Nothing ever seems to work for me...

Hi everyone,

I'm turning to you all for help. I know this is my first post but I've spent a lot of time on here reading and absorbing.

I consider myself to have a great understanding of digital marketing. I've spent a lot of time learning and reading...following various names in the industry and taking everything into account. I also like to think that I keep up to date with the latest trends in digital marketing too.

That being said, I just don't understand what I'm doing wrong. Nothing I try seems to work...at all.

My business helps people that need to sell property quickly. Where it differs to all the other "quick sale" companies is that rather than just blindly give clients a hugely discounted offer, I take the time to discuss their situation with them and use what I know about property to come up with a personalised, ethical solution to their problem. People often don't realise the number of options available to them.

Paid search is too expensive for me at the moment. The CPC is ridiculously competitive and high so I'm focusing on Facebook ads.

I think part of my problem lies in the targeting. It's tricky to target people that need/want to sell their home, let alone people that want to do it quickly. Not only that, you have to catch them at just the right time.

There's also no real demographic. It could be anybody that owns a property. It could be somebody who has just inherited an empty house with a mortgage that needs to sell it quickly because it's costing them money...or it could be somebody with financial difficulties - whether low income or even high income, but for whatever reason their cashflow has been poor recently. There are so many reasons - I've been playing around with trying to pick a few and targeting the "reason"...rather than a "persona". I.e. divorcees or people with financial difficulties.

I've literally had zero success. I spend hundreds on ads and not even one lead. They were all to cold traffic simply trying to get people to get in touch for a chat about their options. I tested all kinds of variations and played around with the targeting. I had great landing pages and I was getting clicks but nobody was getting in touch. I couldn't get it. I thought if it was a band landing page or ad then the response rate would be low...not zero.

I decided to change my attack and learned about the power of Facebook Messenger and chat bots. I immediately thought this is potentially a good solution because it starts the conversation straight away.

I thought I could go broader with my targeting to anyone who wants to sell (rather than people's reasons for selling) then use the bot to qualify the relevant people who want to move fast. I'm currently just targeting "homeowners" etc. in my area. There is a "likely to move" option on Facebook but there's just no volume in it. I can't see how I can get narrower than just "homeowners" and "mortgaged" etc.

I set up a bit of software on my website which allows instant online property valuations. I thought this would make a great lead magnet. I made a cool video and set up a chat bot which directed people there when they commented "valuation" on my video. Was running the ad for a little while and not one person commented!

It's hard to describe how frustrating it is when absolutely nobody responds to your adverts. Not ONE person. It's beginning to get exasperating.

I'm starting to get a little lost with where to take this. I need to get some leads coming in as my pot of cash is dwindling massively.

I don't know if my targeting is just crap or whether there's something more afoot.

I've been thinking about the 'awareness, evaluation, conversion' process and how I'm not really following that. Perhaps I'm being too direct. This is my current thought process.

I've realised offering the valuation and talking with the chatbot/opening the conversation comes somewhere between evaluation and conversion.

I've come to the conclusion that I may be best off coming up with some 'awareness' content of some kind that is relevant and provides value to potential users then using a pixel and retargeting to nurture with the next steps.

However, I'm strugging to think of the best way to approach this. I can't think of anything that is going to be particularly shareable or especially desirable. I did create a "how to sell your house in 10 days" guide which nobody requested on the ads either.

I'm a bit of a loss and completely open to ideas on how to tackle this.

If anyone is kind enough to give this a bit of thought I would hugely appreciate any input.