Dave Robison
By Dave Robison
About 10 years ago when I started advertising online, I knew I only had a few years before the rest of the world caught up. When I first broke out my SEO and PPC campaign, I was paying $1,000 a month. It gave me heartburn at the time, but my business grew and flourished.
That first month I was dumbfounded how I turned $1,000 advertising into $20,000 in commissions. Sure enough, other agents started to do the same thing. My costs started to grow as it got more competitive. Back in January 2008, that cost grew to $20,000 in one month. Ouch. I hadn’t done anything different 7 years ago from that month, I had just let my campaign stay the same. I realized times change and you have to change as well, or one morning you will wake up saying “ouch” like I did that month.
The new secret to advertising is three-fold and its extremely cost effective!
1. Have a Facebook business page. You can’t just have a personal one. Use a personal one and a business page. There is a difference.
2. Focus on getting likes. Don’t pay for likes. Attract people to ‘LIKE’ your page. This is how you grow your sphere. You can see how I did this at www.facebook.com/utahdavehomes You must have a welcome page that brands you and invites people to ‘LIKE’ it. I went to www.builderonlinesolutions.com and for as low as a $199 promotion you can get your page branded for you.
3. Facebook advertising. Get your client’s friends to know about you and be in contact with you without asking your friend to introduce you. You can set parameters such as age and location of which of your clients friends can see your advertisement to your Facebook business page. My SOI grows daily because my client’s friends see it.
The bottom line is this: You can spend thousands of dollars a month with SEO or PPC advertising to people you don’t know; OR you can spend a couple hundred bucks advertising to your friend’s friends. They are more likely to like your page because their friends did it. This is power. I’m not seeing anyone doing it in my area. It is just like it was when I was doing SEO 10 years ago. It’s prime time to grow a business with low cost. Won’t be this way forever.
Dave Robison, known as “Utah Dave,” is a broker of Robison & Company Real Estate.