This post will cover the correct way to create, set up, and run effective Facebook ads that generate leads, listings, and sales at a rate you never imagined.
While it is a bold statement, it’s factual when you understand how to cut ad spending in half while doubling your listings and sales. Facebook ads can turn agents’ or realtors’ profit margins into a steady and significant cash cow when you understand the game and advertising in general.
While the first few sections are about ads in general, it’s critical to understand what an ad is, its purpose, and common mistakes you must avoid if you want to run any type of ad successfully.
Ready to get started?
What are ads?
Ads are known as advertisements. They come in many formats, from print to digital, and each format is for a specific purpose and audience. We will cover three types of ads for clarity. It’s not wasted time and is 100% necessary to understand the difference between different types of ads and what makes them work.
- Product sales ads
- Lead generation ads
- Branding ads
While there are other ad types and formats, we’ll stick to these three for brevity, but before we do, you need to understand that all ads other than branding should not be focused on the agent or the company.
If you are selling products or generating leads, you need to keep the ads about the potential clients or customers and leave branding out of the picture. They have a problem they need to solve. While harsh, they don’t care about you or the company until you and the company give them a reason, which can’t happen until you get the lead. Always remember this fact when crafting ads. Stick to your goal of generating leads and nothing more.
Product sales ads
Product sales ads are the easiest to run. The basic rule is the discount. Advertising agencies understand that the greater the discount, the more sales you make with products. You must target the correct buyers.
Anything under 20% will turn into a nothing burger when selling products. The higher the discount, the more you sell. When you hit and cross a 25% discount, sales start increasing rapidly and with a much higher conversion rate.
Coupon codes are a great tool to use when used correctly. Coupon codes are discounts that close to 7 out of 10 online shoppers search for before making a purchase. Utilize these as you would discounts.
Pro Tip: Once you hit 50% discounts, you need to change your tactics. Merchants across the globe have figured out that if you do a BOGO or buy one get one free. The thought of “Free” is more enticing to the human brain than 50% off, increasing the number of products moved. The word “Free” is the most effective single word in advertising.
Lead generation ads
Lead generation ads are far more complex and can use many tactics to attain the desired results, but most have a similar format. Lead generation ads deliver the correct message to the target at the right time in their buying (or selling) cycle.
Lead gen is monumentally different from product sales because their application is diverse. Generating leads for a CPA is different than real estate, as is advertising for an upcoming webinar or seminar.
B2B ads are a completely different creature. You must show the business owner or upper management that you can add value to their business with whatever you offer, where products such as SaaS or consulting to help a business grow.
We’ll break all this information down specifically for real estate as soon as we cover branding ads.
Branding ads
Branding ads are a long-term, expensive route to take. These ads take 90 to 180 days of advertising to start seeing returns, just like radio and television ads. These are best for medium to large companies.
The ads should focus on the company’s accomplishments and previous clients’ trust in the company. Your goal with branding is to build trust and loyalty based on the company’s previous record. The best and quickest way to do this is social proof. Your happy previous customers’ results are critical to effective branding ads.
Branding ads are the most complex of all ads to run effectively.
Now that you understand the basics, let’s start learning how to do real estate Facebook ads correctly. Let’s establish some rules. First, we will cover what you should never do.
- Never advertise a specific property
- Never add a price range or point
- Never show the agent’s photo
- Never use any branding in an image
You never advertise a specific property because not everyone will like the property you’re offering. You’re giving them a sense of limited options. Keep the images as general and attractive as possible.
Pricing: You never negotiate or give place for negotiation until you are face to face with the clients.
Photos are essential, but they should be model images of a concept, not a particular property type.
Your Facebook page is listed prominently at the ad’s top and sufficient for any branding. Do not add more.
Let’s talk more about images.
Images are instrumental and effective once you understand the power of images and how humans react to them.
Humans are fickle, and as a professional digital marketer of over 20 years, I’ve experienced the results of not paying attention to the imagery used in ads. Slight differences can mean the difference between success and failure.
How to develop your first Facebook ad for real estate
Let’s put an ad together and see how that process works and what image is best to gain listings and sales with one ad. Let’s go after the bigger fish in the pond.
We will target the most stable real estate buyers in the industry. They are the retired empty nester aging beyond their ability to maintain a large home and are looking for something smaller to age in place.
We’re looking for couples that are looking to downsize without downgrading. Villas are a perfect example of what they may be looking for, but you know your local market and where these potential clients are buying.
The key is to sell the downsize without a downgrade. This makes it likely that you get to list their larger, more profitable home while selling them the smaller villa as an example.
It would be a logical conclusion to place an image of a lovely villa or something similar to the featured image of the ad since that’s their ultimate goal. They want to rid themselves of the large home and get into something cozier that they can maintain.
The targeted age should be 55 and older in zip codes with high-end, larger homes and subdivisions. In our example, the quality of the “villa” should meet or exceed that of the house they intend to sell, just smaller.
Most ads on Facebook are national in scope and targeting, so make sure you identify your market area. People want to do business with local entities with local offices. If you live in a city like Orlando, you would be better off running custom ads for each suburb where you do business.
Basic rules for landing pages
Whatever contact or landing page you use, whether an opt-in or a simple form, keep it short, sweet, and to the point. This is not the place to sell; it’s there to gather contact information. Your landing page should be almost as brief as the ad.
Anything extra, and you are talking them out of connecting with you or giving valuable information.
If you’re concerned about writing compelling ad copy, We have fantastic tools that are effective at producing quality copy, titles, and descriptions. We make it easy for average homeowners to sell their homes using our services. Our services are perfect for sites such as Zillow, making the writing process simple, painless, and quick. We have premade Real Estate templates that walk you effortlessly through the process of creating your listing copy.
You could use the same tactics by targeting 1st-time homeowners who have owned their home ten years or more and moving them up to larger homes as this demographic increases their family size and need more room for children. Ten years later, this crowd will be looking for that bigger, higher-end home being sold in our first example.
You know your local market better than anyone, so think about how you can gain a listing and a sale with one lead.
Conclusion
There are a host of different tactics you can use when selling homes and acquiring new listings with Facebook ads. Use the concepts outlined in this article, and you can have a minimum of half a dozen or more highly targeted Facebook ads at scale. If you need help with your Facebook ads or you want to know more about how we can help, contact us today!
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