The majority of folks will agree that ageism isn’t a good thing, and fortunately in the business world it doesn’t have much sway of influence anyway. A young realtor isn’t going to be at a disadvantage to an older one simply based on their age, but they will be if they haven’t established the same name for themselves in the business. Which of course is pretty much guaranteed if you’re new to working as a real estate agent in Canada. We can take age into account when it comes to real estate Facebook marketing though, and here’s why.
It was a whole different story in 2007 when Facebook was new to the world, but nowadays it’s increasingly true that Facebook is the social media platform of-choice for ‘older people’. Again, not being ageist in saying that but if you’re a Gen Xer or older you’ll know that’s fairly true, and especially if you’re one who has teenage kids. They’ll tell you the same thing emphatically. But therein lies the truth of why agents can – and should – put a focus on ways to generate real estate leads on Facebook.
You probably see where we’re going with this; it’s those older folks who are on Facebook more than any other platform, and they are the demographic who are MUCH more likely to be selling homes, or having the financial means to buy them. Not to say there aren’t plenty of Gen Z types who may be ready to buy their first condo or similar, but if you’re looking to drum up business you put your focus on the areas where there is more of it to be drummed up. For social media for real estate, that is 100% Facebook.
Having Facebook pages for realtors that are independent of their personal page is highly recommended, and fortunately it doesn’t take much to put a fairly good looking one together where agents can advertise themselves and field any and all inquiries about buying and selling real estate in the area. Inquiries that are very EASILY sent via social media, and sent a whole lot more often nowadays by people on Facebook who are likely to buy or sell a home.
You’ll want to optimize a Facebook real estate page too, and that’s another part of what we’ll look at with this blog entry here. It is all a part of how to get started with effective Facebook marketing for realtors and it’s something that agents of any age should be applying themselves to if they really want to get real estate clients from social media.
Real Visibility
Indeed, Facebook pages for real estate agents can play a major role in creating more awareness and building a strong online presence. What is increasingly likely is that people who are scrolling through their Facebook feed may be considering a real estate purchase, and if they happen across a post (as a paid Facebook ad for a realtor) that puts an agent right in front of them it is possible they’ll consider that agent.
Now of course that is dependent on whether or not they are already working with an agent, or if they know one through a family friend or acquaintance and would be leaning toward that individual as a result. But if not, it becomes possible that the agent they see is the one they reach out to. This can be especially true for out-of-town buyers who want to buy a home in a different city.
Facebook Pages are great for promoting your latest listings or for creating ads to reach potential clients. They can also be an effective way to generate more traffic and leads for your business, but they need to be put together the right way and deployed properly too if they are going to generate real estate leads for you. The first thing we’ll go over her is how to set up and then optimize a real estate Facebook page.
Before you can set up a Facebook business you’ll need to a have a personal Facebook profile if you don’t have one already. These days most people do, and again especially for the age range that will encompass most realtors AND the types of potential real estate clients they’ll be hoping to secure.
If you’ll be setting up a profile for the first time you can rest assured that your personal account will be separate from your business page and your personal information will remain private. But you will be acting as the admin for your business page and with all aspects of Real estate Facebook marketing as you move forward with this.
Once you have your personal account you’ll be ready to create your business page. Do this by visiting Pages in the menu and click Create New Page. Next you’ll need to enter your business name. From there you’ll enter your PAGE name and choose a category. Seeing as this is a business page, your name should include ‘real estate agent’, ‘realtor’ or something similar in the title. The aim with doing this is to differentiate your Page from your personal account, plus making your Page more discoverable in search results. Some realtors add PREC if they’ve incorporated as a realtor and if you have this is something that you can add in addition to ‘realtor’ if you’d like.
As for category, the options you will look at will be fairly obvious. Most will go with real estate agent on Facebook, but you can also choose from:
- Real Estate Developer
- Real Estate Company
- Real Estate Appraiser
- Real Estate Bimbo
- Real Estate Service
- Commercial Real Estate Agency
Go with the option that best represents your Page and business, whether you’re a solo agent or part of a real estate team that is eager to generate leads from Facebook. It may also be helpful to add a bio to your page, and you have the option of doing that here. You can also choose to add it later if you feel you’re not ready to write one yet.
Try to Stand Out
The next part of creating Facebook pages for realtors is to input your business details, and it’s here that you really want to put some effort into this and make your entry different from the ones coming from the hundreds of other realtors on Facebook. You can start with the easy parts where there’s no room for anything different with what you’re entering – your contact information, real estate agent website with blog, and business hours. Facebook also requires you to enter a valid phone number to continue the process.
You’ll then finish setting up this part of your realtor Facebook page with website email and location. Of course you will enter the location of the city where you are working, and keeping in mind too that this is a big part of search terms when people are looking for a real estate agent on social media. In the bottom-left corner, take note of how FB is letting you know what your ‘page health’ is compared to similar Pages. This helps you understand what information to add to optimize your real estate Page so that you get maximum engagement.
Moving along with this you’ll then need to upload a profile picture and cover photo. Remember these visual elements are the first things people will see when they discover your page and as such they are an integral and immediate part of how your representing your business. Profile pictures should be professional, high-resolution headshot images of you. The shot will automatically be cropped into a circle, so make sure the headshot is centered and focused on your face. The size of it will be displayed at 176×176 pixels on desktop and 196×196 pixels on mobile.
Add Cover Photo
The cover photo you choose will be shown as the banner image at the top of your page. What you should conceptualize here is a space where you are previewing your style, services, or approach. Often when realtors are looking to optimize their real estate Facebook page they will add an easily-recognizable photo of the city they are working in, or other options could be their logo if they have one. If the realtor works as part of a team they may also choose to have a group photo of themselves with the other team members.
There is room to be creative here. Considering again that the most predominant Facebook users are the Generation X types you may even want to take an unconventional yet effective approach here and choose an inappropriate image rather than one that is very ordinary and unexceptional in any way. People of this age generation often prefer to see inappropriate images rather than appropriate ones, and their sense of humour tends to be tailored the same way too.
All this keeping in mind that it is this age bracket of people that are going to be most active in the real estate market for the foreseeable future, and they are the ones who will be buying and selling homes most often. It’s a smart move to take real estate Facebook marketing and gear it towards this demographic group as best as possible. The cover photo will display at a 16:9 ratio and should be at least 400 pixels wide and 150 pixels tall, this according to Facebook’s image dimensions guidelines.
Connect & Invite
We’re really stressing the idea of meeting your prospective clients where they are at, and with the focus again being on that 40/45+ age bracket they also make up a large portion of the 1.2 billion using WhatsApp frequently for communication. So it’s a good idea for agent to have WhatsApp on their devices too and also have it connected to their new real estate Facebook page during this step.
Connecting your business page to WhatsApp helps streamline things if you’re already active on the messaging app and regularly use it for fast and effective communication with clients.
Another must-do for agents who want to get started with effective Facebook marketing for realtors is to be proactive and invite friends to follow the page. Once you’ve set up your Facebook Page, it’s time to start sharing it with the world and the best place to start sharing is with your personal network. This is easily done too because during the setup process you will be prompted to invite friends to follow your page. Those of them that known you’re switching careers to real estate will very likely be more than happy to help you out this as they will want to see you be successful. So notify the friends on your personal account about your Page and invite them to like or follow it.
Plus it is always possible that someone in your personal network can be a potential lead or connect you with one, so sending out those invites really is highly recommended.
Stay Informed
Turning on page notifications is the final step in the setup process. You want these turned on so you don’t miss any updates or potential leads that come through your Page. You can also choose to receive marketing and promotional emails from Facebook. Facebook will share product recommendations and tips to help you get the most out of your Page.
So you want to stay informed, and you always want to stay updated with your page and knowing that it’s optimized to the maximum extent. So we’ll switch direction now and focus on how to optimize an existing real estate Facebook page. Doing so means it is more likely you will generate real estate leads on Facebook, and of course that’s exactly what you’re hoping to achieve with this.
The first suggestion is to create a username consistent with your business. Your username will be your Facebook handle and the web address used for your Page and will display in the URL when you share the link or when people search for you. If you don’t choose a name for yourself and entire it into the filed then Facebook will auto-generates a username if you don’t choose one. It’s not likely that the one chosen is going to reflect your brand accurately so choose something similar to your Page name in the interests of consistency and searchability.
Next you will want to review business details for accuracy. This is also an important step to take when optimizing your realtor Facebook Page, and your focus should be on ensuring your business details are completely up to date and accurate. Preventing situations like a potential client sending an email to an old address is important as you don’t ever want to lose real estate leads.
Make the needed update if you’ve switched brokerages too, and if that’s the case you’ll want to add a new email, website logo, and possibly go with a new headshot. If you’ve formed a team, consider noting that on your Page and making the appropriate changes. Have a CTA (call-to-action) call-to-action button on your page too so that would-be clients can act quickly and easily if they want to be in touch with you without delay to discuss the possibility of buying or selling a home.
You want it to be clear for them as to what they should do. Should they call you? Fill out a form on your website? Whatever you think is best should be indicated with your Page’s call-to-action (CTA). A CTA is essential to have on any agent’s Facebook Page if real estate lead generation is the primary focus for it.
Create Your CTA
Here is how you do that. Click on the icon with the three small dots in the right corner of your Page. Then select the ‘Add Action’ Button. You’ll then be able to choose from the several different actions that are available to you. Most realtors will be looking to have a fast way for prospective clients to contact them. With the Action button, you can choose how they can contact you, whether by sending a message on Facebook or emailing.
After you’ve selected how you want your CTA to function on the page Facebook will create a button that will be shown at the top of your Page. When visitors click on it they will be automatically directed to the action you set up.
Now we move on to setting up notifications. This is something that is equally important because no realtor will be okay with missing out on a quality lead because someone’s message got buried in their inbox. If you’re a busy and successful realtor then it is fairly common to have quite full inboxes all the time. So make sure your Page notifications are turned on, for everything from likes and comments to new messages in your inbox.
If you want to take an extra step to ensure you engage with every message you receive then you can set up automatic DMs for when someone contacts you through the FB real estate page. If they receive an auto-reply it lets them know that their message was seen and they will see that favorably and be more inclined to keep the conversation going. It can also be a good way to answer common questions right out of the gate or direct someone to more information.
Inbox automations
No real estate agent is going to be inclined to spend any more time on Facebook than they have to, and that’s because they’ll be spending as much time as possible working as a realtor and doing everything that comes with that. But at the same time they will not want to be unaware any time a potential lead reaches out to them via their Facebook business page for realtors.
If you set up an Instant reply that sends an automated response to someone as soon as they reach out then that doesn’t need to happen. This automation allows you to create a custom reply that is triggered to send after someone sends their first message to you. Having this auto-reply in place makes certain the sender isn’t left on read, and it also makes it so that the agent doesn’t need to reply right away if they happen to be very preoccupied at the moment.
It’s also a really good idea to use a social media marketing tool like Hootsuite, and the reason it is so popular is that it is an all-in-one social media content creation, scheduling, and monitoring tool. With Hootsuite Composer you can create and schedule posts for Facebook, plus Instagram, Twitter, and other social media sites if you’re promoting yourself as a real estate agent there too.
Join & Participate in Facebook Groups
Joining and participating in Facebook Groups that are related to real estate – and real estate in the agent’s area in particular – is a smart way to expand their network by connecting with fellow agents, potential clients, and other industry professionals. And it’s possible to join a Facebook Group as a Page rather than joining it with your personal account, so when you’re in the group you’re especially visible as an agent who is ready and able with helping people with real estate.
There are all sorts of benefits to be had with this move for Real estate Facebook marketing too. Your best results will be when you find and join real estate-focused groups or local interest groups. Some may be public, while for others may need to be approved to join. When conducting your search for relevant groups, consider groups that offer a chance to connect with homeowners or other industry professionals.
Once you join one of these groups you will need to participate and be active in the community if you want to form genuine connections and ultimately generate real estate leads on Facebook. Participate smartly, and be aware that a lot of these groups won’t allow overt self-promotion. Don’t try to be too sales-y, and remember that the goal is to expand your network and position yourself as a helpful resource so that you’ll be top of mind if anyone needs a realtor.
Boost Posts
You should be sharing a variety of real estate-related posts on your Page, covering topics like home-buying tips and recent listings. If one post performs well, you can boost it so that it reaches even more people who may not be following you yet. A boosted post on Facebook is an existing, organic post that becomes a paid ad when it’s boosted.
An example might be an instance when you share a photo from one of your recent listings on your Facebook Page. You get decent engagement with the current page followers but you’d like it to reach even more people. Boosting the post may help it reach a new audience.
You’ll need to spend money to boost your posts. But it differs from creating an ad because you don’t need to create anything from scratch. When you boost posts you amplify the content you’ve already created, which is a huge benefit. Boosting your posts helps you get the most out of your content creation efforts and increase your reach to potential leads.
Create Ads
If you can afford it, paying for Facebook ads is pretty much the best way to get the added visibility and promotion you want to go along with Facebook pages for realtors. You may well have already bought traditional advertising placements in local media. With Facebook ads you’re able to expand your reach in a big way and tap into a larger, targeted audience.
Meta Business Suite offers extensive ad opportunities across both Facebook and Instagram. Explore the different formats and placements to find the best fit for your goals. It might be that a carousel ad would be a good option if you’re advertising a listing and want to showcase multiple images. You can also include a CTA with Facebook ads. This part is essential if you want to generate real estate leads from Facebook. Make sure your ad is compelling enough to get people to stop scrolling and follow your CTA, whether that’s to learn more or put them into direct contact with you.
