Facebook Ads Secrets for Real Estate Leads 📈

Welcome to the Painless Flipping Podcast, where we show you guys how to get into real estate investing, and we want to take the pain out of your journey. We know it can be difficult getting into real estate investing, especially if you try to figure out everything on your own. So I bring on experts to give their advice so you don't have to fail and figure out everything on your own. Today I got an expert, Alex Thorick, my brother, my Canadian brother, right in Canada.

That's it. Yeah, that's it.

We're my Canadian brother, and he is a master of marketing. So today we're going to be talking about how to use Facebook Facebook ads to target motivated homeowners. All right, so let's dive right in, brother. Alex, tell us a little bit who you are, and let's dive— after that, let's dive into how to use Facebook ads to target people.

Sure. So, um, I've been in the marketing space for the last 7 years working with, uh, many different businesses, local businesses, service-based, and we've used Facebook ads quite a lot. So, well, at this point I guess we can call it Meta because Facebook has everything under, so it's Meta. Facebook and Instagram go under Meta with WhatsApp and Messenger and all of those platforms that they own and run. So we've been basically helping our clients get— push the word about their products and services out there and build out systems to generate those leads because that's what each and every business needs. If you don't have leads, you have no business.

Yeah, that's so true. A lot of people don't really realize, they think that maybe they can get things done with no leads. I don't know why people think that. I used to think that when I first got started. I was like, well, if I just get really good at sales, I'll be able to convert like one lead I get a month. So now you need more leads. You need to generate enough leads for you to have a sustainable business. Would you say a lot of people get that wrong, Alex? Like the amount of leads they need to actually have like a sustainable business?

Oh yeah, 100%. Yeah. Like the amount of leads that you need these days is even more compared to, let's say, a couple of years ago. Let's say prior to COVID. And the reason to that is because the trust level these days is way lower than what we had before, plus the attention level. So the attention span these days is what, it's literally under 7 seconds, less than a goldfish. I'll say it's at about 3 to 5 seconds. So, and you all can attest to that because let's say when you go to YouTube, you can skip the video ad after the first 5 seconds, right, on YouTube. Or let's say, yeah, TikTok or Instagram where you go through those reels and, and shorts. Yeah, it's, uh, like if you're not interested, uh, if, if the video didn't grab your interest in the first 3 to 5 seconds, next, next. And I'm the same way. I mean, if I'm not interested in what the person has to say, um, I'm just gonna scroll to the next one. So it is important for you to have good hooks in order to, to grab their attention.

Hooks are everything, right?

Those days, yeah. Those days, attention is the new currency, pretty much.

You know what's interesting about hooks is you could say— we could sit here and think about the best hook in the entire world, and it could still not hook everybody. It could, you know, like— I don't know. I don't know what, what works. Go ahead, you tell me.

Sometimes you might— let's say, uh, so there are of course certain frameworks, uh, that you would use in the video or in the ad copy, right? When you would promote something for the product or service that you wanna generate leads for. And then sometimes you'd go through all of that. You know who is your target audience, the people that you talk to, right? And you put out one of the best ads, or let's say you have a couple of great creatives. And when I say creatives, I'm referring to images and videos. And you think these ones are gonna work really well. And sometimes they might flop and the, the ad that you were thinking, now this is stupid, but well, let's try it, that ad is outperforming. So honestly, sometimes you don't even know which one would work. And that's why it's so important to test different things. So when you launch a campaign on Facebook, again on Meta, so it's both Facebook and Instagram, it's important to have multiple different images and videos with multiple different creatives. So you could test which one works the best so you don't drain all the money.

Yeah, yeah. That's the craziest thing. Like, I know a lot of people have gone through for like quality, right? Like, oh, I want to have like the best camera and the best stuff. Like, and now I almost feel like if you have low quality, people are more interested to stop to be like, hey, why does this guy's quality suck? Like, why is his image kind of blurred? I don't know. I don't know if that's necessarily true, but I kind of feel like sometimes going against the grain helps.

It's not necessarily that, that it's the, the quality sucks and that's why they're watching it. It's more like, uh, because people see that it's more personalized. So the other person— so yes, the video itself is not a super high-tech, uh, high-production video, but people can see that you pretty much, you take out the phone and you film yourself, and that looks more personalized, and they kind of have more trust.

That makes sense. Yeah, I like that. That's true, more trust. So how do you develop trust with Facebook ads, brother? How do you develop trust with copy, like you're saying, with these ads to get homeowners interested?

So those days it does take— so there's a study that was done by Google. They called it 7-Eleven 4, or at least that's what kind of people started calling it, 7-Eleven 4 rule. So Google wanted to see how much time does it take a person to become becoming a client of a company or customer. So basically, how much time does it take a person from not knowing about the company to becoming their client? These days, on average, it takes a person to consume 7 hours of content, have 11 touch points across 4 different platforms. And when I say 4 different platforms, it could be, let's say, you run ads or you post content, you do the outreach. So let's say maybe they see your ads on Facebook, Instagram, Plus maybe you're reaching out to people, or let's say if they do fill out the form or they reach out to you, now you have their contact information, email and phone number. So now you can follow up with those people. Wow. So yeah, yeah. And that happened because—

A lot of work, man. That's a lot of work to get ahold of somebody, man. 4 platforms, 7, what is that? 7 hours of content in Zoom. Well, good thing I got a lot of content out there.

There we go. You're on the right path.

That's crazy.

Yeah, and the reason to that is because there's a lot of information out there today and everyone is trying to get people's attention like every, and you pretty much need to fight with every cat video, as I like to say.

Dude, those cat videos. So man, sometimes I'm with my wife and she's just watching stuff. I'm like, what the heck are you watching? And then I put my stuff out there and I'm like, no wonder I know, you know, it's hard to get people's attention. I'm fighting the cat videos, man.

That's the case these days. Yeah, so that's why it's important, um, in order for you to start getting those, um, leads coming in, it's important to build the trust. Uh, one of the best things that you could do, just like Nathan you're doing, is record a video of yourself. So let's say if you decide to run it as an— you decide to run ads, record a video of yourself explaining why. So there would be— you could use a framework where you would have a hook Um, or you could use a pattern interrupt with a hook. So pattern interrupt is something that's not typical. Let's say when somebody— I'm sure you've seen the type of videos or ads where somebody's kind of knocking, uh, into the camera. So that's a pattern interrupt because you don't see that every single day, right? Or somebody is getting, I don't know, outside, like behind the tree.

Yeah, doing something crazy, man, doing something crazy.

You got to be creative. Yeah, not— yeah, so, so you can stand out from the marketplace basically. Um, then you would have a hook which would be part of that, so you could merge them together. So you could call out the audience, right, uh, with that hook. Then you would have a one-sentence statement. So let's say something that's related to buying a house or selling a house, and not maybe necessarily because— so a lot of times, just like we had conversation prior to the, uh, to the interview, many times people don't necessarily want to sell the house with an agent. So that's something that you could also use for yourself and start with that statement.

So let me— I'm writing this down. So pattern interrupt.

Yeah, right. Takes— yeah, yeah, it takes about like a second or second and a half, second or two.

And you're saying like knock the camera, like knock or like—

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

Yeah, and then you said hook.

Yeah, then you do a hook. So the hook could be basically the call out. Let's say, are you a homeowner living in this area? Okay, something like that. Yeah, so it's kind of a, uh, some people call it— well, it's not some people, it's in the world of marketing, you would call it dog whistle marketing, where you're calling out specific type of people and only they will react to it because everyone else, let's say if they don't own a house in that area, or maybe they own a house but not in that area, they're not going to listen, and you don't necessarily need those people. Yeah, then after that you have—

yeah, yeah, what else?

Yeah, so after the hook, it's a one, uh, one sentence statement. So that's where you could mention something about, uh, not necessarily working with the real estate agent, that there is another way of doing things. Huh. And then, yeah, then right after that, you would basically tell people, um, I would say 3 to 5 points, give them 3 to 5 points on why it makes more sense to go with you compared to a real estate agent. So you can have multiple different ones, right? Um, so working with a real estate agent is just one example, or not working with them. Um, And basically give them 3 to 5 points explaining why it makes more sense for them to work with you. And then at the end, there's a call to action. So for the call to action, it could be either click the button below or literally message me, because these days people, they feel more comfortable chatting with someone compared to—

I've been seeing some people— sorry, go ahead.

Yeah, I just wanted to say compared to, let's say, talking to people on the phone. Which still works. I mean, it works. It always works. I'm sure it will always work.

That's so interesting. Yeah, 'cause I've been seeing a lot of people that are like, hey, go to this CTA or go to this. And a lot of people, what I'm hearing is they want you to comment more because if you comment more or like ask your question here below, 'cause then it gets more engagement on the post versus—

Yes, it does give more engagement on the post that will push the post even further., and you don't need necessarily to spend as much to reach as many people. And if you want to use that type of strategy that you mentioned, so there's a tool called ManyChat that can help you automate the process. I'm sure you guys have seen all these posts that, let's say, they say comment the word, I don't know, the specific keyword. People comment that, and that triggers the bot, which is the ManyChat, and it sends you the message in the DMs. And that's where everything happens. You can— within the DMs, you could send people to the landing page where they need to follow the form. So let's say share, um, basically tell you what type of house they have, maybe, uh, or just at least to give their accounting info like name, email, phone number. But even if they're not necessarily gonna fill out the form through the landing page, you at least have them inside of your DMs and you can just go in and chat with them. As a real—

wow, it's a lot of stuff, man. A lot of stuff going on these days. It's hard to keep your, keep your minds straight, to be honest. There's a lot, a lot of bots out there.

I agree. Yeah, yeah, I remember using ManyChat back in 2018, 2019 with our restaurant clients, and then, um, all of a sudden a lot of marketers started using managed chat specifically for basically to create that engagement and to push people through DMs, man.

It's still going. And honestly, I think the algorithms are becoming more like, uh, like smart about that. And I honestly think sometimes the chat, like the comments, like sometimes I don't think it— like if it's manipulated or— they got to be able to tell, right? They got to be able to tell like if it's legit or not somehow because I I don't know if that works as well as it used to because I used to do it way more, but then I realized like even with like 100 comments sometimes, like, because you know you can manipulate that stuff to make it like really big, sometimes you feel like, man, this doesn't, this isn't really working like it used to. I don't know if you agree, but I've kind of, I feel like sometimes it doesn't work.

Uh, it depends how you use it. So if you, again, if you want to chat with people within DMs and you want to, you want them, so let's say instead of sending Let's say you have a video, um, of you talking, and then the call to action, send me a message. So under, right under the video, they would have to click on send a message in order to start the whole process.

So instead of doing that through ads, through ads, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So then in that case, like, instead of doing it this way, the ad itself is not going to look like an ad because there is no call to action, especially when you run it as an engagement ad, as an engagement campaign. Yeah. And yeah, and when you say comment below, that triggers the bot on the backend and it sends the message.

So it looks more— it looks like an organic post.

An organic post. Yeah. So people will like, yeah, a lot of people, they won't necessarily see right under the page where it says sponsored. Gotcha.

Yeah. Cause I almost feel like sometimes when things are sponsored, people are like less likely to like look at it.

Right.

Like I look at someone sponsored and like, ah man, they're trying to sell me something. You know, I don't know if you feel that way, but it's almost the same thing with Google. Like when you go on Google and the very Google Ads pay-per-click pops to the top, sometimes I just scroll to the next one. I get rid of that because I'm like, man, let me see who's really at the top, not someone that's paying to get here. But anyway, I don't know if that's you.

Sometimes I do that. Honestly, I kind of have the same mindset, I guess, or I'm doing things same way. For some reason, maybe I've been— maybe because I've been in the industry for a while and I'm like, just next.

Yeah, not only that, but I also like when people pay to be on those spots. If I'm not like 100% sure, I know it costs money to be at the top. So sometimes I don't want to click and like charge, cost them all that money. Maybe for smaller— I don't know. Like, I know when I'm like, for example, homebuyers, like in my industry, if I'm looking for something, I don't want to— because some of those clicks can be like Google like $500, like a click. So like when it comes to real estate, you know.

Yeah, yeah. Well, $500 is quite, quite a high number, but I've seen that as well. Yeah.

Well, I've had— so I ran the Google pay-per-click in Salt Lake City, Utah, trying to get motivated home sellers, like homeowners that want to fill out forms. Sometimes I was paying like $500 a click.

It was insane.

Wow. Yeah, it was, it was not, yeah, it was not cool because, you know, they click on it and they don't fill out a form. You're like, bro, what the heck?

I know, I know. Sometimes people would just click, uh, by accident.

Yeah, exactly. And you're like, oh my gosh. Yeah. So, so what, uh, you've given some amazing advice on like how to create content and how to create, uh, good ads that will engage people with a simple framework. I appreciate that. What Where can people find you and what service, or I guess, what do you provide to the people that are going to hear this that you could help them with?

So they can find me or they can reach out on any social media platform. It's Alex Thorik pretty much everywhere. They can also go to our website. It's buildingincomeondemand.com. We have a lot of free resources that they can look into.

We have—

Will you repeat that one more time? Yeah, buildingincomeondemand.com. Building Income on Demand.

I love it. Dot com. Go check it out, everybody. Alex, do you have anything you want to leave our listeners with? Any other, any advice, anything specific?

I would say if you do decide to run ad campaigns with Meta, so with Facebook and Instagram, give it a little bit of time because in the beginning, especially if you're just starting out, People will not necessarily know who you are. And also start, when you start running those campaigns, start locally. So that way you'll be able to reach out, to reach more people in a shorter period of time. So you can pretty much manufacture that 7-Eleven 4 rule that we talked about.

Yeah, man, that's 100% true. I wouldn't run, personally, I wouldn't run my own ads, like unless I had someone that had that experience to show me, because you're basically, just, you're testing. That's basically what you're doing with running ads. So if you don't have like additional information or like knowledge or experience, you're going to not get results probably in like a week and you're going to spend money. You're going to be like, this doesn't work. And it's like, well, it was working. You just don't know how to understand it. Right. And after spending all that, that's the kind of the problem with ad spend is like the money goes quick if you don't know what you're doing.

Yeah, that is true. Yeah. And also make sure that, uh, there is a product-market fit. And what I mean by that is that you have a good offer for those people. So make sure that you, you position it properly, because if that's— let's say if people see the ad, like, you can literally run any ad on any platform these days. So there is no— because a lot of times I do hear, um, people say, well, I don't have enough traffic. There is no problem with traffic. Like, you can pay any platform and get as much traffic as you want to, as many eyeballs. But then the goal is to convert them into reaching out to you and becoming leads and then eventually clients.

So yeah, there's always traffic. Like you're saying, you can pay for traffic, but the conversion is what's, uh, what's important.

Yeah, so it's really, yeah, it's really the offer that you'll have for them. So make sure that it speaks, yeah, uh, You use their language. And when I say use their language, put yourself in their shoes and think of what they would want to see when they see an ad from you.

I love it, man. I love that.

Cool.

Well, I appreciate you being on here, Alex. And, you know, we're going to meet again. You know, we'll probably hang out in Canada one day. You know, you never know, brother. I appreciate you coming on here. We'll talk to you later.

Thanks for having me.

Hey everybody, what's up?

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