Agency Tested & Proven Ways To Gain More Real Estate Leads With Facebook Ads
In this post, I will share some targeting strategies and ad types that you can use for your real estate Facebook ad campaigns. Paid ads are important for successful Facebook marketing in real estate, because organic posts without paid ads will not be very effective (page posts without ads typically only reach 1% of your fans).
Do Facebook Ads For Realtors Work?
Facebook ads are a successful way to advertise for realtors. The people who are interested in buying or selling homes are more active on Facebook than any other channel. The key to success is having a good strategy, being consistent, and making adjustments to your campaign as needed.
Facebook ads present an opportunity for marketing real estate to a wider audience.
Below are proven tactics that generate results.
We’ve used these tactics in our agency with real estate clients from all over the country to generate buyer listings, seller leads, and create omnipresent awareness with the target audience in local markets to more effectively farm territories.
The advantage for you is that you can implement a tested method that will help you learn more quickly!
To learn more about growing your real estate business through Facebook ads, read our blog post discussing how to market to all levels of the sales funnel and how to use Facebook ads to generate seller listing leads.
3 Core Pillars Of Success For Real Estate Ads On Facebook
- Targeting – the most important component which I’m discussing below (the options available are unbelievably specific and precise – unmatched with anything else you’re doing to drive leads)
- Campaign Objectives – Facebook has more than 10 campaign objectives (Lead generation, Brand Awareness, Engagement, Reach, Conversions, and more)
- Many real estate professionals start with the infamous Boost Post which is part of the Engagement objective – you should stop that now as most of that ad spend is wasted (related post here on why and another post here on Boost Posts vs Facebook Ads, which is better? )
- Your Ad – what type of ad (single image, carousel ad, lead ad, video ad, etc.), and then what is the imagery and copy written into the ad
How you target your ads is the most important factor in whether or not your Facebook ad campaign is successful. If you want to generate leads from sellers and buyers, you need to be very careful about who you target.
Why…?
find the right audience, and you can overcome any number of obstacles If you want to be successful, you need to target the right audience with your ads. Even if you offer a great product or service, you won’t be successful if you’re targeting the wrong people. However, if you can find the right audience, you can overcome any number of obstacles.
The great thing about Facebook ads is that you can direct them specifically towards your target customer base, meaning that you’re more likely to get conversions from them.
This means that there is still an opportunity for you to make an impact on your business by using Facebook ads, and to grow leads that your competitors are missing out on.
Why Facebook Ads For Real Estate Agents?
There is no other marketing platform that can offer the same level of rich, diverse, and deep targeting options as Facebook. This allows you to reach your ideal target customer much more efficiently and avoid wasting ad dollars on people who are not interested in your services.
-Core audience targeting -Demographic targeting -Interest and behavior targeting The three different types of Facebook ad targeting are core audience targeting, demographic targeting, and interest and behavior targeting.
In one minute, I will show you how this is powerful and how selecting your ideal customer from one of the three buckets below will give you hundreds of options.
- Interests – what are people interested in, pages they have liked, and closely related topics
- Behaviors – reach people based on past purchases or intent to purchase (i.e., people looking to buy a home)
- Demographics – include age, income, kids or no kids, parents living in the home, job title, own or rent a current home, and hundreds of other options
Targets can be divided by location, such as zip code, city, or state. They can also be divided by distance from a specific point on a map.
But let’s see how this targeting works…
How laser-focused can you get with your Facebook advertising?
How can this benefit you in relation to generating leads for real estate?
Facebook Ad Tactic # 1: Lead Ads
Lead Ads are a special type of Facebook ad that allows you to capture either buyer or seller leads right within Facebook. Instead of sending traffic off of Facebook, Lead Ads are particularly useful for growing seller leads.
The main benefits of Lead Ads are:
- No need for a landing page since you’re capturing the lead within Facebook
- Easier for the customer to submit their information to you as Facebook will pre-fill form fields (even more important for people on mobile devices that would have a hard time filling out a form on your website)
- Leads can be easily downloaded straight out of Facebook or sent directly to a Google sheet (there are many options)
- Can be set up so that buyer and seller leads are funneled directly into your CRM or marketing automation software (such as InfusionSoft, or email marketing programs like MailChimp)
If someone clicks on your ad, a form will open allowing you to collect any necessary information from them. You can create multiple fields to gather more information as needed.
A home evaluation is when you go to someone’s house to see how much it is worth. If you were running an ad to get people to sign up for a home evaluation, you could ask for their first and last name, email address, phone number, and home address.
Facebook Ad Tactic # 2: Buying A House
Facebook has a category called “Buying a House” for people who are potential buyers.
How fantastic is that?
A person who wants to buy a house is more likely to need a real estate agent than someone who is not interested in buying a house.
Based on the vast amount of data Facebook has collected on users’ behavior both online and offline, the company is able to target specific consumers with ads.
Laser Targeted Facebook Segmentation
If you are a realtor in San Diego, you may specialize in areas such as Poway, Rancho Bernardo, and Scripps Ranch. These areas are mostly upper middle-income neighborhoods with a Household Income (HHI) of $100,000 or more per year.
We can find 170,000 people on Facebook in those areas by pulling zip codes. However, when we narrow our target to potential buyers who are actively interested in buying a house, the number of people decreases.
Facebook Ad Tactic # 3 – Real Estate Investors
If you want to target real estate investors, you can reach those people on Facebook.
Our ad targeting now includes:
- Geography: Targeted San Diego zip codes of the areas that you’re farming for leads
- Age and gender selection
- Real Estate Investing
Facebook Ad Tactic # 4 – Target People That Are Browsing Realtor.com, Zillow, and Trulia
The people who visit these websites are looking for homes, so you can target them with other ads that match their interests, behaviors, and demographics.
The people visiting these sites are good potential leads since they are already interested in real estate.
Facebook Ad Tactic # 5: Use FREE Home Evaluation Ads To Generate Seller Leads
Home evaluation ads are a great way to fill your pipeline with new prospects.
You can generate seller listing leads at a low cost by running a Facebook campaign with free home valuations. By showing people what other homes are valued at, you will pique their interest in their own home valuation.
Facebook Realtor Ad Tactic #6: Testimonial Ads – Satisfied Customers Can Be Your Promoters
Testimonials from satisfied customers can help build trust with potential customers on Facebook.
If you want to generate leads over the long term, you need to build social proof and trust.
There are many different types of testimonial ads that you can create, such as single image ads, carousel ads, video ads, and more.
You can place ads that redirect traffic to a page on your website that contains testimonials from satisfied customers.
Ads that feature customer testimonials are more about establishing a brand identity and creating a presence in the community, rather than selling a product or service.
Facebook Ad Tactic # 7: Set the Campaign Objective & Ad Settings
Click on “lead generation” and name your campaign something like “Buyer Lead Ads.” Then click “Continue.”
The text is saying that Facebook provides different options for advertising, such as increasing traffic, engagement, app installs, or video views. You can also create an ad specifically for lead generation. To do this, go to the “Lead Generation” option and name your campaign. Then, click “continue.”
We will now add our ad settings. On the next page, click on the campaign we created. Under “special ad categories”, click on “housing”. According to fair housing laws, Facebook requires agents to use this category and this category only.
You can also use this page to set up A/B testing for your ads and to optimize your budget. Optimizing your budget will involve spreading your spending across multiple ad sets. However, we will only be creating one ad today, so we will cover ad sets in a later article.
Facebook Ad Tactic # 8: Set Your Contact Method & Ad Budget
call, text, or form. After you select how you want leads to reach out, you’ll need to choose how much you want to spend. On the following page, you will be able to set up your ad budget and change additional settings. The first thing you need to do is select how you want leads to contact you. You have three options for this: call, text, or form. Once you’ve chosen how you want potential leads to reach out, you’ll need to decide on how much you’re willing to spend.
With Instant Forms, your leads will fill out a contact form to get in touch with you.
If a lead chats with your business page, they will be trying to get in touch with you.
Your leads will contact you via telephone call. For the time being, select the “Instant Forms” option.
Next, under “Page”, choose your Facebook Business Page and check the box to accept Facebook’s terms. After that, click on “yes” under “Dynamic Creative”. This will allow Facebook to optimize elements of your ad to get more leads.
Setting Your Budget
Pricing for Facebook advertising is based on a bidding system, which means that advertisers specify how much they are willing to spend to reach a specific audience. Facebook then determines when and how much to bid for your ad placements based on your maximum daily bid.
You can set your daily budget differently for each campaign or each ad set within each campaign. You can also change your budget as you go, but be careful not to change your budget too much once you have an ad set that is generating leads at a reasonable price per lead!
To begin, select a daily budget and a start and end date for your ad.
Facebook Ad Tactic # 9: Choose Your Placements
Here is where Facebook gives you the option to select where your ads will be displayed. You have the choice of having your ads displayed on Facebook, Instagram, or both. Another option is to display ads on Facebook’s “Audience Network” of apps that have agreed to participate. Right now, select “automatic placements.”
Scroll down to “Instant Form” and click on “Create Form.” Here, you can select an image for your lead to see, along with your headshot. You can also decide how many questions you would like your lead to answer in order to contact you. Generally, fewer questions result in more conversions. Alternatively, you can choose to not ask any questions and simply set an appointment.
Facebook Ad Tactic # 10: Set Optimization & Spending Controls
Now you can set optimization and spending controls for your ad campaign by setting a daily budget for your ad spend. Facebook will optimize your ads more quickly if you start at the high end of your budget, and you are more likely to get good leads if you have more ad placements.
The objective of a traffic ad should be set to “Landing page views” in order to generate clicks to the website. For a lead generation campaign, the goal should be set to “leads” in order to capture contact information.
If your campaign is set up correctly, Facebook will show you your estimated daily reach and link clicks. Make sure your target audience is large enough to reach your lead goals, and adjust your settings if necessary.
One bonus tactic –
If you want to increase your lead real estate leads and have a competitive advantage over your slower peers, Facebook ads for real estate are a way to grow your business and local market share.
The targeting options mentioned above are just a small part of what is available.
With Facebook, you can be very specific in your marketing of real estate, and have a lot of freedom in how you appeal to the home buyers and sellers.
Don’t let your competitors steal your customers!
