Your real estate business needs to focus on video marketing in order to be successful. Facebook is clearly the most dominant video platform right after YouTube. Instagram (owned by Facebook) secures the 3rd spot.
Most real estate agents are faced with the dilemma of how they can constantly keep producing high-quality content for Facebook. As a matter of fact, most agents do not even create any kind of original videos.
In this guide, we will share some of the proven strategies to create an effective video marketing plan and execute it. Our primary focus for this particular guide is Facebook Videos using your real estate business page.
What do you need to get started with Facebook video marketing for your real estate business?
Most agents are under the misconception that in order to be successful you need to make content with expensive video & audio equipment. This is factually incorrect.
Most of the successful content producers and vloggers started with basic equipment and grew their following with interesting original content.
Here’s what you need to get started
- A smartphone
- A lav microphone (optional)
- A basic video editing software or hire someone as a freelancer
Let’s get started with our 5 proven strategies to generate more real estate clients from your facebook page.
Strategy 1 – Change The Facebook Page Theme To A Video Friendly Layout
Facebook is switching its focus to more and more video content. Most of you probably don’t know that there is a video focussed Facebook page template.
The video page template is optimized to for a video first experience when someone lands on your Facebook page. On the top header area, you can add up to 5 videos as spotlight.
These videos should be about your recent open houses, client testimonials and more. The goal of your spotlight video is to generate trust and build a meaningful relationship with anyone that lands on your page.
Strategy 2 – Use Facebook’s inbuilt close caption feature
Facebook videos are muted by default. This means in order to capture the attention of your potential homebuyer or seller you need to use closed caption.
The first 10 seconds of your video is also very important. When prospects are scrolling through their newsfeed it’s important to capture their attention. The two most effective tool to make someone stop and watch your video are your post headline and the closed caption.
According to Facebook themselves, videos with closed captions get more engagements than the ones who do not have a closed caption video.
Facebook even does a personal review of their auto-generated closed caption for videos up to 3 minutes.
You can also upload a custom SRT file. The best way to create your own closed caption is to hire someone from any freelance website.
However, the way Facebook’s AI is advancing in transcribing videos, we don’t think that hiring someone is necessary especially if you have a North American accent for now. Their transcribing software is not only accurate but they let you change.
Strategy 3 – Run Paid Engagement Campaigns For Your Real Estate Videos On Facebook
Our secret number 3 is all about running paid campaigns on Facebook. There are a number of ways you can use your original video content to generate traction for your real estate business.
Paid boosting or running paid campaigns allow you to accelerate this process of building relationships with homeowners in your area. Facebook’s organic reach is declining every single month. This means you need to allocate a certain portion of your overall marketing budget.
When you launch a new Facebook video ad, there are lots of objective that you can choose from. However, we think you should focus on engagement when going with Facebook videos.
The engagement objective is best suited for generating more comments, shares, and likes.
When you are boosting a video your goal is not to get leads directly, rather nurture your audience and build a relationship with them first.
Target homeowners and parents. That’s a good spot for most of the housing market. Feel free to experiment with your audience.
Another tip is to make sure that you create a custom audience of everyone who interacts with your video or watches them over 10%. (check our next tip for more information on this)
Strategy 4 – Retarget Engaged Audience With Straight Offer Funnels
Once you have your videos running you need to start targeting the custom audience with retargeting ads for your real estate business.
This is called the breadcrumb technique or a simple 2 step funnel to generate new leads for your real estate business.
The goal of the 2 step funnel is to nurture your audience before asking for business.
So, you are offering them valuable video content first and then retargeting those who watched 50% or more with direct real estate ads.
If you want to get super granular then create custom audiences for people who watched 10%, 50% and 90% of your content. Launch ads under separate ad sets targeting audiences.
Strategy 5 – Start A Watch Party With Your Real Estate Facebook Page Followers
Although Facebook organic reach is declining there are a few tricks that you can use to boost the visibility of your videos to all of your followers. One such trick involves using Facebook’s latest feature called Watch Party.
Basically, you start a live stream with an existing video from your page. You can even select other videos like a local influencer’s own take on your target area.
When you go live your followers and friends will be notified of your Watch Party. When they join your watch party you can interact with them directly in the comments section.
Watch Party is one of the newest features on Facebook and we have not seen any agent using it creatively to generate followers and build relationships with homeowners. Maybe, you should give it a try.
Here’s our simple Watch Party Blueprint:
- Shoot a video of the real estate market in your local area. Ideally, cover 30 mins. You can divide it up into different sections.
- Make sure you run some kind of a brand awareness campaign ($50 – $100 dollars) to gain a few new followers to your real estate page.
- Wait a day or so and launch a Watch Party video. Try to interact with as many people as possible during the live session.
- You can even promote the video after your Watch Party to get more engagement.
Facebook Video is growing at an unthinkable pace. Some experts suggest it might give YouTube a run for their money if this growth rate continues.
Your goal should be to take advantage of all these new features and generate more revenue for your real estate business before every other agent starts doing it.
