Here is a thought leadership article from Yomdel
This article highlights the changes to social media organic algorithms and the power of advertising through social media for estate agents.
While most agents will have a presence on social media and might post regularly, there is a vast difference between using an individual profile to post and gain exposure, to effectively using Facebook Advertising to create engaging campaigns that will widely broaden exposure.
It is no secret that social platforms operate on a pay-to-play model and the visibility of organic social posts has been reducing. This comes as all the social media platforms encourage businesses to use their advertising to reach their audience instead. The average reach of an organic post on a Facebook Page hovers around 5.20%, which means around one in every 19 fans sees non-promoted content. While organic social media is ‘free’, once you take into consideration the time it takes to think of content, write copy, design images, create videos and post, is it worth only reaching 5% of your audience? And, when you consider that time is money, there is a cost.
Even if you’ve built quite a good audience on social media, it’s likely to be dwarfed by the reach of advertising. A regular post on Facebook might be seen by a few hundred people, however, paid advertising has the potential to be seen by thousands of people within a targeted audience. An audience that is based on location, interests, engagement with the business and people that share the characteristics of your best clients.
How much time people spend on social media shows that businesses need to be using it as a lead-generation platform. Social media is a necessity these days and needs to be treated like a second website. As a crucial revenue-generating element of the business, almost as much time needs to be spent updating and maintaining social media as a website. Advertising will streamline this a little.
Advertising will help to automate social activity to some degree. You still need to design, write, and manage campaigns then update them, but for the most part they run in the background whilst you focus on other areas. To save even more time while increasing ROI, there is the option of working with a Facebook Advertising Specialist such as LeadPro, that has extensive knowledge and expertise within the property sector. A specialist will have a far greater understanding of the technical aspects that boost a campaign’s potential success, increasing leads and gaining traction for your business.
In addition to Facebook Advertising, Facebook Messenger is another form of contact many businesses are starting to offer. People trust Messager as they trust Facebook and most people would already use it with their friends. It keeps them within Facebook, not having to leave to another website or app. Much like live chat, it’s casual and informal. People feel like they can leave when they want unlike a phone call, Teams meeting or a physical meeting.
While many businesses are choosing to handle the account themselves, messages can come at all points of a day and if you don’t answer within seconds, the chance of a reply significantly reduces. Replying at the peak of their interest in a property you’re selling gives you the best chance of progress. If you don’t reply, they’re much more likely to go elsewhere.
If you decide to handle the account yourself, there is the question of who manages the platform outside of working hours. Again, using a specialist might be the best option to ensure that messages are automatically replied to when an agent is unavailable. A platform such as Yomdel generates the highest volume of valuation bookings from direct to chat links from social media advertising, as opposed to popup chats on the agent’s site. The reason for this is Yomdel can man the Facebook Messenger chat, which means the customer never exits the Facebook app thereby increasing chat occurrence.
Offering many forms of contact better ensures you offer the form that every prospect prefers to use but it is harder and harder to manage. That is unless you can filter them into one system, something live chat allows. Funneling many forms of contact into one is ideal, even better if a third party replies on your behalf, within seconds and 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Who are Yomdel?
Yomdel’s live chat operators respond to estate agents’ web visitors, email recipients, social followers and more within 15 seconds, 24/7. We help to improve your customer experience as well as nurture and record leads before posting them into your CRM or even booking appointments in your diary.
