By Bryan Driscoll, co-founder of Motivated Leads. He helps real estate investors generate quality motivated seller leads.
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When it comes to Facebook ads, one of the most desired actions to produce is lead generation. Lead generation entails a potential seller filling out a form with information like their name, phone number, email address and more, depending on how comprehensive the form is.
Most investors I’ve spoken with have stated they’re only converting a small percentage of these leads into sales. One of the biggest reasons for this lack of efficiency is due in large part to the forms that businesses use to gather information for these leads.
Options For Lead Generation
When you set up a Facebook ad to generate motivated seller leads, you have the choice of using Facebook’s forms or sending potential leads to your landing page with a custom form. Facebook’s lead forms may produce a higher number of leads and be more cost-effective. However, in the end, this may be costing real estate investors valuable ad-spend and producing low-quality leads.
1. Lead Forms: When you choose lead forms, basically what happens is Facebook users scroll until they see your ad in the form of an image or video. The only information they see is the ad text and image — which is to say, not a ton of information.
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However, a lead-form is created to produce one result only: filled-out lead forms. It’s called lead-form because the user’s generic information surrounding their Facebook account populates the lead form and it’s sent over to you, the business owner.
While this initially sounds like an efficient and productive way to produce high numbers of motivated seller leads, this is only partially true. It will produce high numbers of leads, although sometimes it may not be as efficient or productive as the manual way.
2. Conversion Optimization: The other way is to set up your Facebook ad with a link to your landing page in order to generate the lead. This method requires each potential seller to first click your ad, then navigate to your website and finally fill out the lead generation form once they arrive. This sounds simple, but in the world of online marketing, this method, compared to the previous, is like comparing a 40-yard dash to running a mile.
With every step added to the lead generation or purchase process, achieving the intended result becomes exponentially more difficult. However, while this may drastically lower the number of leads overall, the end result is normally the production of more efficient and motivated leads.
When I say more efficient, I mean leads that result in a higher percentage of conversions. What makes this method more effective at producing sales than the former? Shouldn’t more leads produce more sales?
Sometimes Less Is More
While it’s true that having traffic navigate to a landing page and fill out a lead generation form will produce lower numbers in terms of leads, the leads are typically higher quality. This is because the person actually saw your site, saw what you offer and decided to fill out the form.
Think about it: When a customer clicks on a link that takes them to a landing page, they’re navigating to a whole new site dedicated to your business or offer. More information regarding your service helps the seller understand why they’re filling out the lead form. This means they have to take the time to read about the service or business and understand how or why they need it. When you receive these leads, it’s from people who are a lot more familiar with what you’re offering.
The alternative may produce 1,000 leads, while the conversion campaign may only produce 100. However, doesn’t it make more sense to convert or sell two or three out of 100 leads than 1,000? Using this method helps you avoid sifting through potentially useless leads who have no motivation in selling their home. That’s assuming you get in touch with someone at all. This is another area that the auto-form potentially causes problems in as well.
Outdated Information
When these auto-forms are populated with information regarding a potential lead, it’s taken directly from the Facebook profile of the user. What happens if the user filled in this information 10 years ago? Do you know how many times people move or change phone numbers, addresses and emails within 10 years? Not everybody updates this information when it comes to their Facebook profile.
This means you could potentially receive hundreds of leads that lead to a dead end. If there’s anything more frustrating than spending money on leads that don’t convert, it’s spending money on leads that don’t even give you the chance to produce a conversion. You’re dead in the water if you don’t have updated contact information. This is why it may be worth it to set your ads up in a manner that generates leads from a landing page instead of directly from Facebook.
It may end up costing you a few extra dollars on ad spend, but it’s a smart investment. Higher quality leads and a better conversion rate lead to a better bottom line in the end, which is what manual lead conversion from a landing page produces for your company.