Learn The Secrets Of Using Real Estate Facebook Ads!
Today, we’re talking about Real Estate Facebook ads Campaigns. Let’s get into it.
Advertising for real estate agents and companies can be challenging.
That’s because you’re selling a high-ticket item, and it’s not like someone can just shop online after clicking your link.
The process of buying a home looks different from the process of buying a necklace or booking a vacation. Makes sense, right?
If yes, then why are you trying the same strategies that you’re seeing other businesses use?
In this post, we’re talking directly to real estate agents and companies, but the strategies we will talk about can also apply to a lot of service businesses.
Facebook Ads For Real Estate: Targeting That Works Well
Before we get into the specifics of what you need to do before you run ads, to make sure you’re optimizing your time, efforts, and budget…
…let’s look at the well-performing Real estate Facebook Ads types for real estate agents.
You are by no means relegated to the examples we use here. You can make any ad type work for you with proper planning and strategy.
But, we’ve found these to be good starting points, and it’s important to keep these in mind while running your first campaign.
a. Retargeting
- What are they?
These are ads that are shown to people who have already engaged with your business or page in some way.
- Why do they work?
When it comes to Facebook ads for real estate, this type of ad works because these people have already shown interest in what you offer. They are a “warm” audience, so they are more likely to make a move.
- Who should you target?
That depends on the data you have.
Have lots of page follows? Target them first.
Have thousands of views on your latest video? Target that.
Have a lot of website traffic? Target that!
Essentially, target who you can and build your reach.
- What content could you share?
Remember that you’re retargeting a warm audience, so you want to share content that makes sense to them.
Where are they in their buying/selling process, and what would be most helpful or important for them to hear right now?
- Promote new listings (share with someone you know who’s looking)
- Encourage referrals
- Introduce previous buyers to the concept of investment properties
- Talk about a first-time-buyer loan program update
Pro Tip: You’ll want to create lookalike audiences for all of your retargeting audiences.
b. Location Targeting
- What are they?
These Facebook ads for real estate are kept to a specific geographic radius.
You can target folks who live there, folks who have traveled there, and folks who recently were there.
Each of these may be useful depending on the audience you’re targeting.
- Why do they work?
These work well because you’re not spending money showing houses to someone who lives in a different state and has no intention of moving.
Location targeting works best for location-based businesses like real estate.
Who should you target?
As I mentioned, you’ll target folks depending on what you know about your audience.
If most of your prospective buyers right now are looking to scale up and move out of a “starter” house into a bigger, nicer house…
…maybe you target folks in the suburbs and show them the new house on the hill.
What content could you share?
- New house listings
- Open House details
- Free resources/webinars you’re hosting or giving away to contacts
- Market updates
- Posts encouraging homeowners to at least SEE what their home is worth.
The sky is the limit. Get creative.
Let’s move on to preparing for and setting up your campaigns.
And make sure to stick around until the end, because we’ve brainstormed a bunch of ideas for ad campaigns that you can run.
Before You Run Ads
You’ll want to do some legwork before you actually run those ads.
You can stumble into a successful campaign, but if you don’t do some work upfront…
…it will be much more difficult and you’ll be unlikely to replicate the results.
We compiled this list using advice from other account managers here at LYFE who have spent time managing real estate marketing efforts.
So, while this list isn’t exhaustive, it’s filled with strategies we’ve found most helpful in real-world situations (some lessons were learned the hard way).
As with any digital marketing strategy or advice, it may or may not work for you. You’ll need to continue monitoring and adjusting your efforts.
You’ll want to focus on a few areas before your team starts designing ads:
- Who are you advertising to?
- Where are they on their customer journey?
- How will you measure performance? Success? Failure?
- Where will you draw inspiration from?
1. Establish Your Audience
Before you can start running Facebook ads for real estate, you’ll want to have a really clear idea of who you’re targeting.
There’s nothing that will waste your advertising budget faster than having no idea who you’re going for.
You could have the best, most clever ad campaign with the prettiest graphics and video…
…and get exactly zero clients, if you have no idea who you’re making content for.
Depending on how much experience you have, you probably tend to help a similar set of buyers and sellers.
Maybe you mainly handle commercial real estate, or you’ve noticed most of your clients are first-time buyers, or are buying their first investment property.
Look for any patterns in your existing clients and see if there’s a niche you can wiggle into.
That doesn’t mean you should stop marketing to folks outside of this audience.
But it does mean you should focus most of your efforts on honing that audience.
Part of this audience honing is understanding why they’re contacting you, as well as what their needs are (beyond “I need to buy a house” or “I need to sell a house”).
Grab a piece of paper or open a new document on your computer and answer these questions:
- Are there any patterns or trends in the type of people I work with?
- Am I specialized in any type of real estate or loans?
- What areas am I licensed in?
2. Understand the Audience’s Place on the Customer Journey
If you don’t know where your customer is (what’s driving their decisions), how will you know how to market to them? Simply put, you won’t.
You need to understand whether your audience is sellers, buyers, other agents, or someone else entirely.
Then you need to figure out where they’re at, what led them to you, and what they want and need.
Easy right? I’m kidding.
It’s a lot, but it’s possible. You do it all the time.
Think of all the questions clients have asked you and some of the reasons they’re selling.
Each client will have a different path and be on a different spot on that path, but there are general similarities that you can use to guide you.
For example, a seller, typically, doesn’t wake up one day and just lists their house for sale.
They have some reasons for wanting to do this: relocating for a job, moving closer to family, going to the city or leaving the city, etc.
Maybe this is their first time selling, or maybe they’ve done this 12 different times.
Maybe they’re taking advantage of a hot market and will be looking to stay in the area.
Let’s say your buyer is someone who just sold their first home and is relocating for a new job.
They’re also thinking about starting a family, so they are looking for some extra space.
How would you help them? And what questions would they have?
This would be different from how you’d help an investor buying their fifth rental property, for example.
This is a great way to mine for content.
If there are loans available to second-time home buyers who are planning to have a family, that’s good information to share with potential buyers.
But this shouldn’t be the only advice you share, since you have a bunch of other customers with a different set of questions and needs. Does that make sense?
Let’s revisit that paper or document you used a couple of minutes ago. Answer these questions:
- Are there stories you hear from prospective clients often?
- Are there trends in the client’s reason for buying or selling?
- Are there any patterns in client needs?
- What process of buying/selling do your clients ask the most questions about?
3. Set Key Performance Indicators
It’s not a good idea to set up Real Estate Facebook Ads without knowing how you’ll track performance.
Leads and clicks won’t be enough information on their own, because you need to know how many actual clients you’re getting from your paid advertising.
How will you know when your ads are working? When you’re getting 100 referrals a month? When you’re getting 3 new clients a month?
Are you happy with anything as long as your ad spend is under $600 a month?
If you’re working with an in-house team, or a White Label Company like Us, you’ll want to hear what they recommend as far as ad health indicators.
They’ll have a good idea of what to expect for your budget and can easily identify when ads start to decline…
…so you don’t waste a bunch of money on an ad that stopped working.
You can adjust these KPI’s as you go (and you should), so don’t freak out if things aren’t going the way you thought they would.
Manage your expectations from the beginning and know that you’ll need to make improvements and changes as you go.
Let’s get back to that document and answer a few more questions:
- How much can you afford to spend on ads every month?
- How much are you willing to pay per lead?
- How many leads do you want per month?
- What other actions are valuable to you? (page likes, comments, messages, etc.)
- Do you keep track of how clients find you? (If not, you need to start now.)
Hint: Use Hubspot’s Advertising ROI Calculator for help figuring out the budget it will require to reach your goals.
Visit www.hubspot.com/ads-calculator and adjust each slider section to your desired (or actual) results.
The right side of the screen will display results, expected clicks, leads, revenue, and profit, and it displays your ROI at the bottom.
4. Segmenting your marketing efforts
In order to run truly effective Real Estate Facebook Ads…
you need to segment your audience and speak directly to their unique situation and needs as often as possible.
To do that, you need to look back to your customer journey exercises and see why folks are contacting you.
From there, you should see some patterns for types of people you work with. There are probably a couple of different groups. Here’s an example:
- Folks who own a home, haven’t decided to list it yet, but want to know what it’s worth.
- Folks who own a home and have decided to list it for sale and want help.
- Folks who are looking to buy a home and are new to the area. Or, they already live here.
Whatever your different audience groups and journeys are, you’ll split your ad and content creation so that you’re hitting each group on a rotating basis.
When choosing ad targeting, you’ll target folks who fit into your groups, and you’ll specifically create your ads to speak directly to that unique journey.
You may think an ad that touches on all the things you can do is a good idea. It says you can do a LOT.
And it will appeal to someone, right? Um… Maybe.
Or, you’ll look so generalized and so all-over-the-place that clients don’t think you can handle their unique situation.
I created two examples for you to illustrate the difference between trying to speak to everyone, and speaking directly to your audience.
- You’re speaking to every possible client:
“I can help you buy or sell a home or commercial property for yourself or as an investment.
Locals and those new to the area, with no budget or big budget, give me a call.”
- You’re speaking to one of your client groups (parents who are relocating from out of state):
“New to the area? I can help you find the best houses in great neighborhoods that are close to the best schools.
I was voted Best Agent for New Residents in 2020 and I know all the coolest parks for the little ones.
Let’s discover some fun parks and tour a couple of houses together (kids are welcome!). Schedule a consultation on my website now (it only takes 2 minutes)!”
I know hypotheticals can be tough to handle, so let’s look at some real examples.
5. Look at Real Examples
It’s always a good idea to see what other companies are doing. For starters, it helps you get a clear idea of what you like and what you don’t like.
It also helps you to identify ways your ads could stand out from the crowd.
Maybe most examples you see use one or two sentences, but you think longer descriptions would generate more interest… Give it a try!
The one or two sentences may be the way to go (which is why you saw people doing it) but maybe your two paragraphs perform really well.
If they don’t, you know to stick with fewer words.
One of our favorite tools for seeing Real Estate Facebook Ads that companies are running is the Facebook Ad Library. We’ll give you a tour of the ad library really quickly.
Facebook Ad Library
The Facebook Ad Library was created to help establish transparency across the platform, specifically for political and social issue ads.
For general ads, you can search the Ad Library by advertiser or keyword and browse ads that are active on Facebook.
Take your time to familiarize yourself with the platform.
Play around with all of the search and filtering options and test out different terms and company names when you search.
You can see details for ads that are running, including when they started and other creative associated with the ad.
If your ad is in politics or government, you can see more information and review past ads.
6. Follow Up via Multiple Touchpoints
If you’re running a lead generation marketing campaign, you want to make sure you’re following up with all leads within the first 24-hours.
You’ll want to do this in multiple ways. For real estate, most of our clients have found success following up via phone call and email.
What you don’t want is someone contacting you and never hearing back from you, or hearing back from you weeks later.
Chances are they’ll have found someone else to work with in that timeframe, or will be annoyed and less likely to become a client.
When you’re posting ads on Facebook, you’ll have folks reach out to you in a few ways;
- by comment,
- via message,
- by filling out a lead generation form, or
- an off-Facebook method like calling or emailing.
You’ll want to be actively monitoring those first-contact points and following up within 24-hours.
Follow up in multiple ways too. Of course, respond to them in their original contact (if they left a comment, respond via comment), but don’t stop there.
Send them a private message if they left a comment. Or send them an email if they filled out a lead generation form and follow up with a phone call.
Keep in mind your…
- capacity,
- any internal resources you have (like an assistant),
- number of contacts you expect, and
- your audience
…when choosing placements and methods of contact.
Here are a few ways you can reach out to potential clients (and existing clients):
- Use automated emails (frequently called drip campaigns).
- Use a texting service (most of us would prefer to text). You could use automated responses or respond live.
- Personally respond to calls (or hire someone to help).
- Keep up with comments and messages on your social channels.
On your paper (or in your document), write your plan for reaching out to leads, and at least one other touchpoint.
7. Summing Up Pro Tips from Account Managers
That was a lot, so let’s sum up our tips on running effective Facebook ads for real estate before we move on:
- Know who you’re advertising to
- Know where your audience is in their customer journey
- Segment your marketing efforts
- Establish KPI’s early on (and understand how to improve these)
- Draw inspiration from real examples using the FB Ad Library
- Have multiple follow-ups in place for any leads collected
6 Ad Ideas for Your Real Estate Facebook Ads Campaigns
Sometimes the hardest part is brainstorming an idea that makes sense.
Luckily, we’ve done some of the heavy lifting for you.
We used the Facebook Ads Library and the experience running campaigns to compile a list of ideas.
Now, these aren’t guaranteed to work – because no ads are guaranteed to work – but they’re a great starting point.
Hopefully they spark an idea or work well enough that you can run with them until you analyze their performance and make your own adjustments.
1. Ask for referrals
Use a lead generation form and ask for referrals. Offer a gift certificate or nice gift to anyone who refers someone who then becomes a client.
2. Advertise listed houses
Show all the glamour shots of new houses on the market. Your targeting should be local and you can show it to folks in the area.
3. Advertise your open house
- Play a game.
(i.e. open house bingo). Folks print or digitally keep track of their bingo cards and attend open houses over a weekend.
They need to go to your open house and turn in their bingo card in person to get the gift card.
- Do a live stream tour
Use this opportunity to answer questions and show the house to anyone who joins online. Advertise this in advance.
Highlight a cool or unique feature of the property as a teaser, and share all the details for date and time.
Encourage viewership by doing a giveaway live (a simple Starbucks gift card would work well). Choose from the live attendees.
4. Advertise a free webinar
- If this is for buyers: Top 10 Staging Tips To Sell Your Home Faster
- If this is for sellers: 3 First Time Home Buyer Loans No One Has Told You About
- If this is for prospective agents: How I Finally Reached My Goal Of $1 Million In Sales
5. Find prospective sellers with freebies (free home appraisal, free staging guide, etc.)
- Run a lead generation campaign for homeowners who would like to see how much their home is worth.
- Offer a free workbook or downloadable guide in exchange for their email address
6. Find prospective buyers with freebies
- Create a video with 15 questions you should ask the listing agent, or 10 things buyers don’t know about putting in an offer.
You can send this to them for free after they fill out your lead generation form or share their contact info on your website.
Now that you’ve got some ad ideas, let’s look at how you’ll set up your new campaign.
Conclusion
I know it can be challenging to market a service business, and real estate can feel extra difficult.
But with a little bit of planning and the right strategy, you can see success with Facebook ads for real estate.
We hope this helped you get a better idea of how to use Real Estate Facebook ads to promote your real estate business. We hope it sparked some good ideas as well.
And if you’re interested in hiring a professional Facebook advertising agency to help you out with this, be sure to contact us today!
