Have you ever asked yourself if you can use Facebook for real estate marketing? You absolutely can. In fact, Facebook is a powerful engine for reaching people, crafting a reputation, and finding the right buyers for your properties.
It’s important to understand how marketing on Facebook can be different from marketing on other channels. On Facebook, you’re trying to do something more like building a brand than direct advertising.
The goal is to attract followers you can use for indirect marketing using the infrastructure (such as Facebook Pages) that is there to help you. In this guide, you’re going to learn some tips that can help you make the most of Facebook.
- Optimize your page name for searches
- Choose a compelling call-to-action
- Choose excellent photos to liven up your profile
- Develop a personality. Use humor, education, or intensity
- Speak to a wide audience
- Cover local real estate issues
- Build a mailing list from people who contact you
- Build your listings into your content plan
The tips are sorted into four different stages. First, you’ll learn some tips for developing a business page. Then, you’ll learn some tips for attracting your first audience. Finally, you’ll learn the tips that will help you turn fans into buyers.
Let’s start by looking at the ways you can create a functional page.
Stage One: Developing A Great Page
The first thing you need to do to make Facebook a powerful platform for real estate marketing is to develop a Facebook page.
Facebook Pages are a separate feature from your personal account. Unlike your personal profile, you can name a Facebook page after your business. You can then fill it out with a rich description, cover photo, and calls to action.
You can learn how to create a Facebook Page from Facebook’s official guide, here. However, before you finish the signup process, make sure you check out the tips below. Some important optimizations can only be made while you’re creating the page.
Optimize your page name for search
There’s a small option in the page-creation process that will matter a lot if you intend to use your Facebook page for moving real estate. It’s the first field you will fill out: the name of your page.
It’s important that you understand that your name isn’t just what will appear at the top of the page. It’s also what will be set as the page’s URL. The URL is important because you want people who search for your business name to easily find both your site and your Facebook page.
For that reason, it’s best to set your page name so that it’s identical to your business name. If your website has a different address than your business name, you should choose to make it identical to your site’s address, instead.
If you have already chosen your URL, don’t worry. Facebook has provided instructions for updating your name and other settings, here.
Choose a compelling call-to-action
You can add a call-to-action to your Facebook Page. If you plan to use your page for leads, a CTA button is a great way to collect contact information, set up appointments for open houses, or field offers from home buyers.
You can also follow these instructions to add a CTA to your page:
- Go to News Feed, and click Pages in the lefthand menu.
- Navigate to your real estate business Page.
- Click the Add a Button option that appears below your Page’s cover photo.
- Select a button from the dropdown menu and follow the on-screen instructions.
- Click Save.
Your CTA should be short (a 30-character limit is in place), and descriptive about where it’s taking the person clicking on it. For example:
| If you want the reader to… | Then your CTA should be something like: |
| Contact you about your listings | Learn more about Any Listing |
| Join a mailing list | Sign Up for Regular Updates |
| Book an open house appointment | Schedule an Open House Now |
CTAs should be tested regularly. Try different options once-a-week or so to find out if certain calls perform better than others.
Choose excellent photos to liven up your profile
Facebook is a visual platform, and great photos are essential for adding a sense of value and personality to your page. You should choose the photos that will appear on your profile carefully.
These are the photos that need the most attention:
- Your cover photo (851 x 315): This is the image that is splashed across the top of your page. It’s the largest image on the page, so it needs to be high-definition. Remember that any image below the (851 x 315) resolution will be stretched. Choose a photo of the right size or cut one to avoid stretching.
- Your profile photo (180 x 180): This is the image that will appear in the profile image box near the top of the page. Most businesses choose to use a headshot, here. Some use brands, but personal photos seem to work better.
- Your post photos: These are the images that appear above the content you create. It’s worth developing a unique style early in the process of publishing content. You can “brand” your post images by using a consistent border, perspective, or filter over the images.
After you’ve perfected your page, it’s time to start doing the work of attracting an audience to your real estate content.
Stage Two: Attracting An Audience
Attracting an audience is an essential stage of marketing real estate on Facebook. Everything you have to say is only shared with your audience (unless they share your content), so the value of your message is only as good as the number of people you reach with it
Building an audience is hard work, but fortunately, it has a cumulative effect. Once you’re doing well, new followers will be attracted by the authority that is suggested by the number of followers you have already.
The main things you have to do to attract users to a real estate page is to provide value and set yourself apart. The only way to do either of those things from a Facebook page is to start publishing content.
There are a few tips that you can follow that will help you get started.
Develop a personality. Use humor, education, or intensity
If you want followers, you need to think like an entertainer. There needs to be something compelling about your voice even if you have great information and listings. There are a lot of personalities you can adopt for your page.
A lot of successful real estate influencers tend toward one of these three:
- Be funny: Humor is a great way to attract an audience if you have a natural talent for it. However, if you aren’t someone who is naturally funny, it’s best to avoid going in this direction.
- Be educational: You should always provide good information. Being educational is more about your tone and the choice of topics. If you choose to focus on this personality, choose simple topics, and patiently explain them.
- Be intense: Intensity can be a great tool for attracting an audience. Think about how personal trainers and fight promoters work by focusing on creating energy.
Speak to a wide audience
Yes, you are focused on attracting people who want to sell houses, but you’re less likely to reach those people if you only create content for them. Remember, when you build a big audience, you’re also creating the potential to reach all of their friends and followers.
A lot of different people can be attracted to a real estate Facebook page if you’re creating the right type of content. Remember that you can attract:
- People who are shopping for homes in your area
- People who want to be real estate investors
- People who love home architecture/history
Speaking to a broad audience will help you keep your topics interesting and diverse.
Cover local real estate issues
If you’re like most real estate investors using Facebook, you’re buying and selling homes in a particular city or region. You can attract a more relevant audience and increase your return with the followers you do attract.
Focusing on the local area can also improve the likelihood that your page appears on search engines. Do it by frequently including the names of local neighborhoods, streets, or landmarks.
Some example topics you could use include:
- Where to buy supplies for home flipping
- Interesting historic buildings near you
- Exciting new architecture styles in your area
Stage Three: Turning Readers into Buyers
After you’ve built your Facebook page into a powerful platform, and started developing an audience, you should focus on converting that audience into people who are interested in buying homes from you.
The following tips will help you get the best returns for all the work you’ve already done so far.
Build a mailing list from people who contact you
Targeting the people who are likely to buy from among your followers can be hard. However, it can be really easy when they identify themselves by contacting you first.
The people who contact you to ask about the details of houses, or about scheduling open houses, are the ones most likely to buy in the near future. Make sure you maintain your relationship with these buyers by sorting them into a mailing list.
Send them messages when there are new properties available, or when the status of a property they’ve asked about changes.
Build your listings into your content plan
As you’re developing your voice and content to attract visitors, you need to start working your listings into it. These posts will not even seem like advertising if you’re doing it correctly. It will appear like a natural extension of the topics you’re covering.
Here are some examples of the way you could frame your listings as content for your Facebook page:
- Developer Diaries: A series of posts about how you took a gutted home to the point it was ready for sale.
- Interesting, luxurious, or bizarre features of houses, such as hand-carved staircases, retro features like sunken living rooms, etc.
Conclusion: Move more Real Estate Using Facebook
Now you know how to take your new Facebook through the beginning stages, build a powerful audience, and compel that audience to start converting. If you employ these tips, you’ll find that Facebook is an excellent tool to market any kind of property.
