Not to be confused with a funnel cake, but it’s a SALES funnel.
A sales funnel is essentially the process of you getting strangers into your sales funnel and moving them down the sales pipeline to ultimately buying real estate. This sales funnel is going to be what helps you have a better Facebook ads strategy. It works for all advertising strategies too – not just Facebook ads.
For example, think of strangers being above the sales funnel. All the people in the world that don’t know you are outside the top of your funnel. So, maybe you upload a real estate video to your Facebook business page.
You want people to watch the video because you want to show them that you’re amazing, naturally. In this example, you would target cold traffic to get people INTO the top of your sales funnel. And, because the people who already know you deserve a different message, right? It’s all in the strategy.
What do you do with someone once they watch a video?
Well, you don’t just forget them. You want them in a video views audience. Then you can serve them another ad after they watch the video.
And that’s how it goes. You serve another ad to that audience and move them further down the funnel. The whole point is to get strangers into your sales funnel (or what I like to call the circle of trust) and the people interested in doing business with are pushed to the bottom of the sales funnel when they make a purchase. The funnel gets smaller toward the bottom because not every person that gets into your funnel is going to turn into a sale.
And, it’s possible that someone who enters your funnel in 2018 might buy or sell a house with you in 2022. But, you have to have a good strategy to stay at the top of their mind for when they’re ready to do business with you.
A simple sales funnel example:
Ad 1 – Serve your video as an ad to a cold audience (strangers).
Ad 2 – Then, anyone that watched at least 25% of your video you’re going to serve them a home value ad.
So, if they watch 25% of your initial real estate video, then that might be a sign they’re pretty interested in real estate. Then you want to serve them a very specific ad that has the opportunity for them to take action. In this case we used a home value ad. Once they register with your home value ad – you’ve got their contact info and you’ll work them until they sell! (Or at least put them on a drip campaign.)
This is a pay to play world.
Be strategic with your sales funnel and how you’re going to get them further down the pipeline. Now, of course, not everybody’s going to make it to the bottom of the funnel, so that’s why it gets a little bit smaller, but you can get so much more targeted as you get closer to this buying decision part of the funnel. Once you have this strategy in place, then you can actually say with confidence whether or not you know if you Facebook ads are working.
Today, I have a very simple strategy because I was too lazy to set up a complicated funnel. And well, frankly, maybe it’s not even me being lazy. Maybe it’s just that I’m so darn busy, all I had time for was to throw up those ads.
I want leads on my listings.
Just like you and every other real estate agent out there. And there is nothing wrong with that. It’s effective. I can say that 97 leads for less than $60 in seven days is worth the money.
Before you give Facebook any more money… actually, this rule actually applies for everything.
Before you give Google AdWords money…
Before you give ANY VENDOR any money, make sure you know what you want in return for that money. And then you have something to judge the performance by. You have your baseline expectation and with a little more experience, you’ll have cost per lead, cost per sale, you’ll figure all of those things out.
The very basic minimum thing that you have to have…
…is a strategy of what you want to happen. Then, you can grade your performance and know ultimately if that money is worth your time or not. You can get a lot more advanced and nerdy about the numbers later, but please: If you don’t know if your ads are working, STOP.
Stop spending that money right now or talk to the marketing person who’s in charge of those ads. Somebody knows. And if that somebody is supposed to be you, shut the ads down and think through it, look at the numbers. You’re a business owner and you deserve to know that your money is being spent wisely so that you know if you should spend more of it or not.
We teach a lot about funnels in Savvy Agent Club. But, if you make sure you have a STRATEGY before spending any advertising dollars, that’s half the battle right there.