One of the most common questions real estate agents have about Facebook Marketing is regarding Facebook Business Pages, also known as, Fan Pages. Does a real estate agent need a Business Page? Well, kind of YES, and kind of NO.

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The question is not, Do you need a Business Page, its really more of a question of, How far do you want to go with your Facebook Marketing? Let me explain.

Facebook is just plain powerful

Facebook is one of the most powerful networking and communications tools the world of business has ever seen. The power of Facebook comes from the fact that it has an extremely active community of over one billion users worldwide who are actively engaged in the platform on a daily basis. Facebook also collects a ton of personal information about each one of it’s users. Yes, they collect everything about you. Your activity, likes, interests, and it’s developing profiles with all of this information so that it can sell it to marketers, like us. This is exactly why Facebook is so powerful. First, you have a very active community who is there everyday engaging on it. Second, there is a treasure trove of data available about those users which can be used to target them with ads on the newsfeed.

The 2 Strategies for using Facebook in Real Estate

Now back to the original question. Do you need a Facebook Business Page? There are actually two answers for this question. No one single answer is correct or wrong for any particular real estate agent because it depends on how far you want to take your Facebook Marketing. Therefore, we are going to break it down into two strategies for using Facebook for Real Estate Agents. Strategy 1: Using your Personal Profile Every agent should be using their Personal Profile on Facebook as a part of their overall Database Marketing plan. Think about it. Your personal profile on Facebook is a collection of your entire Sphere of Influence online. Therefore, we should apply a pure Database Marketing approach to using your Personal Profile on Facebook. Using your personal profile is purely a long-term game. This is warm-lead generation, total database marketing ala Gary Keller style. Strategy 2: Using a Business Page If Strategy 1 is all about warm lead generation akin to Database Marketing, then Strategy 2 is all about cold lead generation. Using a Facebook Business Page in 2016 is one of the most powerful tools any real estate agent can use for generating cold and “luke-warm” leads. The detailed level of targeting in Facebook’s Ads Manager/Power Editor is phenomenal. You can create an ad on Facebook targeting Females, 30-40, who like Yoga, are married, have kids, and live in any particular suburb of your choice. Now all you need to do is create the right message (this is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT if you want the ad to be successful) to reach the intended demographic you want to connect with. Running Facebook Ads is far cheaper than using traditional USPS Mail. You can reach more people, create more engagement and awareness with them via targets ads on Facebook. To run a successful Facebook Business Page marketing plan an agent will need the following in place:

• A website, preferably one built on WordPress.
• The ability and willingness to create engaging content for their future posts.
• An effective email service like; AWeber, Mailchimp, and/or ConverKit.
• A small budget.
• An open mind.

An Open Mind…

The last item on this list is extremely important. Facebook targeted ads are a phenomenal tool, but it takes practice and creativity in order to make it work for you. Part of the process involves learning more about your target audience and finding the most effective ways to reach them via using a combination of interests targeting and location targeting. Plus, Facebook is always making changes to it’s ads platform and keeping up with these changes is important to ensure your ads are running optimally.

Where should a Real Estate Agent begin?

Simple. Learn how to start using your Personal Profile on Facebook. Begin looking at it and using it like an Online Database. Once you begin looking at personal profile marketing like this you can start learning how to create engaging content. The practice of creating engaging content is a skill. Anyone who wants it can develop this skill. This is necessary if an agent wants to begin using a Business Page and running ads with it. By understanding your target market and creating creative posts from your Business Page you can reach far more prospects than a full month of cold calls or $2000 worth of postcards sent via USPS.

Agent Redefined’s Facebook Marketing eBooks

You can now download the first Facebook marketing eBooks from Agent Redefined for FREE. This is the starter guide to getting your total Social Media and Facebook Marketing going. Download the eBook by clicking the book link in the sidebar. If you have any questions about Facebook Marketing and using Personal Profiles and Fan Pages, ask me in the comment box below. Thanks for reading. El Guapo.