The client files: Facebook vs. Google

I’ve had several clients ask me, over the course of the last several months, which is better for real estate lead generation? Should they be focusing on Google or should they be focusing on Facebook?

Well, the answer isn’t black and white. It’s not right or wrong. In fact, it’s convoluted.

Did you know that your future real estate clients who are hanging out on Facebook are not looking for the same thing that your future real estate clients browsing through search engines are?

This is why it’s so important to understand both how to generate leads on Facebook as well as the typical online lead generation process.

When someone is looking to buy or sell a home, no matter how far in the future they are looking, they’ll typically head over to a search engine such as Google and they’ll either start doing searches for homes or, they’ll start asking questions about the process.

Making sure you are filling your blog site with both of these types of “content” is the essential foundation to guiding those eyeballs over to your site, and to capturing them into your sales funnel.

Knowing that the traffic that comes to your blog site via search engine traffic is in a different phase of the process than someone who connects with your business page on Facebook is essential.

When someone is on Facebook, they are looking to connect with someone or something they have some sort of connection with already, or, they are looking for someone or something that gives them value in some way. Typically, your Facebook lead is not in the process of buying or selling, yet.  Typically.  I said typically.  This is not all-inclusive.

In most cases, there isn’t a time frame in their mind, just some nebulous “in the future” (if that). With a search engine lead, even if that time frame is 12-18-24 months in the future, it’s still there, identified as a time frame. They are using search engines because they have a direct need or desire.

When people are connecting on Facebook, it’s not usually out of a direct need or desire to buy or sell a home, it’s out of a desire for connection, for value, for someway to improve their lives.

The thing is, the connections you make on your Facebook business page are often, even farther away from making a purchase than the consumer who is using a search engine.

However, the connections you make on Facebook have the potential to be, and are more likely to be, more loyal and more likely to refer their friends and family to you, even before that connection utilizes your services.

But, to make sure of this, you must be providing value, on a constant and consistent basis, both via the Facebook connection and via a touch connection outside Facebook (typically an email connection). You must be in constant engagement with (notice I didn’t say communication with) your Facebook connections. Honestly, you’ll need to make sure you are in front of your Facebook connections on nearly a daily basis, directly on Facebook.

So in other words, for Facebook leads, the nurturing process is longer, but the ultimate potential in sales for you, the real state agent, is infinitely higher.

So the question is, which is better for real estate lead generation, Facebook or Google?

You need both.

You must have a diversified channel process for your lead generation. However, you need to understand the leads that come through each channel, where they are, what they are looking for, why they are there, and when they will be ready to take action.

This is why it is so important that you have a niche and know your niche. When you do, you know the entire process for that niche (you know what that niche needs even before that niche knows what they need)

When you master this, you can master online lead generation. You’ll quickly dominate when it comes to nurturing and converting those leads into closed clients.