The platform still provides mortgage professionals unprecedented access to potential clients
With over a billion daily active users, Facebook is still the big daddy of social media channels. It has been a godsend for mortgage professionals looking to promote themselves to potential customers in a direct and cost-effective way.
But after living in a Facebook world for the past 16 years, it can be tempting for users to think the platform’s unprecedented reach will be enough to ensure a successful social media campaign. According to Aditya Kathotia of Nico Digital, that’s not the case.
“I don't think the average person has a comprehensive understanding of the kind of effort that goes into a successful social media marketing campaign,” he says. “It's virtually impossible to quantify the amount of strategy, effort, and thought that a good Facebook marketing campaign requires. All I will say is, it’s not as easy as it seems.”
As Kathotia explains, one of the reasons why Facebook is the platform of choice for many advertisers is because of its myriad customization options. But to make use of them, a mortgage officer needs to get acquainted with the Facebook Business Manager Dashboard.
“The easier option, of course, is to click on the 'Boost' button below every post and advertise from there,” he says. “The problem is that the whole range of customization options are not available on the "Boost" window. It's great if the objective is to increase your viewership. But if you want to secure leads, hyper-target your audience, and make the most of your budget, Facebook Business Manager is the place to advertise from. That is where the true success lies.”
Once mortgage pro’s have an understanding of Facebook Business Manager, Kathotia says there are several strategies they can use to get the most out of advertising on the platform.
1. Keep your target audience in mind
Staying focused on a target audience helps avoid spending on ineffective ads, ensuring a more satisfying ROI.
“Dedicate sufficient time, resources, and energy to defining your customer base and creating buyer personas for ad targeting,” Kathotia says. “But don’t be too picky with persona targeting as overdoing it will impede your visibility.”
2. Establish user-friendly tactics
“You should create ads specially-designed for the leads already in your possession. This personalized approach enhances engagement and generates more profit,” says Kathotia, adding that Facebook’s Custom Audiences feature targets existing leads that a user may have already collected.
He encourages self-marketers to share user-generated content instead of constantly creating their own, which saves time and promotes customer loyalty by making these users feel a sense of inclusion. “This will also engage customers with your brand and familiarize them with what you are all about,” he says.
3. Analyze content with Facebook Page Insights
Effective Facebook marketing requires good content. But it’s hard to know what is quality and what isn’t if mortgage professionals aren’t tracking how their content is faring amongst users.
Facebook Page Insights is an internal analytics tool that tracks a page’s performance in a fashion similar to how education assessments work for students. It provides a detailed report of a brand’s reach by assessing the total number of views or likes on its posts and page. “It also helps to record and measure customers’ engagement with your page and posts,” Kathotia says.
4. Use Facebook Messenger to deliver content
People spend a large amount of time using Facebook’s messaging app. Kathotia says anyone marketing themselves on the platform should be using Facebook Messenger, too, either by implementing chatbots or as a way of delivering personalized content like reminders or updates. Messenger is a unique one-to-one method of targeting an audience and generating leads.
“People are more likely to engage with content sent through Messenger than through emails,” he says.
5. Host Facebook Contests
Facebook contests are one of the easiest and simplest ways of engaging with an audience. Participants often become marketers of an LO’s brand by asking their friends and family members to take part in the fun.
Kathotia explains that running a Facebook contest can be as simple as asking a trivia question or posting pictures and challenging customers to come up with the best caption. Facebook-averse or overloaded mortgage proffessionals can also use third-party apps to conduct more interesting contests.
Say what you want about Facebook and the company’s business practices, there is no denying its effectiveness as a marketing platform. But optimizing its use takes work. The originators who put that work in will be the ones achieving the best results.
