Ok, it’s time for a little “constructive criticism” for Realtors who buy pay per click ads on Facebook. I’ve seen one screw up too many on on there. I’m sure other professions have their share of Facebook flubs, but Realtors seem to do it quite a bit more than others.
One mistake that I’ve seen is incorrect targeting. Real estate is a very targeted profession and in Facebook you should be just targeting your local area. No, I don’t want to buy that house in South Carolina. I’m in Dayton, Ohio! You might think that this is just common sense, but I really did see a South Carolina Realtor’s ad on Facebook recently. I hope she didn’t go totally bankrupt from the ad.
There’s another Realtor here in the Dayton market that has really hit Facebook hard in the past few days. She must be bidding pretty high because I was seeing her ad every 2 minutes the last time I logged in. However, she is making some major mistakes and I suspect that in the long run, she will leave a lot of money on the table that she should be making.
The first mistake is she is linking the ad to her plain ol real estate website. I don’t think it’s the site that her agency gave her, but there’s no blog attached. No articles. Even more importantly, she doesn’t have an opt in form for a newsletter on the site. Huge opportunity lost!
I did a quick Google search and figured out that this agent has an account on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Active Rain, yet there’s no link to any of her profiles on the landing page that the Facebook ad goes to. Another huge lost opportunity there!
Listen, Facebook people are browsers, not serious buyers. They browse a lot more than the ppc traffic you will get from search engines. You need to capture them with content. Schmooze them and wow them with some good info and that trust will turn into something great.
Before spending your hard earned money on Facebook, at a minimum have the following systems in place:
- A good solid website optimized to local keywords
- A blog that’s updated on a regular basis
- An email capture form so you can send newsletters to your prospects
- A Twitter account and a Facebook Fan page linked to your blog via RSS feed
Link the ad to either your blog, a lead capture form or the Facebook Fan page. Do this and you will make a lot more money.
I hope this helps you all out there and I would love to hear some comments from you.
Dayton SEO Services is owned and operated by Carlos Scarpero, a West Carrollton, Ohio based internet marketer. Carlos has over 10 years experience in building websites, blogs and pay per click campaigns. Put his internet marketing expertise to work for you today!
