Facebook Ads for Motivated Seller Leads [Progress thread]

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Facebook Ads for Motivated Seller Leads [Progress thread]

Michael McKay
Rental Property Investor · Jacksonville, FL · Member since 2016 · 155 posts · 68 votes

There are a lot of posts and Youtube videos on using Facebook to generate motivated seller leads, but most of these only cover a small part of the overall marketing campaign. Online marketing has evolved a lot in the last few years- no longer can you expect optimal results from making a couple Facebook ads with stock photos.

I believe that I can find off market deals cheaper than direct mail by using online marketing.

I started working on this project 2 days ago and I’m going to document my entire journey here, including:

  • Which strategies work and which don’t
  • The tools I use
  • How much money I spend on ads, design, vendors, etc.
  • The exact ads I use
  • My cost per lead, my cost per deal...everything

Why am I doing this?

I want to find off market deals and creating this thread will keep me accountable.

This thread also gives me an easy way to share my learnings. Plus, some of you will have great suggestions on how I can improve my strategy :)

What I’ll be building and sharing over the next few weeks

  1. A high converting landing page.
  2. An outline of my marketing funnel- this will be my road map as I build out all the pieces of this project.
  3. Video and photo ads for Facebook- I’ll test these to see which ones work and which ones don’t.
  4. A messenger bot for Facebook ads- We’ll see if these perform better than lead or landing pages ads.
  5. A system to manage leads and automatically follow up with them

Test budget: $2,500.

Most people spend between $1,500 and $2,000 on direct mail to find a deal, so I thought $2,500 made sense since there are some set up items (website design, graphic design, etc.) that cost $500-$700.

I’ll update this thread every few days with my progress. I’d love to hear your suggestions!

I’ll do my best to create detailed posts of what I do, in case anyone wants to borrow my strategies. Feel free to ask questions if anything isn't clear.

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James Wise
Real Estate Broker · Cleveland Dayton Cincinnati Toledo Columbus & Akron, OH · Member since 2013 · 30k+ posts · 20k+ votes
6y
Originally posted by @Michael McKay:

There are a lot of posts and Youtube videos on using Facebook to generate motivated seller leads, but most of these only cover a small part of the overall marketing campaign. Online marketing has evolved a lot in the last few years- no longer can you expect optimal results from making a couple Facebook ads with stock photos.

I believe that I can find off market deals cheaper than direct mail by using online marketing.

I started working on this project 2 days ago and I’m going to document my entire journey here, including:

  • Which strategies work and which don’t
  • The tools I use
  • How much money I spend on ads, design, vendors, etc.
  • The exact ads I use
  • My cost per lead, my cost per deal...everything

Why am I doing this?

I want to find off market deals and creating this thread will keep me accountable.

This thread also gives me an easy way to share my learnings. Plus, some of you will have great suggestions on how I can improve my strategy :)

What I’ll be building and sharing over the next few weeks

  1. A high converting landing page.
  2. An outline of my marketing funnel- this will be my road map as I build out all the pieces of this project.
  3. Video and photo ads for Facebook- I’ll test these to see which ones work and which ones don’t.
  4. A messenger bot for Facebook ads- We’ll see if these perform better than lead or landing pages ads.
  5. A system to manage leads and automatically follow up with them

Test budget: $2,500.

Most people spend between $1,500 and $2,000 on direct mail to find a deal, so I thought $2,500 made sense since there are some set up items (website design, graphic design, etc.) that cost $500-$700.

I’ll update this thread every few days with my progress. I’d love to hear your suggestions!

I’ll do my best to create detailed posts of what I do, in case anyone wants to borrow my strategies. Feel free to ask questions if anything isn't clear.

As someone who spends $100,000+ per year on marketing I can say that the highest ROI you'll get from sellers is from direct mail. Online marketing is going to have it's biggest impact on creating and maintaining brand awareness.

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  • Michael McKay
    OP
    Rental Property Investor · Jacksonville, FL · Member since 2016 · 155 posts · 68 votes
    5y

    @Caroline Yaun Sounds good! I'm actually driving down to Jax this weekend. I'll send you a message so we can connect.

    0Reply
  • Mark Sewell
    Investor · Houston, TX · Member since 2017 · 1k+ posts · 871 votes
    5y
    Originally posted by @Michael McKay:

    Update #23

    I completed the Carrot Facebook course over the weekend and spent the last few days putting together a detailed plan using that and some other resources I found on Youtube. The plan is 17 slides long, so I uploaded it on Slideshare, since it wouldn't fit in this post.

    I also decided to move to Florida for at least the rest of the year, so I'll be relaunching the campaign in the Jacksonville market. It will be interesting to see what works there and the costs vs CT.

    Michael thanks for doing this.  Just downloaded and I will definately study it.

    0Reply
  • Christian Nachtrieb
    Rental Property Investor · Medford, MA · Member since 2016 · 288 posts · 171 votes
    5y

    Hi Mike,

    I appreciate you sharing all of your work and progress, I'm in the same boat looking to start up a high converting landing page. One thing I'm noticing on your site, is that you have spelling errors EVERYWHERE. I would fix that as soon as possible. It literally looks like you hired someone on Upwork that doesn't speak English to write all of your copy. I would also delete the fake / non-review that's there as a temporary placeholder. It's off-putting. 

    Best of luck and I'll be checking in on how things are going for you. Thanks again!

    Christian 

    0Reply
  • Michael McKay
    OP
    Rental Property Investor · Jacksonville, FL · Member since 2016 · 155 posts · 68 votes
    5y

    @Mark Sewell no problem! I'll keep posting updates here on which tactics work. I'm driving down to Jacksonville this weekend and should be launching the new campaign on Tues or Weds.

    @Christian Nachtrieb You actually caught us in the middle of a total website redesign that we started a couple days ago :) A lot of the items are placeholders and everything should be updated by the time I re-launch the campaign next week.

    0Reply
  • Michael McKay
    OP
    Rental Property Investor · Jacksonville, FL · Member since 2016 · 155 posts · 68 votes
    5y

    Update #24

    I got down to Florida late Sunday night and yesterday I launched the campaign here. I started with a video views campaign to build my audience, since that worked well in CT. I used dynamic creative with 6 videos and multiple variations of copy.

    This morning, I noticed my I had 171 thruplays (15 second video views) from 190 impressions, which is crazy high. The CPM was also high at over $13, so I dove in deeper to see if something weird was going on.

    I noticed Facebook added a new placement called "Rewarded video" and almost all my ads were going to that placement. Facebook defines this as "Rewarded video ads are a type of video placement available for gaming apps. Players can choose to watch a video in exchange for a reward, such as virtual currency or in-app items."

    So it looks like people are bribed to watch a full video, which explains the high rate of thruplays. I decided to disable audience network. Since I'm using these videos to build my audience to retarget, I don't want to be building an audience of people who aren't actually interested in selling their home.

    0Reply
  • Michael McKay
    OP
    Rental Property Investor · Jacksonville, FL · Member since 2016 · 155 posts · 68 votes
    5y

    Update #25

    The video views campaign has been been running at $15 a day and my cost per Thruplay is the same as CT at 4 cents. My CPM is still high at $12.46, but I'm going to let it run for a few more days before I make any adjustments.

    This morning I launched a traffic campaign optimized for landing page views targeting the same audience at $15 a day. I used dynamic creative here as well and used the same videos plus one additional video I made using Facebook's tools. I'll post an update once it's run for a bit and there are more impressions.

    0Reply
  • Michael McKay
    OP
    Rental Property Investor · Jacksonville, FL · Member since 2016 · 155 posts · 68 votes
    5y

    Update #26

    I realized after my post Thursday that Facebook was using another placement that was skewing my results, which was in stream videos. It was forcing people to watch this videos without being able to skip, making it a bad placement if I'm trying to use the videos to build an audience for retargeting.

    I quickly removed this placement and my campaign has been running all weekend. My CPM decreased to just over $5 and my Thruplay cost is at 6 cents. Still a little high, but hopefully I can get that lower with some testing.

    Today, I'll be making my retargeting campaign. I have 1,700 people in the 10 second video viewers retargeting audience and I'm going to test both a conversions campaign and lead generation campaign.

    0Reply
  • Jerryll Noorden
    Flipper/Rehabber · Wilton, CT · Member since 2015 · 4k+ posts · 4k+ votes
    5y
    Originally posted by @Michael McKay:

    Update #26

    I realized after my post Thursday that Facebook was using another placement that was skewing my results, which was in stream videos. It was forcing people to watch this videos without being able to skip, making it a bad placement if I'm trying to use the videos to build an audience for retargeting.

    I quickly removed this placement and my campaign has been running all weekend. My CPM decreased to just over $5 and my Thruplay cost is at 6 cents. Still a little high, but hopefully I can get that lower with some testing.

    Today, I'll be making my retargeting campaign. I have 1,700 people in the 10 second video viewers retargeting audience and I'm going to test both a conversions campaign and lead generation campaign.

    Lets have a chat.

    0Reply
  • Michael McKay
    OP
    Rental Property Investor · Jacksonville, FL · Member since 2016 · 155 posts · 68 votes
    5y

    @Jerryll Noorden You have my number :) Let me know when is good for you.

    0Reply
  • Michael McKay
    OP
    Rental Property Investor · Jacksonville, FL · Member since 2016 · 155 posts · 68 votes
    5y

    Update #27

    So far I've been retargeting using a lead generation campaign, since my website still has some finishing touches needed. No leads so far on that lead gen campaign or the video views campaign.

    The site should be done by Friday, so I'm going to set up a conversions campaign for the retargeting audience to see if that converts better. I'm also going to start a traffic campaign to my website optimized for landing page views.

    I installed Hotjar on my website, so that I can see where people click and watch recordings of how people interact with the site. My goal is to use this to optimize my website to increase conversions.

    0Reply
  • Michael McKay
    OP
    Rental Property Investor · Jacksonville, FL · Member since 2016 · 155 posts · 68 votes
    5y

    Update #28

    Over the weekend I spent about $110 on the traffic campaign. The click through rates are high at 2.93% for a link click through and 3.75% for all click throughs, which is good. I also took a look at the age breakdown and Facebook is spending most of the budget on the higher ages, which are more likely to be motivated sellers. No leads so far, but yesterday I set up a retargeting conversions campaign, so hopefully I can convert some of the people who clicked to leads.

    I'll be reviewing Hotjar with my web designer later today to see if we need to change anything to optimize the site for conversions. 

    0Reply
  • Wasiu Adeyeye
    Member since 2021 · 3 posts · 0 votes
    5y

    @Michael McKay How's everything going? any deals? Update? 

    0Reply
  • Tomas Satas
    Investor · Berwyn, IL · Member since 2015 · 64 posts · 8 votes
    5y

    Haha. I was going to ask the same thing.

    But looks like it didn’t work out. 

    0Reply
  • Kelly Kinne
    Member since 2019 · 5 posts · 0 votes
    5y

    Just coming across this, is there a place you've publicly published your results?

    0Reply
  • Allan Smith
    Contractor · Nashville, TN · Member since 2014 · 1k+ posts · 1k+ votes
    5y

    I don't want to jump to conclusions here, but I'm guessing things did not pan out perhaps as he hoped. I read through this whole thread and certainly learned a lot, but then again if it didn't work, I may not have learned anything I can apply.

    @Michael McKay was a beast with the continued tweaks and effort he put into this campaign so I'm a bit shocked if it didn't work. I think one time he posted he said about $750 for 3 leads, so that's about $250/lead. Not terrible, but needs to be better.

    Honestly, it just doesn't make sense to me. He put more effort in than 90% of the other fast cash FB advertisers, so if he can't get it to work, what will it take? The funnel he set up was primo with multiple tailored touchpoints at each step of the way to a conversion.

    0Reply
  • Michael McKay
    OP
    Rental Property Investor · Jacksonville, FL · Member since 2016 · 155 posts · 68 votes
    5y

    @Allan Smith @Wasiu Adeyeye @Kelly Kinne @Tomas Satas I apologize for not updating this thread. Life got busy when I moved down to Florida.

    The campaign did not work out. I decided to call it quits after spending about $2,000 on Facebook. Maybe there's something I did wrong, but I decided to invest my time and money into other marketing channels.

    In better news, I've done 4 deals from SMS marketing and one from SEO in 2021. 

    I did discover one awesome way to use Facebook ads though. I leave my retargeting campaign up at $1 a day, so it re-targets people who visit my website. Nothing revolutionary here, but after I speak to leads who come in through other channels, like SMS, I send them a link to my website. 

    Facebook then shows them my ads for the next 60 days. 1 ad is of a video of me talking and the other is a screenshot of a review. After I started doing this I realized that sellers would remember me way more when I followed up and it seemed to give me a lot more credibility. Some even mentioned to me how they saw me all over Facebook. Hard to directly attribute to deals, but seems like $30/month well spent to me :)

    1Reply
  • Wasiu Adeyeye
    Member since 2021 · 3 posts · 0 votes
    5y
    Originally posted by @Michael McKay:

    @Allan Smith @Wasiu Adeyeye @Kelly Kinne @Tomas Satas I apologize for not updating this thread. Life got busy when I moved down to Florida.

    The campaign did not work out. I decided to call it quits after spending about $2,000 on Facebook. Maybe there's something I did wrong, but I decided to invest my time and money into other marketing channels.

    In better news, I've done 4 deals from SMS marketing and one from SEO in 2021. 

    I did discover one awesome way to use Facebook ads though. I leave my retargeting campaign up at $1 a day, so it re-targets people who visit my website. Nothing revolutionary here, but after I speak to leads who come in through other channels, like SMS, I send them a link to my website. 

    Facebook then shows them my ads for the next 60 days. 1 ad is of a video of me talking and the other is a screenshot of a review. After I started doing this I realized that sellers would remember me way more when I followed up and it seemed to give me a lot more credibility. Some even mentioned to me how they saw me all over Facebook. Hard to directly attribute to deals, but seems like $30/month well spent to me :)

    Thanks for the update, i went ahead and tried FB ads for a month and a half spent about $1500 called it quits too. It just doesn't work unless you're dumping ridiculous amounts of money into it. Back to traditional methods.  

    0Reply
  • JT Rose
    Member since 2019 · 32 posts · 20 votes
    5y

    @Michael McKay Hey man shoot me a text if you want me to hop in and take a look at your retargeting campaign.

    0Reply
  • JT Rose
    Member since 2019 · 32 posts · 20 votes
    5y

    @Wasiu Adeyeye I've found that the first deal often times doesn't come until the 60-90 day marker and you need to spend about $1000 a month for that expectation but using Facebook in a retargeting and direct mail, SMS, & cold calling campaign can be huge and a lot less expensive. If you want me to walk through your ads or shoot your a free strategy training let me know. 

    0Reply
  • Michael McKay
    OP
    Rental Property Investor · Jacksonville, FL · Member since 2016 · 155 posts · 68 votes
    5y

    @JT Rose thanks! Will do.

    Just to be clear to everyone above, I do think there is potential in Facebook. I just didn't have success. It's still something I plan to try again later down the line.

    0Reply
  • Duane Alexander
    Investor · Atlanta, GA · Member since 2020 · 253 posts · 240 votes
    5y

    Dang I was really interested in this. @Michael McKay it's cool that you're getting some traction with SEO and SMS blasting though. How long did it take for you to start getting SEO leads? How many texts are you sending out before you get someone willing to work with you? I tried SMS for a bit, but only sent out 200 or so texts. I got so many people that were pissed I had the audacity to text them that I gave up lol. I'm focused on SEO and other digital marketing now. 

    0Reply
  • Michael McKay
    OP
    Rental Property Investor · Jacksonville, FL · Member since 2016 · 155 posts · 68 votes
    5y

    @Duane Alexander SEO took about 2 months to start getting leads and 2 months after that to get the first deal. I'm still working on it. Only got 5 leads to far, but 2 were very solid.

    I don't have my SMS numbers in front of me, but you will needs to send thousands to get a deal. Definitely build a system for a VA to handle responses. Like any outbound marketing channel, some people will be upset and more people will be unrealistic when you talk to them vs someone who searched on Google to find you. I've found that the key is to disqualify them as fast as possible on a call, so you only work with people who it actually makes sense for to sell to an investor.

    Lots of follow ups needed on all these. I'd have to go back to check exact stats, but I'd guess that my average deal has 15-20 touch points before a contract is signed.

    1Reply
  • Mark Sewell
    Investor · Houston, TX · Member since 2017 · 1k+ posts · 871 votes
    5y

    I think SEO is the foundation for any of it.  FB will perform better, I believe, if you have good content to put in front of them.  If your online presence isn't building credibility and adding value, no amount of FB spend is going to help.

    People swear bandit signs still work.  FB is all that and way more, but I think you gotta just keep testing and give it 4-6 months, with a serious budget.

    0Reply
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