Imagine getting invited to a real estate open house in an area you’re thinking about moving to. Sure, you like the neighborhood…but life has been really busy. You’re burned out from work, the kids need attention & you really need a night off.

Given this situation, the last thing you want to do is stand around in someone’s kitchen eating cheese & crackers & awkwardly tour the house with a group of complete strangers.

And besides…maybe now isn’t the right time to move after all.

Now imagine you get the same invitation…except this time, it’s not to an open house.

It’s to a VIP party.

Same type of event. Different atmosphere. Different wording. Different message.

Which event would you be more inclined to attend?

That was precisely how marketer Dan Henry approached the challenge of bringing more potential buyers to a real estate open house.

Where did the change in language come from? How did the agency end up getting so many attendees?

It wasn’t just in the wording change. It was in the Customer Value Journey, which began with dynamic Facebook ads for real estate.

How The Customer Value Journey Works For Real Estate

The obvious core offer for real estate agents is for clients to purchase or list their home. However, as with any other business, going straight for the core offer out of the gate isn’t an effective tactic for getting people to buy.

It’s the equivalent of going up to someone you just met & asking them to marry you, & we all know how well that one turns out.

The goal of the Customer Value Journey is to create superfans of your business by simply following the natural course of human relationships with a series of micro commitments that develop your business’s authority & trustworthiness.

Specifically, before you advertise your core offer, you need to entice customers to make a smaller, lower stakes purchase, which the Customer Value Journey formula calls a Tripwire offer.

A tripwire is a low-dollar offer that exists purely to turn leads into customers. The key is to offer something that is super affordable, but not “cheap.” It has to present real value for someone’s money, or in the case of real estate, someone’s time.

For real estate agents, the open house is the tripwire offer, which will cost an attendee a few hours to take you up on.

Time is a valuable commodity—in fact, most people would say that they would have a harder time parting with time than money. So it’s even more important than you deliver value in return.

No matter what your tripwire offer is, it marks a crucial stage in the Value Journey. Having spent either time or money on your offer, customers get real value from what you have to offer & experience the benefits of doing business with you.

It’s one small step toward not just investing in your core offer, but becoming a repeat buyer & total evangelist for your brand.

Creating Open House Excitement

To transform his real estate client’s open house tripwire offer from a bland gathering with cheese & crackers into something completely rad, Henry drew on his previous experience as a nightclub promoter.

The agency’s target market was millennials looking for housing in the downtown area, so Henry created a VIP event at one of the condos, complete with drinks, hors d’oeuvres & a nightclub atmosphere with lights & music.

To up the stakes, he advertised the events as having limited attendance, invoking the tactics of exclusivity & scarcity.

He used an in-person version of what we call the Velvet Rope Funnel—where prospects opt in online to receive exclusive offers & discounts.

Using Dynamic Facebook Ads For Real Estate

To attract potential “party guests,” Henry ran 2 ads to 2 targeted audiences. The first was millennials who were currently renting properties in the area; the second was professionals who lived near the properties for sale.

The first ad included language that spoke to the pain point of wasting money on rent, while the second talked about the benefits of the properties themselves.

Both ads pointed to the same lead magnet—a free brochure containing the floor plans for the properties & an invite for the VIP Party.

Clicking the call to action button on the ad took leads to a landing page to claim their ticket, which continued the appeal to scarcity by including a countdown clock showing the time left to sign up.

All landing pages for lead magnets should take the new leads to a Thank You page telling them the next steps. But rather than telling them to watch their email for their tickets, Henry tried something a bit different.

He jumped straight to the Advocate stage of the Value Journey by including a link on the thank you page to the Facebook post about the VIP Party so they could share it & invite friends.

As a result, the new leads were now helping the business generate even more prospects.

All told, Henry spent $441 on ads, which led to $900,000 in condo sales. Cold prospects saw the ad on Facebook, signed up to be VIP Party guests & through the excitement they experienced at the event, eventually purchased homes.

Learning From The Strategy

Henry’s strategy with dynamic Facebook ads for real estate & the event that followed demonstrates how critical the Customer Value Journey is to an offer’s success.

Note that the ads were delivered to 2 separated audiences—younger people who were renting & professionals who were more established. The younger viewers may not have even been considering the idea of moving, until the ad led them to the conclusion that they should investigate buying a home.

The Customer Value Journey begins by creating awareness—not just of the business, but the customer’s awareness that they actually need what is being offered.

Defining your ideal customer through a customer persona is vital to creating dynamic ads that clearly communicate a need to viewers.

The other thing that makes this real estate strategy so successful is that Henry was not afraid to redefine his offer. The small change of the name of the event, from an open house to a VIP Party, made it perfectly appeal to the target audience, making them more likely to come learn more about the properties.

So, we recommend thinking about 3 things as you start crafting your own Value Journey:

1. Who is your ideal customer? What are their needs, pain points, personal values & goals, & how can your marketing speak to those elements of their lives?

2. What tripwire offer can you use to get customers to commit a small amount of time or money to your brand?

3. How can you tailor your tripwire offer to fit the language & lifestyle of your customers?

Those questions might help…but if you’re still not sure about what the Customer Value Journey is or what it can do for your business, we get it.

That’s why we created the Customer Adventure Score.

This quick assessment will let you take a look at your business & learn what stages of the Customer Value Journey you’ve already got in place & which are still under construction.

Then, we’ll give you access to some exclusive resources to help you improve your score & create a better customer experience.

Click here to learn your Customer Adventure Score!