Facebook Ads for Real Estate 2020

Marketing is essential for any business, especially real estate, as every broker and realtor should have a digital marketing plan. The secret sauce to marketing in the real estate industry is to stay at the forefront of consumer’s minds. As a realtor, you’ve probably asked yourself, “how do I stay in the mind of the consumer and how do I market myself?” You’ve probably sent direct mail with promotional flyers to residents in your local area, plastered billboards along the highway, or have even gone as far as advertising on television. With 2.23 billion monthly active users on Facebook and the average person spending 35 minutes per day on the site, Facebook ads for real estate can be highly effective, and this guide will make it less daunting to implement them. 

Why Real Estate Agents Need Facebook Ads

Not only is Facebook the largest social platform, it’s where consumers spend the majority of their time online. Many are accessing the site multiple times a day, as 95% of Facebook users visit the site through their mobile device.

Real estate is inherently visual, and people become enamored with the idea of purchasing a home when they see beautiful properties, happy families, pets running around a big yard, etc. Facebook and Instagram are the perfect places to display compelling visuals. 

Purchasing a home is an incredibly personal decision, and people want to work with a realtor they can trust. What better place to demonstrate why someone should work for you than Facebook?

Plus, you have the ability to target specific local areas, such as neighborhoods with rising property values that give people an incentive to sell. 

Say Goodbye to Organic Reach on Facebook

With several newsfeed updates in the past few years, organic reach is rendered obsolete, and Facebook has shifted to place emphasis on interactions they find more meaningful, such as connecting with friends and family, as opposed to business page updates

Following the updates, organic reach has been as low as 2%. This is why you may have 2,000 likes and followers on your real estate business page on facebook, but only getting 20 likes on your posts.

Facebook is now making business “pay to play,” encouraging you to invest in Facebook (and Instagram) marketing by either “boosting” posts or using the Ads Manager. With Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram, you can also place ads on both social media platforms from one convenient place, the Ads Manager.

Boosted Posts vs. Facebook Ads 

With both Facebook Ads and Boosted Posts having the same objective, reach a previously unreachable audience, many realtors make the mistake of just boosting their posts. If you’re not a marketer, Facebook’s abundance of options and information can be overwhelming and can sometimes lead to this error. Facebook also “conveniently” placed the boost button so that it’s easier for the general public to spend their advertising budget with just a few clicks

3 reasons not to boost posts:

1. You don’t get to use the powerful and much more effective objectives and targeting available in Ads Manager
2. You are restricted to only testing the creative to determine what is and is not working
3. Boosted posts only reach the individuals that are the most engaged with your business already. Due to the algorithm, they may not see your post organically thus boosting it will only put it in front of your most engaged followers 

Increased engagement without an objective will not lead to more sales and conversions, so you should always choose Facebook Ads vs Boosted Posts. 

Set Up Facebook Business Manager & Ads Manager

In order to utilize the Ads Manager and run Facebook Ads for your real estate company, you will need to set up your Business Manager. If you don’t already have a Facebook page for your real estate company, you will need to create one.

To get started setting up your Business Manager, visit https://business.facebook.com/. You can also visit this site for a complete guide on how to set up your Business Manager and ad account.

1) Once you’ve finished setting up your Business Manager, you will need to set up your ad account. The screen below will prompt you to add your page if you haven’t already done so, create an ad account, and add anybody else who you would like to have access to your Business Manager.

2) You have the option of adding real estate page(s) to your Business Manager, whether they are your own, someone else’s, or a brand new Facebook business page. 

3) You also have to option to add an existing ad account, add someone else’s ad account, or create a new ad account altogether, which is the likely option if you’ve never advertised on Facebook before. 

4) To add people that you’d like to have access to your Business Manager, enter their email (preferably the one attached to their Facebook account) to send an invitation, assign a role, and grant them permissions. 

To access your ads manager, click on Business Manager at the top left corner and click Ads Manager under the “Create and Manage” section in the menu. 

The Types of Facebook Ad Objectives & How to Utilize Them for Real Estate

The first thing when starting a Facebook Ad Campaign is to select your objective. Facebook Ads are broken into 3 categories, Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion.

Awareness: Objectives that generate interest in your product or service.
– Brand Awareness
– Reach

Consideration: Objectives that get people to start thinking about your business and look for more information about it.
– Traffic
– Engagement
– App Installs
– Video Views
– Lead Generation
– Messages

Conversion: Objectives that encourage people interested in your business to purchase or use your product or service.
– Conversion
– Catalog Sales
– Store Visits

Awareness Objective Category

The “top” of your marketing funnel and used to generate initial audience interest in what your real estate company has to offer. 

Brand Awareness Objective

To get your ads in front of the people most likely to be interested in your business, use the Brand Awareness objective. As a realtor or real estate company, your branding is key. You want potential clients to not only be able to recognize your brand instantly, but also think of you when they’re getting ready to move, buy a house, or sell their home. As Facebook states, each brand awareness ad will reach an individual in your audience up to 2 times every 5 days by default.

If you have an established brand in your local area or your location(s), this objective is perfect, but if you are a smaller realtor or real estate company, this objective may not be as effective as others that will be discussed shortly. 

Reach Objective

To reach as many people as possible in your target audience, use the Reach objective. This comes in handy when you want to get a message out. An example would be for a grand opening or an open house that you want everyone in your local area to be aware of. 

For real estate, if you are trying to target a small audience and your goal is to reach as many people as possible in that target audience, then this is the objective you would want to choose. Due to the actions that each of the other objectives are optimizing for, your reach may be limited. 

Consideration Objective Category

The “middle” of your marketing funnel and used for audiences that have already displayed some interest in your real estate company and want to engage or learn more about the properties you have available. 

Traffic Objective

Designed to drive individuals off of Facebook to your website or app, this objective allows you to send traffic to a specific destination online. This could be a landing page for prospective home buyers, or a mobile app showcasing your property listings. 

If your real estate website is not getting much traffic or is not conversion-friendly, you should choose this objective to bring as many people as possible to your site. However, if your website is conversion-friendly and already generating steady traffic, there are objectives that we will cover shortly designed to get qualified traffic that’s going to take action, be it a phone call, request for an appointment, or request for more information on a specific property.

Engagement Objective

In order to get more people to see and engage with your Facebook page or post such as like, comment, and share, select the Engagement objective for your ad campaign. The engagement objective lets you create four different types of ads:

• Increase Post Engagement
• Promote Your Page
• Get More People to Claim Your Offers
• Raise the Attendance of Your Event

This objective is incredibly effective as it can generate additional organic reach beyond the audiences that you paid to access.  You can also build your engagement audiences for re-targeting purposes for other campaigns you choose (we will cover this in more detail later). 

Post Engagement Option

The Post Engagement option allows you to boost a post from the back-end. This differs from simply boosting your post as you are creating the post first and then going into ads manager to select the post so that you can take advantage of the targeting and engagement objective of the post. This option will allow Facebook to share your post with as many people as possible who are going to like, share, and comment on your post.

Page Like Option

This option allows you to create an ad where you can not only suggest people to like your page but also, which one of your friends has liked the page as well as seen below.

These types of ads are great for real estate for three reasons: they build social proof, they tend to be the easiest and least expensive to set-up, and they grant your page instant exposure to new fans. 

Event Responses Option

If your real estate company holds events such as open houses, you will want to use event responses. This option allows you to target people who are likely to be interested in your event. One example is if you had an open house where you could target recently married couples and white collar professionals. Once you create your event, just like other options we discussed, you will be selecting from within the ads manager.

App Installs Objective

To drive more people to a destination where they can download your app, use the App Installs objective. Many larger nation-wide brokerages and real estate companies have their own app showcasing their property listings. If you are in a smaller real estate company, you may not have an app of your own to promote, and that’s okay. For most realtors, this objective will not be used very often. 

Video Views Objective

In order to get more views on your video content, such as an aerial drone tour of a property, use the Video Views objective. As a realtor, this is a highly-effective objective as you may want to showcase a fantastic property, a particular neighborhood, or even testimonials from satisfied clients. If you want to raise your brand awareness, video ads are key as they get more engagement on Facebook than static images, and they can be used with other ad objectives as well. 

Shown below, you can build custom audiences from the video views objective and re-target audiences based on how long they viewed your video. We will further discuss retargeting later on.

Lead Generation Objective

To drive more leads such as collecting email addresses of audiences that are interested in your brand and business, use the Lead Generation objective. As a realtor, you may know that having an email list is an asset, as this allows you to continuously connect with potential home buyers, build loyalty, and web traffic with stories, updates, and exclusive offers.

An example of a lead generation form for real estate would be to request a meeting with a realtor to discuss properties available in your market area and price range. 

Lead generation through Facebook is so effective in part because it is responsive and mobile-friendly. Facebook offers customizable forms and CRM integration, plus there’s an additional benefit from Facebook pre-filling contact forms with information users have already provided on their profile. This not only encourages people to fill out lead generation forms, but makes it easier for them to do so. All of these attributes lead to more conversions.

In this image, you can see that Facebook lead generation forms allow for total customization. 

Messages Objective

To create conversations with audiences through Facebook messenger, use the Messages objective. With 1.3 billion people around the world actively using Facebook messenger, the implementation of messenger ads makes it easier than ever before to connect with potential clients. There are three types of messenger ads: messenger ads, click-to messenger ads, and sponsored messages.

Messenger Ads

Messenger Ads appear directly in Facebook messenger. These ads would be perfect for brand awareness or special promotion, such as that for an event, for your real estate company. 

Click-to Messenger Ads

These ads display in the newsfeed where someone can click on the call-to-action button in the ad, and it would direct them to messenger where they could inquire about properties and begin communicating with you or your team.

Click-to Messenger Ads are particularly effective for public events, such as open houses, where potential home buyers can inquire further about a particular property.

Sponsored Messages 

Delivered directly to a person you have had an existing conversation with in messenger, these ads are primarily for retargeting and can be powerful when integrated with a chatbot software such as Manychat.

For example, if you had someone inquire about a particular property, you can show them an ad to one or more similar properties to give them an incentive to reach out further. 

Traffic Objective Category

The “end” of your marketing funnel where you want your warmest leads to be, and where you want people interested in purchasing a property to take actions like redeeming an offer beginning their property search by visiting your office. 

Conversion Objective

The conversion objective encourages people to take valuable actions on your website, app, or in messenger such as making a purchase or redeeming an offer. You can use the Facebook Pixel with the conversion objective to track and measure your conversions. 

As a realtor, you would benefit greatly from using the conversion objective. If you had a page on your site where someone can request a meeting or a property listing, you could install the Facebook Pixel onto those web pages to track the actions users take on those pages such as who viewed the page, who viewed a particular listing or property type, and who requested more information.

Then,you could create a conversion ad on Facebook that drives users to that page so that the Facebook Pixel can collect the data of user’s actions such as who requested more information or who just viewed the page and left. 

After collecting that data with the Facebook Pixel, you can then create another ad specifically targeted at certain users. For example, for the audience that viewed single family homes under $300,000, you could upload that pixel and simply make an ad specifically targeting those users with other homes they may like. 

How to Create a Facebook Pixel

1) Go into your Business Manager menu and select Pixel below Events Manager in the Measure & Report column. 

2) Once you click Pixels, you should come to the screen below if you have not yet created any pixels. You have the option to create up to 10 pixels for your business, so give your pixel a unique name. 

3) The next screen will prompt you to set up your new pixel. If you are not familiar with HTML or don’t have a wordpress site, it is recommended to email instructions to a developer to ensure correct installation on your site. 

4) You also have the option of creating custom conversions with your pixels, such as if someone who began filling out a lead generation form but did not get to the thank you page. This means you can then retarget that person with ads reminding them to finish where they left off.

Create Offer Option

Facebook allows you to create an offer ad that customers can save and redeem. When you are creating an offer ad using engagement as your objective, not only will those offers be shared to people who will engaged the most, but those people will share to their friends creating even more buzz.

What makes creating an offer ad even better is the ability to customize the details, set the duration period for the offer, choose if it can be redeemed in-store, online, or both, and even make promo codes to keep track of how your offer is being redeemed.

Customers can save, like, or comment on your offer when they see it on Facebook. A person who saves your offer will be notified up to 3 times before it expires. If your offer can be redeemed online, Facebook will notify them if they switch devices (phone to tablet) and right before the offer expires. If it can be redeemed in-store, customers can bring their phone in store and also have the option for it to be e-mailed to them so they can print it. If a customer has their location sharing turned on, they’ll get a reminder to use their in-store offer when they’re nearby!

You can make an offer by just going to your business page, make status on your timeline, and select offer from the options below the text box. Once the offer is made, go into ads manager, select the engagement objective, and select your offer from within ads manager.

Catalog Sales Objective

The catalog sales objective shows items from your catalog to a targeted audience. As a real estate agent, there is little benefit to using this objective, and it is more aimed towards ecommerce sites. 

Store Visits Objective

If you have multiple business locations, the store visits objective allows you to create unique ads for those locations. It also allows to target people within a set distance of one or more of your locations with ads designed to either help people get to or get in touch with businesses near them. 

If you have multiple real estate offices, this would allow you to more easily personalize your marketing efforts to each area you serve. With the templates available with the store visits objective, you can implement unique call-to-action buttons such as “Get Directions” or “Call Now” with custom targeting distance around each location. 

Detailed Targeting for Real Estate With Facebook Ads

The detailed targeting options available are one of the primary benefits to using Facebook Ads for real estate. After selecting an objective for your ad campaign, the next step is to complete the details of the audience you would like to reach. 

There are 7 fields for you to complete:

• Audiences
• Locations
• Age
• Gender
• Languages
• Detailed Targeting
• Connections

Audiences

You have three options when starting a Facebook ad campaign: create a new audience, upload a saved audience, and add custom audiences. 

Create a New Audience

If you’ve never ran ads before, then you will be creating a new audience and leave the custom audience field blank. 

Upload a Saved Audience

This is where you would select a target audience you have saved from a previous ad campaign. For example, if you have weekly events or an open house that you just want to target a particular audience, this option is quick and convenient as your targeting information is already completed. 

Add Custom Audiences

The best time to start using custom audiences is once you have ran a few Facebook ads and have built traffic and engagement on your ads and website. This gives you the ability to retarget people who have taken specific valuable actions on your website and posts. 

How to Find and Create Custom Audiences

Click on “Audiences” under the Assets column in the menu. 

Then you will be presented with three options: to create custom audiences, lookalike audiences, or saved audiences. 

When you click on Create a Custom Audience, you will be brought to this screen.

As we touched on before, you can create custom audiences based on the interactions they’ve had with your real estate company. You have the option to use your sources, be it from a website, app activity, a customer list, or offline activity, or you can use Facebook’s sources, which are based on engagement with a particular content piece, such as a video, event, or lead form. 

Website

This creates an audience based off users who took specific actions on your website if it has a Facebook Pixel installed. As we covered in the Conversion objective, by adding the Facebook Pixel to your real estate company’s website, particularly on a lead generation page, you can then create custom audiences based on the actions they took and the parameters you set. 

Go back to the “Conversion Objective” if you want to learn how to install the Facebook Pixel and how it’s used, or click to learn more about the Facebook Pixel.

App Activity

You can create a list of users who launched your app or took a specific action on it. If you had a real estate app with your listings, you can create an ad for people who interacted with it.

Customer List

You can upload a customer list such in the form of a CSV file that Facebook will automatically hash prior to upload. If your real estate company has an email list, you can literally export a CSV file of that email list, upload it here, and make an ad specifically targeted at your email list.

Offline Activity 

This creates a list of people who interacted with your real estate company offline such as by phone or in-person. 

Lookalike Audiences

When you click on Create a Lookalike Audience, you have the ability to find people similar to your existing audiences. This is particularly useful if you are looking to find new clients and have exhausted your current audience with the same marketing.

Lookalike Source

You can select a custom audience you have previously created or followers of your real estate Facebook page. 

Audience Location

Choose the region you would like to reach.

Audience Size

Ranging from one to ten percent, this is based off of the total population of the countries or regions you choose, with 1% being the most targeted and closest to your base audience. 

Saved Audiences

When you click on Create a Saved Audience, you can simply recreate an audience you wish to target and save it to be easily used in your next ad campaign. 

Location

In real estate, location is obviously very important as you want to target individuals living in or seeking to move to your area. With Facebook Ads, you have the ability to get hyper-specific with your location targeting. 

The default option when targeting is the United States, but you have the option to enter exact addresses, such as that of your office or public event, cities, states, and countries. You can also select the size of the radius (from 10-50 miles) you want to cover from that address or city.

You also have the option to target individuals that live in, have recently visited, or are currently traveling in your set location, as well as everyone in your target area. 

Everyone in this location

This will target everyone in your set location. For real estate, you may not always want to target everyone as you primarily want to reach people living in your area.

People who live in this location

This will target individuals living in your set area. 

People recently in this location

This allows you to target individuals who have recently left your location. 

People travelling in this location

Great for businesses in the hospitality, restaurant, and tourism industry, this option allows you to target individuals travelling in your location, however, this is not ideal for real estate ads. 

Age

This allows you to set age ranges for your ads, which is useful when targeting different audiences. A college apartment rental listing would be more aimed at young adults and their parents, while a $500,000 home may be directed towards more established professionals in their 30s and 40s. 

Language

You have the option to target by language, but Facebook recommends leaving this blank in most cases unless the audience you are trying to reach speaks a language that is not common in your targeted area. 

Detail Targeting

Detail targeting allows you to define your audience based on including or excluding factors, such as demographics, interests, or behaviors. This is an incredibly powerful feature of Facebook ads and essential for real estate ads. 

Demographics

You can reach people based on their education, employment, household, and lifestyle details.

Interests

This allows you to reach people based on their interests, activities, pages they have liked, and other closely related topics.

Behaviors

You can target people based on their device usage, purchase behavior, and more. 

I recommend you play around with Facebook’s detail targeting options and implement suggestions as well. 

You also have the ability to exclude audiences based on these same detailed targeting parameters. 

Connections 

This allows you to reach people who have a specific relationship with your page, event, or app and narrows your audience to include or exclude people with that connection. They will still need to meet the other targeting categories you have completed.

Shown below are the different connection type options. 

Complete Budget Control With Facebook Ads for Real Estate

Facebook Ads are so profitable if used properly for real estate in part due to their scalability and budget control capability. Unlike traditional advertising such as direct mail or billboards, you have the ability to scale Facebook ad campaigns before they even start vs. paying up-front without the ability to retract or scale if it is not as profitable as predicted. Furthermore, you have the ability to track the campaign as it progresses and see exactly who you are reaching.

There are two settings to complete, budget and schedule. 

Budget

You have the option to either spend a daily budget or lifetime budget. The daily budget is the average you’ll spend every day, and the lifetime budget is the maximum amount you will spend during the entire duration of your ad campaign.

Schedule

You have the option to run your ad campaign continuously and stopping at any time, or you can set a start and end date. 

Types of Formats for Facebook Ads

Single Image Ads

The most common type of ads on Facebook, these ads feature a single image. For real estate, these ads can be effective, but they limit your creativity and are not as engaging as other formats. 

Video Ads

Video ads can be incredibly effective for real estate, whether it’s an aerial tour of a spectacular property, testimonials from satisfied clients, or a promotional video highlighting your office and team, videos have the ability to captivate people and are more engaging. 

Carousel Ads

Perfect for showcasing multiple images of a property or neighborhood, these ads allow you to highlight up to 10 images or videos within a single ad with a single call to action. 

Canvas Ads

The most engaging and creative ads, these ads are mobile-optimized and allow people to watch engaging video or image content by swiping and tilting to pan. 

Spy on Competitor’s Facebook Ads

As a realtor, it can be exhausting to consistently coming up with fresh marketing ideas for your real estate company. It can be beneficial to see what your top competitors are doing and learn from their mistakes and successes to boost your own marketing efforts. This is precisely why Facebook made it easy to see what kinds of ads your competitors are running. 

The Page Transparency section on the right column will give you more details, such as if a page is running ads, and you can actually visit the Ads Library to see exactly what kinds of ads your competitors are running. 

Once you click See More, you will be prompted with this pop-up.

To see the ads that a particular page is running, visit the Ad Library.

Example of a Recommended Monthly Facebook Ad Budget for Real Estate

Daily Photo/Video Based Ad

Objective: Create consistent engagement and reach

Budget: 1/day $15-20/day (up to $600/mo)

Lead Generation Ad

Objective: Generate leads by getting people to submit their information or take valuable actions on your website

Budget: $100/month ($100/mo)

Like Ads

Objective: Increased brand awareness and more page likes to improve organic reach

Budget: $5/day ($150/mo)

Total Monthly Cost: $950

Best Practices to Get the Most Out of Your Facebook Advertising Efforts

We’ve covered quite a few topics on how to improve your real estate Facebook ads, but here are a few more tips to make sure you get the most out of your Facebook marketing for real estate. 

Target the right audience

You wouldn’t want to turn anyone interested in buying or selling their home, but when creating an ad campaign, it’s essential to target one person at a time in order to better connect with your audience. 

The kind of person you target your ad towards depends on a few things:

• Who you have previously worked well with 
• What type of homes or properties you can sell quickly in which areas
• What types of homes or areas you enjoy while working with individuals buying or selling
• Where your skills and core knowledge are the strongest
• Defining traits or characteristics of these individuals (level of education, interest, any children, etc)
• Do they rent currently and seeking a move? Do they own their home and are seeking to upsize or downsize?
• How are the markets and demographics changing? 

This is a good starting point, but it is important to narrow your target to be as specific as possible. You want your ideal client, or 1,000 of them, to see your ad and engage with it. Think about past clients and what they may have had in common. You can also browse the many targeting options available at your disposal. 

Targeting Suggestions for a Successful Real Estate Ad Campaign:

With Facebook being so popular along with the many targeting options available, customize your location, demographic, interests, and behavioral targeting options to ensure your ads are being shown to the correct audience. 

Target by Zip Code

First, target the location where you want your ads to be shown. Since you do not want to target too small of a radius, it can be beneficial to target zip codes that have moved to your area based on previous selling history. 

Target the Age Ranges Most Likely to Purchase a Home

Next, it may be obvious, but it’s critical to avoid wasting your ad spend on 18 year olds looking to rent their first apartment, not purchase the million-dollar mansion with acreage you are promoting. Another example would be marketing one-story homes requiring relatively little upkeep to individuals over 60. 

Target by Income

This is where targeting gets a little crazy, but if you go to Detailed Targeting, then Demographics, then Financial, and finally Income, you have the ability to refine your audience based on how much they make. For real estate agents, this is indispensable as it determines the kinds of homes people can afford to purchase. 

Target by Home Ownership Status

If you go to Detail Targeting, then Demographics, then Home, and lastly Home Ownership, you will be presented with three options: first-time homebuyer, homeowners, and renters. This can be very practical when trying to market the right properties to the right individuals, for example, modern, affordable condos in an urban area to first time homebuyers. 

Lookalike Audiences

This allows you to submit a list of previous buyers to Facebook and create a lookalike audience of similar individuals. You can then market your properties to those new individuals. 

Target Individuals “Likely to Move”

Another crazy one, but Facebook actually lets you target people who it deems “likely to move.” If you navigate to Detailed Targeting, then Behaviors, and select Residential Profiles, there is a “likely to move” option.

Build Ads for Specific Target Audiences 

Since people will only click ads that appear relevant, the best ad is a very specific one. 

Connect on a Meaningful Level

Consider the profile of the individual you are targeting and their challenges and goals. Then, think about what emotions you can use to your advantage within that audience. 

Someone with a growing family will respond to different ads and copy than first-time homebuyers and individuals approaching retirement. 

Use Some Psychology in Your Targeting

In sales, it’s always a good practice to put your prospective buyer at ease and make them feel good about themselves. 

Try a compliment relative to their work ethic, how sophisticated they are, how much they deserve a new home, how well they manage their money, their excellent judgement and decision making ability, or how well they support their families. 

An image can send these messages, often better and with a more nuanced delivery. If you show that you share values with your clients, respect these qualities, and demonstrate it properly, you could earn a client through your real estate Facebook ads. 

Use a Captivating Graphic

Real estate is obviously very visual, and what better place to market than on a visually engaging platform. The most efficient ads convey their message through visuals, and with just a few seconds to get someone’s attention, compelling visuals make a potential client stop and look closer. 

Visuals can be more than just a static image, and consider what may interest your target audience, or even what would be captivating enough to go viral. 

Don’t do exactly what everyone else is doing, meaning using an image of you standing in front of a house smiling with some bold text. 

Bring Your Properties to Life with Video

Video is much more effective at capturing people’s attention while aimlessly scrolling through their newsfeeds. Try an aerial tour over a property on the water, or a high-definition shot of a grand entrance followed by shots of luxurious details, such as elegant molding or a beautiful bedroom balcony. 

Use Carousel Ads to Highlight Multiple Properties (or Multiple Rooms in One Property)

Take advantage of being able to use up to 10 pictures or videos in carousel ads by showcasing more than one property, or retarget individuals who have looked at a particular listing but clicked away with more images of the property. 

Appeal to a Lifestyle with Stunning Ad Creative

Appealing to a more elevated lifestyle when selling homes is essential, and make sure to select only the highest quality images for your ads. You can always incorporate this into your ad copy as well, but first impressions of powerful imagery can render more leads and your campaign more successful. 

Write Engaging Copy

Copywriting shouldn’t be full of long sentences, difficult to pronounce words, and abstract concepts, and the priority is to efficiently, clearly, and quickly convey a message. 

Though it can be tempting to use as much of the available text as possible, a shorter, more concise message is normally optimal in eliciting an immediate response. Remember to cover what you are offering and why/how it will help your target audience. 

Be Transparent in Your Ad Copy

Purchasing a home is not only a massive financial decision, but one that impacts an individual’s daily life, making it very personal as well. So, it is imperative to build trust with your potential buyers, and one way to do this is to be as transparent as possible to ensure your lead never feels misled or deceived. 

Make sure to use realistic imagery, be direct in your copy, and tell your potential client exactly what they are getting before they even click by including things like price, square footage, location, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, etc in your real estate Facebook ad. 

Create a Clear, Compelling Call-to-Action (CTA)

The best Facebook ads have a clear goal, and real estate Facebook ads are no different. Someone should not only know exactly what it is that you want them to do, but it should be easy to do so. 

Keep it concise, but make it personal by addressing directly a person’s values and needs. Think back to who you are trying to reach, and reduce clutter that can detract from your CTA in order to increase clicks by over 200%. 

Create a Landing Page (or use Facebook’s native Lead Generation Form)

A landing page is simply where someone lands when they click on your ad and usually on your website. It’s also a unique page created specifically to convert prospects who click on your real estate Facebook ads into clients. This is done by offering a lead magnet, or something of value, in exchange for their email or other contact information. 

A lead magnet could be:

• Offering a home value estimate. This can be done manually or through an automated service. 
• Offering a guide to buying/selling something your target audience would find valuable
• Listings customized to their preferences 

Your landing page should be optimized for conversions, meaning it should be free of distractions from the action you want your lead to take. Feel free to test different versions of your landing page to find the most compelling one. 

Other Ways to Improve Your Landing Page

• Ensure your ad and landing page are aligned to the same objective. 
• Have a clear strategy to convert a prospect to a client. Be specific and intentional regarding the action they should take. 
• Evoke emotions with colors by considering how the colors you are using make someone feel. For example, orange and red buttons tend to get more clicks, but use those colors in moderation.
• Ensure your landing page is mobile and user friendly as over 50% of clicks now come from a mobile device. 
• Focus on the value you can bring them by thinking about what they want and how you can deliver. 
• The image should link to the same place as your call to action as many people click the image instead of the button. 
• Keep things simple with a compelling image, headline, subheading, and brief paragraph. 
• Get rid of the menu as it only serves as a distraction. Don’t bring it back until after they’ve entered their information. 
• Add an incentive to take action on your thank you page. 
• Use a video on your landing page to increase your conversion rate by up to 85%. 

Use Testimonials and Reviews to Build Trust

Though I touched on why gaining trust is essential, letting testimonials from satisfied customers speak for themselves can often be more impactful than bragging about how great you are. The more earnest option always wins. 

Test Your Ads

Testing your ads to find the more effective option is key, and Facebook makes it easy for you to run two different ads with smaller budgets testing a particular variable. 

Track Facebook Analytics

To determine how well ads are doing, monitor these metrics for your real estate ads. 

1. Impressions – the number of people who had your ad show up on their screen. 
2. Clicks – the number of people who have clicked on your ad. 
3. Cost Per Click (CPC) – the cost of your ad divided by the number of clicks. You want your CPC to be as low as possible. 
4. Click Through Rate (CTR) – the number of clicks divided by number of impressions. 
5. Conversion Rate – number of leads your ads generated divided by the number of clicks. A lead is defined as not only someone who clicks on your ad, but also enters their information into your landing page. 
6. Cost Per Action (CPA) – the total ad cost divided by the number of leads generated. This is important as it helps determine the actual cost of generating a lead. 
7. Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) – revenues generated divided by ad cost. You can track how much of your revenue is coming from Facebook by monitoring how many leads come off of Facebook and the commissions from those leads. 

Keep Your Relevance Score Up

Ad relevance to your target audience is key for several reasons.

First, showing your ad to people who unlikely clients can increase your chances of losing money to accidental clicks. Yes, people do sometimes click on ads accidentally. 

Facebook also wants the most relevant ads as possible because it is part of a great overall social media experience. To thank you for trying to stay relevant, Facebook rewards ads with lower costs and better placement. 

Plus, a low conversion rate means you are losing money on your real estate Facebook ads, and more relevant ads increases your conversion rate. 

To keep your relevance up, keep an eye on those metrics previously mentioned. You want to keep your costs as low as possible. 

Plan Ahead to Increase Your Ad Spend During Peak Times

It can be easy to put off marketing when you are so busy with potential home buyers, but you have much better odds of selling if you get your listings out to the correct audience during this peak time. 

Plan ahead and budget to put a little more into your ad spend to reach a larger audience before your competitors get to them first. According to Zillow, the best times are based on climate, generally in the spring. 

Look at What Others Are Doing

I mentioned this already, but it’s important to realize that there are some ads that just work. Visit your competitors’ websites and Facebook pages. If you see an ad from your competition, stop to view the engagement and maybe even click on it to check out their landing page. You can also go to Facebook’s Ad Library, search other companies, and if they’re actively running ads, you will be able to see the ads they are running right now. Make sure to select “Search All” as the “Issues, Elections, Politics” category is selected by default, limiting your search to only those kinds of ads.

Concluding The Beginner’s Guide to Facebook Ads for Real Estate in 2020

Running Facebook ads for real estate in 2020 can be intimidating with so many options available, and without the correct strategy, you could still be throwing your hard earned money away despite using Facebook’s incredibly powerful advertising platform. 

This is why it is imperative to expand your knowledge further than just this beginner’s guide or seek the help of professionals from a digital marketing agency to implement a Facebook marketing plan. 

Black Pine Digital is a premiere SEO and Social Media Marketing Agency based out of Glenwood Springs, CO. Our team has worked with a variety of businesses and real estate agents in the past, whether it’s improving real estate SEO, social media advertising, or implementing a complete web redesign. We specialize in bringing real estate agents qualified leads that are the most ready to buy.