FACEBOOK

I am on track to sell $3 Million in Real Estate through Facebook alone in 2014.  This is not by accident and its 100% measurable.  To sell $3 Million in Real Estate is not a miracle but to credit one single Social Media outlet with that volume is mind blowing.  In 2008 if you had told me that I could use regular and strategic Facebook posts to build my business I would have not believed you.  I may have even looked at you like your are talking Snake Oil and ran away.  But I bought into it and committed to it.  Not only did I commit to it, but I study it and put myself in the seat of my target audience every single day, because that is who I want to reach.  On top of building a great Brand of WKRP Indy Real Estate through Facebook with zero marketing dollars, I changed my business model and expanded into additional service lines and today I am able to claim a successful Full-Service Realtor status.  You may think I am bragging here but that is not my goal.  My goal is to talk to other agents, including ours and show them that this is a great way to market and sell our product.  And the more of us that are using it the more sales will come from social media.  So below I will break down the basics of Why I Will Do $3 Million in Sales on Facebook alone in 2014.

1.  Commitment–Realtors are so bad at the hurry up and wait game, but I had no choice.  I had never witnessed the process of list, offers and sell or meet, show and sell.  That may have given me a handicap but instead I had the mindset of slow and steady with good solid deals along the way.  So I committed to posting on Facebook a certain number of times each and every day, depending on who I was talking to.  I scheduled them and to this day get the best results if I follow my original posting timeline.

2.  Strategic Posts–The two things I understand in marketing (and thats about it) are that people buy from people and they want information to be easy and relevant.  I sat down early on and created my target audience, niche and story I wanted to tell.  What came of that was that I am a Westfield Indiana Realtor that has a Family and Open sense of Humor.  I was going to use having fun to promote my life and work, but in the meantime educate that target with the specific expert knowledge I had.  Over time I have revisited my list several times and updated to the goals I have as a business and simply removed what was not working.  

3.  Pay For Nothing–This came first because I had no money to spend but was a lucky position to be in.  When I began I was overwhelmed by the advertisements and lead generation spaces to spend money and buy.  They all promised to grow my business with a minimal regular investment, but looking around didn’t seem to be doing much.  So knowing that I was not going to pay for nothing, I had to rely on a free platform that my time could maintain and my business could benefit from.  Buying any sort of Real Estate advertisement would have cost me dearly early on and to this day I do not spend a penny on any sort of advertisement.  I especially will not buy leads.

4.  Sorry To Bug You!–I have bugged a few people and even one time was told I offend someone with my posts, but that was something I had to grow to understand.  Never do I want to push away business or a friendship so having a plan and strategy was so much more important.  I track interaction and click throughs on my website to see what posts people are more inclined to enjoy but more importantly what they don’t want to see.  In general, people do not want to see “New Listing” unless its a neighbor or they can personally gain from it.  You know what they do want to see?  Videos and Me!  I know surprised me too.  People want to be taught things about Real Estate and a video by someone they know and trust is a great way to do so.  The most important thing to do is to work hard at not bugging people with your posts but create value for them to enjoy and learn from.

5.  Like you back–We Realtors are a special kind.  We need affirmation and your stamp of approval way more then many but the way you give that to us is through “Likes” and “Shares” .  We find the Like button to be as good as a referral or good reference and when we stop experiencing them with each post, begin to lose confidence in ourselves.  Well the same goes for each other.  A great way to gain support and engagement is by liking important posts or sharing others posts with your “followers”.  Not only are you looking out for your audiences best interest but you are also throwing some credit and appreciation to a colleague or friend.

So selling $3 Million on through Facebook is not an accident but its also not a huge amount of work.  Its just efficient and direct.  A mentor of mine always used to tell me “buy where the people are” when it came to investment Real Estate and that same goes true for marketing.  Sell where the people are buying and looking most.  Thats online and on social media with the potential for that traffic to increase greatly.  I hope this article was a bit of help and I would be glad to offer any additional details if you want to email me at curt@wkrpindy.com .  

-curt