Decrease Cost Per Lead with Facebook Click-to-Message Ads (w/ Bryce Liggins & Houwzer)
This tech-enabled real estate brokerage dramatically refocused their acquisition strategy around Facebook's "Click to Message" Ads in the face of shifting market forces to unlock new levels of growth.
This is Product-Channel Fit, a newsletter that dives into how D2C startups discover and scale new acquisition channels that work uniquely for their brand.
If you’re getting this email, it’s because you’ve subscribed to the previous iteration of this newsletter called “Scale Economies”. Long form essays turned out to be too difficult to maintain on top of work when my first kid was born, so this newsletter is a move toward case studies of fast growth companies from the inside rather than the outside.
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Bryce Liggins is a full-stack marketing leader with a decade of experience growing companies from both the agency and brand sides.
He’s currently the VP of Marketing at Houwzer, a next-generation real estate brokerage disrupting the industry with a full-service experience that saves clients thousands.
The Growth Challenge 🗺️
Bryce was facing a skyrocketing cost per lead and deteriorating attribution situation caused by iOS 14.5.
To make matters worse, the pandemic created an extreme sellers market in the real estate space. This limited the appeal of Houwzer’s “save money selling your home” value proposition, as sky high prices made home sellers less concerned with saving money when their home sold.
In order to find a product-channel fit in this new environment, Houwzer’s marketing team needed to shift their product prioritization and channel approach.
The Experiment 🔀
Leverage Facebook’s “Click to Message” Lead Ads by offering a personalized service rather than an automated experience.
They knew they needed to shift away from home sellers toward home buyers. They believed we could deliver a stronger value proposition based on the current market.
They also wanted to stay within the Facebook ecosystem rather than driving traffic off-platform. They expected Facebook to improve their attribution situation in the near future.
As such, ads promised to deliver listings that align with a prospective buyer's search criteria, “sometimes faster than Zillow.”
The Results 🏆
Facing these headwinds, Bryce and his team figured out a way to achieve a 97% decrease in cost per lead, with profitable pull-through to MQL.
The first sign of possible fit was a drop in CPM of 35%, which was very quickly followed by promising CPL ($35 CPL, a 97% decrease).
After a week, they started to see MQLs at a profitable rate, something they hadn’t seen from Facebook attribution in months.
How They Scaled 📈
The test initial launched with manual fulfillment – a person was managing the lead requests
Leads quickly overwhelmed the manual processes, so they began automating with Zapier and real estate MLS tools.
They increased budgets, expanded to all markets, and continued to iterate on creative, further driving down costs.
Growth Takeaways 🎁
Stay in Touch With Changing Customer Needs. In Houwzer’s case, market conditions had shifted so drastically that it fundamentally changed the struggle that their customer base was facing. Having a pulse on their customers pointed them toward where to pivot next.
Swim With the Tide of the Platform. At the time they started using Facebook’s “Click to Message” campaign type, Facebook was prioritizing it – reps were encouraging adoption, and the price points were more favorable than other campaign types. Houwzer identified how to win with a tactic that the platform also happened to be prioritizing, making it a win-win.