A lot of real estate agents and brokers go after first-time homebuyers as opposed to getting a listing appointment. We understand while working with buyers may not be an agent’s first choice, it’s something you have to do in order to get your real estate business rolling.
The good news is that generating buyer leads using the power of internet marketing is a lot easier compared to seller leads. Every agent in your area is probably going after home sellers. This causes the cost per click for home selling keywords to go up significantly.
On the flip side, not many real estate professionals are going after buyer leads because the truth is they do not know how to target these type of customers.
If you are serious about working with a lot of buyers in your area then you need to keep reading.
We will show you some of the proven techniques that generate really high-quality buyer leads for your target area.
Facebook Ads Are The Way To Go For Buyer Leads
If someone is doing seller leads, we would recommend sticking with targeted keywords for your area.
However, when you are trying to target hot buyer lead keywords like “planning to buy a home”, “first-time homebuyer” etc. you will see that the top ad spots are all financial institutions.
Banks are also targeting first-time homebuyers to get them pre-approved for a mortgage.
This means that in order to take over the top spot for these keywords you need to have a massive budget and overbid aggressively on those keywords.
Since competition is so stiff for buyer keywords, it’s best to stick to Facebook advertising for your buyer leads.
Facebook ads are relatively cheap compared to Adwords and the best part is their targeting feature that let you target potential home buyers or people actively looking to move in your area.
3 Key Elements For Generating High-Quality Buyer Leads
#1 A Useful Offer That Helps Potential Buyers
Homebuyers, are always looking for more information on the internet. Purchasing a home is the biggest decision someone makes in their lifetime.
It’s logical to think that before someone decides to buy a home they do extensive research in order to be certain that their investment is fruitful and checks off most of their wishlist.
List of buyer related content homebuyers are looking for:
- Information about a community or area they are planning to move to
- Information about local schools in their target area
- How to get a mortgage for their first house
- What are all the costs involved with the home buying process
- Recently listed homes in their target area
- Recently sold houses in their area
Each topic mentioned above can be turned into an e-book, white paper or a checklist for potential homebuyers.
#2 A Landing Page To Send Targeted Homeowners From Your Facebook Ads
This is one of the most important steps in generating high-quality buyer leads for your real estate business. When you start getting traffic from your Facebook Ad campaigns you need to reroute the clicks to a special landing page that is optimized for higher conversion.
Unlike a normal page on your website, landing pages are specifically designed to be an entry point for your broader sales funnel.
The goal of the landing page is to convey the message and generate an action from the visitor.
For the home buyer landing page here are the key takeaways:
- The landing page should have a clear heading about the offer (free e-book, home buyer checklist etc.)
- The landing page should have an easy to identify form with a clear call-to-action (CTA) button.
- Do not create too many form fields, stick to name, email and phone number for the form fields.
Pro Tip: If you are really serious about maximizing your buyer lead generation using Facebook then install the Facebook pixel on your landing page so that you can retarget everyone if they did not convert into a lead the first time.
Popular Landing Page Software
- Instapage – Easy to use drag and drop landing page builder that anyone can use. You don’t need to be a web designer to create a high converting landing page. Comes with lots of pre-built templates.
- LeadPages – A popular choice for many landing page campaigns these days. Very similar to Instapage.
- ClickFunnels – All in one landing page creator and sales funnel solution. If you are planning to nurture all of your leads (which you should) this is a good all in one option.
Now that you know a little bit about some of the landing page software that you should go with, let’s talk about A/B Testing.
The Importance of A/B Testing – This can be a game changer
Every Facebook Ad campaign that you are launching in your area should have multiple variations of the landing page. Testing different variations the landing page allows you to see which version convert more and you can improve upon the higher converting versions to reduce your cost per lead.
When planning to test multiple versions go with small changes so that you can analyze the data better.
For Example: If you are promoting a free e-book for first-time homebuyers then you should test the following variations.
- Different placements of the e-book cover photo (left on one version, right on another)
- Change colors for the call to action button
- 2 – 3 heading variation
If you followed all the steps in this section (#2) then your landing page should be all set to generate high-quality buyer leads. Now, the only thing that’s left to do is launching the actual campaign using Facebook Ads.
#3 Step By Step Blueprint For The Ultimate Facebook Buyer Lead Campaign
Are you ready for the ultimate step by step guide to launch a high converting, positive ROI Facebook Ad campaign?
Good, if possible print this section so that you can follow along when building your ad-campaign.
Before we begin we are assuming that you already have a Facebook Ad’s account.
Follow These Steps To Setup Facebook Conversion Tracking For New Leads:
- Login To Facebook Business Manager and create click on Pixels from the top right menu section.
- On the pixel page copy your pixel code and paste it on your landing page as well as the thank you page where users go to once they fill up the information.
- Navigate to custom conversion from the main menu and create a custom conversion (blue button).
- Name the conversion tag and use the URL for your thank you page.
- From the drop-down make sure that you select the conversion type as lead.
Best Practices For Setting Up The Buyer Campaign
Now that your conversion tag is all setup, it’s time to create the campaign and launch it in your target area.
Follow These Steps For Launching Your Campaign:
- From the Ads manager select create new campaign
- Select “Conversions” as campaign type on the next screen
- Make sure that you choose your target area in the next screen. This is also where we are going to set the behavior targeting so that we target only people likely to move.
Here is a complete list of targeting combinations for buyer leads:
- Newlyweds (1year, 6 months, 3 months)
- Newly engaged (3 months, 6 months, 1 year)
- Likely to move (only available in USA)
- Education Level: some college, college grad, masters
- Age: 30 – 45
- Gender: Both Male and Female
Bidding Type: Pay for Impression, Optimize For Conversions
Whenever you use any combination of targeting from the list mentioned above you will be targeting people who are most likely going to buy a place in the near future.
Important Things About Buyer Lead Generation On Facebook
Once you start generating high-quality buyer leads you should see the Facebook campaign recording each lead as a new conversion. Since your campaign is already optimized for conversion the most leads your campaign generates, the better it will perform. Facebook uses advanced algorithms to track which visitors are most likely to convert into leads from your target audience.
After generating leads, you need to have a comprehensive plan for nurturing them and closing them. Remember, not everyone will be ready to buy a home right away. You need to build trust and establish a connection with these potential homebuyers so that when the time comes, they will trust you as their go-to real estate professional.
The lead to customer conversion timeframe for a well-optimized Facebook Ads campaign is anywhere from 2-6 months. This means 50% of the effort needs to focus on how you nurture then after getting a buyer lead.
BONUS: Real Estate Professional Found Success With Facebook Ads [Case Study]
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