do to bring in new home seller and home buyer leads. Your recommendations for new campaigns will be specific to lead generation techniques for the real estate market and will focus on using Facebook Messenger ads and follow-up sequences to get people engaged and interested in properties, or interested in working with that real estate agent to sell their own property.
You're offering your potential clients value upfront. You're showing your skill with online marketing and you're proving that you can handle their campaigns.
Offering this kind of free audit will get you more than leads, it will get you clients who are happy to sign a high-paying retainer contract and stay with you for months, or years to come.
Managing Your New Clients’ Facebook Ads Accounts
Once you’ve gotten your prospective clients to sign that monthly retainer agreement with you, here’s how you’d run a lead generation Facebook campaign for them:
Discuss the Type of Real Estate Advertising Campaign They Want to Run
The two most common home buyer lead generation campaigns are for the local market or for a specific property. Your client decides to run one of each. They have a house for sale in a specific area, and they’re building a list of other properties on the market in that area.
Identify the target audience
Now that you know the type of real estate ads you'll be running, you’ll figure out who you’re selling to.
Obviously, you’re looking for people who want to buy a house in your client’s chosen area. But you need to ask other important questions, like:
- What type of home is this? Starter or upgrade?
- What kind of income will a home buyer need to qualify for a mortgage in this area?
- What are the demographics of your target audience?
You and your client may come up with other questions as you create your customer avatar.
It's important to take the time to build this customer profile, because it can save your client a lot of money in the long run. Facebook's targeting system is so sophisticated, you can drill down to exactly the type of customer your client is looking for, and just target them.
Yes, this may sound a little creepy, and it may seem like you're missing out on some opportunities outside of this audience. However, the more specific you are in your targeting, the more likely you are to build a highly-qualified list of leads for your client.
Create Your Target Audience in Facebook Ads Manager
Once you know who you’re marketing to, you can go into the Facebook Ads Manager and create that audience. Here's what our Facebook ads managers recommend:
- Likely to move behavior
- Students of a particular school, segmented by age
- Real Estate Website related interest cluster
- realtor.com, Trulia, Zillow
- Home Ownership >> Renter Behavior
- First Time Home Buyer Behavior
- Home buying term interest cluster
- Buying a House, First-time buyer, House Hunting, My First Home, Starter home
- Income range of $250,000 and up. (You need to discuss this with your client before setting this number.)
First, I must state that these are our recommendations for how we would run this campaign if a real estate agent hired us to do their advertising. This is also a local audience, not a national one, so the overall reach is smaller.
Your audience reach and results will depend on the area your client is trying to sell in, the property or properties in question and how much they’re willing to spend each day.
Next, you’ll set your budget, based on what your client can spend, determine your placements (if you don’t want it to be automatic) and schedule your ads for a specific start and end date, and a specific time, if that’s what you want.
Create Your Ads
Now it’s time to create the ads you’ll run traffic to.
As I mentioned above, the two most common campaign types are for a local area, or for specific homes for sale. I’ll show you ads for both of these.
This first campaign is for an area. It’s promoting the list of available properties in this area that your client has been building. The list is the lead magnet to get people to opt-into their email list.
I chose to do a carousel ad here. You're welcome to do a single image ad, if you'd prefer.
You will want to do some testing to see what types of images and copy get the best results for your client. You can set up a Creative Performance Report dashboard to track your results. Learn more about this dashboard, as well as the others you can build with FunnelDash.
Make sure you name each of your ads in a way that will make it easy for you to track them. This will also make it easier to set up the Creative Testing Dashboard for accurate reporting. Check out this post for some good tips on setup and architecture for your campaign.
Sort Hot Real Estate Leads from Warm Leads
With this ad, you're going to set up a Facebook Messenger sequence that lets your client see which leads they should contact right away and which they should follow up with via email or a monthly newsletter.
This sequence is available for sale in the FunnelDash template library, or you can create a custom sequence in your FunnelDash account, based on your client's criteria.
When a prospect clicks on your listings ad, they'll be taken to a sequence that sorts people who want to move right away from those who are looking to move in the next 6-12 months.
This sequence will let them schedule a showing for available properties right away, or be put on a monthly (or weekly) notification list.
If a prospect wants a showing right away, they'll be taken to a scheduling app where they can book time on your client's schedule at their earliest convenience. If they want to know when houses come on the market, their email address and phone number are collected so they can be added to the regular notification list. Please note: You will need to replace locations, regularity of email notifications and contact phone number in this sequence if you purchase it.
The second Facebook Messenger ad will be a fairly standard campaign, promoting a specific property for sale.
For this ad, you'll send clients to a sequence that gives them more information about the house. This sequence is also available for sale inside our Template Library. Or, you can create a custom sequence for your client.
A prospect will go through a full set of questions to get them to the right information. Ultimately, it will result in them getting contact information or being able to schedule a call or showing with your client.
Again, you will need to update the sequence with your client's property information and contact information.
Report Your Results
FunnelDash makes it very easy to report to your clients on a weekly and monthly basis. You can use our Facebook Weekly reporting dashboard to show your progress.
Just take a screenshot once a week and send that to your client. If you need to, you can mark it up with arrows and circles to show certain metrics and to indicate what you'll be tweaking next.
You can also use all of the FunnelDash dashboards to show your clients how you’ve increased their ROI and gotten them more leads during their monthly reporting meeting.
Get Everything You Need to Create These Campaigns for Your Clients
I’ve created a special Real Estate Client Campaign Kit for you that includes:
- The 3 Facebook ads referenced here so you can use them as guides for your own ads.
- A basic copy template for your Facebook ads.
- A list of resources for creating these assets.
You can find the Real Estate sequences for sale inside the FunnelDash Template Library, or you can build them yourself, using the Custom Sequence Template.
Click on the button below to get your Real Estate Client Campaign Kit and start marketing your services to local real estate agents.
If you run this campaign, tell us how you did in the comments.
