How much more of this are you going to take before the blinders come off and you see the writing all over the wall?
I’m not going to make any predictions about where these big lead conglomerates are headed but I know where you are…
Out of business. Sorry, before I wrote this out I tried to think of some prettier ways to say it but there isn’t any. And I shouldn’t anyways. Whether you like it or not the industry as a whole is headed a direction you won’t be able to bounce back from.
The only thing you can do is defend against it by becoming the most well-known, liked, and trusted agent in your marketplace.
By generating media – Just like Zillow has done. Like Amazon, Trulia, Realtor.com, and Redfin.
Names, email addresses, and phone numbers stock-piled as your source of fuel for growing your business and building a thriving brand that can handle any marketplace.
There is ONE Facebook advertisement a Real Estate agent can use to replace these large companies in their marketplace and build media. ONE.
And you can use this ONE real estate Facebook campaign if you’ve never run an ad in your life. You can use this ad even if your marketing budget is the size of your kid’s piggy bank. You can use this ad even if you don’t have one single name in your database right now.
We call this ad the Social Listing Method. This is the exact strategy a company like Zillow used to grow their influence to what it is today.
The only real difference is they did it using Google’s platforms. Using SEO and SEM. What they haven’t tapped into and have only attempted to in a kindergarten fashion was trying to leverage Facebook ads.
And this still another insulting attempt to get you to pay their advertising bill all while they end up owning both the custom audiences created and the leads they get.
It’s very simple. You need ONE listing. You need ONE Facebook Post. You need ONE follow-up campaign.
If you have those things and you can follow some simple direction to implement them, you can beat out ANY huge lead generation company on a local level with ease.
If you don’t have a listing, you can borrow one from a colleague – with permission, of course. You wouldn’t want them to feel like you’re just going to steal their listing info and then sell them leads back, would you? 😉
Ok, here we go…
The first thing you’ll want to do is create a landing page that would allow people to browse your listing. You can use a website as well. If you don’t have one we recommend Witly. This is a Marketing Intelligence Software that creates and automates follow-up for you once someone opts in to your campaign and will allow you to build the landing pages for this listing too!
This is more of a fail-safe as most of our leads will be set up through a lead form. You can learn how to use Lead Ads for Real Estate Agents here.
Witly is a software that can be seamlessly integrated into Facebook so those leads you get from Facebook can be directly placed right into your follow up campaigns.
Once done, you will want to go through the ad creation process. When starting out you’ll want to choose the ‘Lead Generation’ objective through Facebooks Ads Manager.
We then recommend setting up your Real Estate Targeting Terms Download Here.
You’ll move on to set up your budgets and placements. Make sure that you’re only placing your ads on the Facebook feeds. Mobile and Desktop.
Once done with placements, set your budget. As a rule of thumb, you should spend $1 for every 10,000 people in your audience. If you are unsure of how much you should spend you can safely budget $3 – $5 per day for this campaign.
Once you move through the ad set up process you’ll begin to set up the ad itself and create the lead form.
You can copy and paste what you see here so ensure you’re implementing exactly like you should be:
Once this advertisement is created and set up you can place your order so the ad starts to deliver. You should begin to get leads within 24 hours of Facebook’s approval process.
In this market homes may sell faster than you feel you have time to get this in place. The reality is that you can set this stuff up in less than 30-minutes if you have the right tools. And with EVERY SINGLE lead being followed up with automatically you’re in a position to grow your database by 200 – 300 leads with every single listing.
That’s all these lead companies have done. Used your listings to generate leads and sold them back to you. Now, you can keep them all to yourself. On a VERY small budget. And once these leads are in your database, you can market to them every day with email campaigns, text campaigns, and socially driven re-marketing strategies.
These are the results from a recent campaign:
Replacing Zillow and other lead generation companies in your market-place isn’t hard. It’s actually pretty easy. You simply need a strategy and a strong desire to go out and build your own media.
If what you’re watching these companies do to your industry isn’t enough motivation then I’m not sure else is.
If you’re ready for a change and ready to OWN the attention, the media, and the leads you generate (not to mention the data from these listings) then take our free Training on Demand to learn how you can Become Your Own Lead Generation Company so you can cut out these middle men and own your own exclusive leads.
