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by Mike Vestil 

How To Create High-Converting Facebook Ads For Real Estate

If you run a real estate business, you can’t afford to ignore online advertising. 

In particular, Facebook ads for real estate agents present a golden opportunity for growth.

If you have a business Facebook page, then  Facebook ads will be a great addition to it, which can help attract new customers to your real estate business. In this article, we will look at which real estate Facebook ads are most effective and how to create an ads campaign for real estate.

Why Facebook Is Crucial For Real Estate Advertising

Today, 43% of home buyers start searching for homes and properties on the Internet.

Only 18% contact a real estate agent as their first move.

Also, factors such as a pandemic, self-isolation, deteriorating air quality contribute to an increasing number of requests via the Internet. So the number of people who start their home search online is probably much higher now.

Social networks, and specifically, Facebook, are the best channel for attracting customers. Facebook is the most used social network. Today, over 70% of Americans use this platform. Facebook ads allow you to communicate with your customers right where they are, targeting the right regions and people.

And that's not all the benefits.

Facebook also:

  • Gives you direct access to people’s inboxes through Facebook Messenger ads.
  • Has an engaged audience with Facebook users spending up to one hour on the platform.
  • Generates organic growth as people share about your brand on the platform.
  • Centralizes the ad creation so you create and monitor your Facebook campaign in one place.

How To Set Up An Ad Campaign Step-by-Step

In this section, we will look at a step-by-step guide to creating an ad campaign on Facebook. Facebook ads work. Remember, it all starts with you launching a Facebook business page to access the Meta Business Suite where you will find Facebook ads.

Create A New Facebook Ad Campaign

To create a campaign, go to Facebook Ads Manager.

In the ads manager, you can see a list of campaigns you are currently running. Click the green button + Create to create a new campaign.

Create A New Facebook Ad Campaign

You can switch your live campaigns on and off.

Select Special Ad Categories

Real estate Facebook ads are included in the list of special categories of ads.

You need to select "Housing" in the drop-down list under the special categories of ads.

Select Special Ad Categories

Hit next after you’ve checked ‘Housing’

Choose Campaign Objective

In the Select Campaign Objective section, select the Lead generation objective.

Choose Campaign Objective

There are three categories of major campaign objectives:

  • Awareness - Awareness objectives include reach and brand awareness.
  • Consideration - Consideration objectives cover traffic, engagement, app, installs, video views, lead generation, and messages.
  • Conversion - Conversion objectives include conversions, catalog sales, and store traffic.

Our focus here is lead generation under the consideration objective.

Name Your Campaign

Next is naming your campaign.

You can assign a campaign name at the campaign settings level and in the ads manager.

photo

Choose Your Budget

In Facebook ads, it is possible to set a daily budget at the campaign level and a budget limit at the level of a set of ads. You can also set an end date for the ad campaign.

Choose Your Budget

…..ad spend……

Create A New Audience And Add Location

To create Facebook ads with high impact, you need to be clear about your target audience.

Setting up audiences and targeting occurs at the level of a set of ads.

Here, you can enter the location you want your ad to target. Enter the name of the city and the surrounding radius to reach people in the desired geographic location.

Create A New Audience And Add Location

Source: Adexpresso

Then select the radius.

Create A New Audience And Add Location

Source: Adexpresso

Select the people who live here from the drop-down list.

Set Detailed Ad Targeting

In the Facebook special ad category, gender and age settings are not provided.

But customization by user interests is available here.

Set Detailed Ad Targeting

Source: Adexpresso

Targeting the hobbies and interests of the potential buyers you want to reach is crucial. It’s helpful in three ways. First, it makes your adverts more relevant. Second, it makes it easier for you to address their pain point because you know their shared needs. Third, you increase the reach of your Facebook ad.  

From industry to shopping habits, from sports to yoga, you can target virtually any interest your audience has.

For hyper-relevance and higher conversions, merge interest and location targeting with your custom audiences.

Custom Audience

Custom audiences are highly engaged people who have already connected with your business. Think of your most loyal customers, regular website visitors, rabid app users, and people in your email or CRM list. 

Combined, they all represent your ideal customer.

That’s why custom audience based targeting is a smart marketing strategy. By identifying the characteristics of your perfect customer, you cut through the chase and target people with similar attributes.

So your conversions, appointment bookings, and virtual tours of your listings will skyrocket.

Choose Ad Placement

Choose Ad Placement

Next, we will look at ad placements, where your real estate Facebook ads will appear for maximum reach and impact.

Here are the available placement options:

  • Feeds In-stream videos
  • Facebook News Feed.
  • Facebook In-stream Videos.
  • Facebook Marketplace.
  • Facebook Video Feeds.
  • Instagram Feed.
  • Instagram Explore.
  • Stories and Reels, Apps and Sites
  • Facebook Stories.
  • Instagram Stories.
  • Stories and Reels, Apps and Sites
  • Facebook Instant Articles.
  • Facebook Search Results.

You have 11 placement options in total. 

Placements happen in two ways:

  • Facebook can do them for you automatically through their machine learning-driven super machine.
  • You can do them yourself manually by choosing the best places based on your experience and testing.

Experienced real estate professionals and marketers recommend using the manual placement mode. 

From our experience, the top three placements for effective real estate ads are:

  • Facebook News Feed.
  • Instagram Feed.
  • Facebook Marketplace.

Thankfully, you don’t have to guess where the best placements are. You can perform an A/B split test to discover the best spots for your Facebook ad.

Here’s how.

A/B Tests In Ads Manager

  • Head over to the Ads Manager main table. This page lists all of your current ads, campaigns, and ad sets on your ad account.
  • Check the box to the left of the ad set(s) campaign(s) or you want to use for your split test.
  • From the toolbar above, click A/B Test.
  • Select an available variable and follow the on-screen instructions.

Choose The Image And Type Of Ad

The next step is to pick the type of ad you will use in ad settings.

At this stage, you choose the type of advert you will use for your campaign:

  • Single image ads attract new leads by using a high-quality still image to showcase your real estate listings.
  • Video ads add sound and motion to a still image to attract more home buyers.
  • Carousel ads use a video or image to display up to ten homes in one advert.
  • Slideshow ads use video-like ads to show all the angles of the homes you are promoting.

While looking at industry best practices can give you a few pointers on how to design your ads, it’s not enough. It’s always best to experiment with ad types to see which works best for you. 

In real estate Facebook ads, media is vital. 

Selling homes and property has a lot to do with what people see. Media gives potential clients irresistible food for the eyes that touch their senses and inspires them to click through to your landing pages. Stunning media attracts immediate attention in crowded social media streams.

When using media in your real estate Facebook ad, consider the following technical specifications.

  • The optimal resolution for photos on Facebook is 1080x1080 pixels.
  • For photos, use JPG or PNG file types and MP4, MOV, or GIF for videos.
  • If you are using video, your file size must not go beyond 4GB.
  • If you are uploading a video, then its duration should not exceed 15 seconds.

For instance, here are two high-quality images from Shopping Casas.

Choose The Image And Type Of Ad

See the full ad below.

Choose The Image And Type Of Ad

If you are running a video ad campaign or using Facebook’s carousel ad format, high-resolution images are the perfect fit.

Fill Out The Ad Text

Fill Out The Ad Text

After choosing the cover photo, you need to fill in the text fields with compelling ad copy. 

These fields include:

Main Text

Here, the recommended length is up to 125 characters. You can also tag Facebook pages and profiles in the primary text. Plus, you can use visually stimulating emoticons and emojis to attract attention.

Main Text

Nevada Real Estate News adds a dollop of emojis to make their ads distinct on jammed Facebook users’ streams. But make sure the emojis are relevant and test them in a small context to see if your audience likes them.

Headline

The headline is pivotal to the success of your Facebook ad. Most ads with cobbled-up headlines get ignored. Here you can briefly describe the very essence of the commercial proposal. Get straight to the point without wasting words. Here, it is better to enter a short title summarizing the key message.

Description

This is an optional field that can be shown to a highly engaged person. Use the opportunity to explain more about the benefits of your offer so buyer leads keep moving through the commercial.

Call To Action

The call to action is a link or button that tells people the action you want them to take after seeing your ad. There are several options here, one of which you need to choose. In our case, these are our picks of CTAs best suited to real estate agents:

  • See more.
  • Find out the cost.
  • More details.

Here are the available options for the call to action copy.

Call To Action

The best part?

The text variation feature lets you add up to five different text versions for your ad's primary text, headline, and description. This feature is available for a single image, video, or dynamic creative ads that use Page Likes, Brand Awareness, Reach, Lead Generation, Post Engagement, Messages, Video Views, Event Responses, Traffic, App Installs, or Conversions objectives.

Use many text options to spotlight different aspects of your real estate listing. Facebook will display different combinations of text to different target people based on what they're more likely to respond to.

Pretty smart, right?

Create A New Lead Form

To generate leads through Facebook lead ads, you must collect info from potential buyers.

You can then scroll to the Instant Form section and click + new form.

In the Form Type section, select the "More Volume" option and turn off the optional "Intro" button.

Create A New Lead Form

As you can see, there are two types of forms for your real estate Facebook ad:

  • More Volume - Pick this form if your major goal is to increase the number of leads you get. Because the “more volume” form is easy to fill and submit even on mobile devices, most users complete it.
  • Higher Intent - Unlike the “more volume” form whose goal is the quantity of leads, “higher intent” focuses on quality. By adding an extra step for people to review their info before submission, it means only serious people will go through with the form completion. So you get fewer leads but of a higher quality with high intent.

After selecting the more volume form, move to the next step.

Choose Information To Capture

Choose which questions to ask the leads in the form you are creating.

Choose Information To Capture

There are two types of questions you can ask:

  • Prefill Questions - These are basic user information that Facebook auto-fills from their account details.
  • Custom Questions - These are tailormade questions users fill manually. Custom questions include multiple-choice, short answer, conditional, and appointment requests.

Phrase your question well so people can answer in just a few words to prevent high drop-offs.

No matter which approach you choose, you will need the following essential information:

  • Name.
  • Email.
  • Phone number.
Contact information

Make sure you add your privacy policy. If you skip the privacy policy, you will get an error message and you won’t be able to publish your Facebook ad.

Facebook takes data breaches seriously. That’s why you must tell new leads how you will use their info. Use Facebook’s sample privacy policies or create your own.

Thank You Message

After new leads complete filing in the form, they receive a thank you message. To set it up, select the message that appears in the Completion section.

By default, it shows "Thank you", but it's better to change this message to make it stickier.

Here’s the default message.

photo

And this is the customized message that talks about taking a virtual tour of our top listings on our landing page.

Thank You Message

In the description, you can give confirmation or direct the user to the next step. You must seize this moment because the lead has just filled in your form. Your ad thrilled prospective home buyers and they are glad they have connected with your brand. So they are likely to do whatever you ask of them.

Customize the call to action button.

It could be something like "View a website", “see top listings” or a "view list of popular houses" for example.

The call to action button looks like this.

call to action button

Once again, test to see the best performing copy and then stick to it.

With your lead ad form copy done, your real estate promotion is ready for publication.

Publish Your Ad

After all these manipulations and tweaks, the advertisement is ready for placement.

Just click publish.

Facebook moderates promotions before they go live.

They show the status of an ad under moderation in the ad manager.

Here’s a sneak peek of a lead gen form in ads manager.

Publish Your Ad

Once your ad gets the nod, it’s published and you start getting real estate leads to grow your business.

4 Examples Of Effective Facebook Real Estate Ads

We’ve gone through the step-by-step process of crafting real estate Facebook ads.

Let’s look at 4 real-world examples of real estate advertising on Facebook. We will look at the results the ads achieved, and what caused them to be successful.

McCarthy & Stone

McCarthy and Stone is a top UK developer and property management firm for retirement communities.

The company has seen phenomenal results from its Facebook real estate advertising efforts.

  • 4.3x more sales leads compared to the previous year.
  • 2X lower cost per lead for prospecting campaigns using real estate ads.
  • 2x lower cost per lead for retargeting campaigns using real estate ads.
photo

How did they pull it off?

By using top-notch real estate Facebook ads like the one below to drive their retargeting ads campaign.

McCarthy & Stone

This is a powerful Facebook ad because it leads with a high-resolution image of a property the company is promoting. It also hooks readers by opening with a question “ready to make the move?”. Questions are a proven tactic for drawing readers, so they dig deeper. 

They conclude with a straightforward CTA “Learn More”.

Dubai Properties

Dubai Properties is a premium property development company based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. 

Real estate Facebook ads are a part of the reason for their success over the years. The company has landed major wins from Facebook advertising. Here are the numbers from one of their result-getting ad campaigns.

  • 2.2 million people reached with Augmented Reality ad.
  • 50% of units sold in the first two weeks of the campaign.
  • 17% of web leads became qualified leads.
photo

Here is a case study of one of their real estate Facebook ads.

Dubai Properties

Instead of using a regular Facebook advertising ad format, they raised the bar. They used eye-catching Facebook Augmented Reality ads with lead ads to drive traffic, get an avalanche of website visitors, and generate leads.

This gave their target audience a thrilling, immersive virtual tour of their real estate properties. Their ad copy is minimal, so all the users’ attention goes to the captivating HD-quality images.

Newsome Interactive LLC

Advertising company for land development Newsome Interactive LLC knows the ROI-boosting power of real estate Facebook ads.

The company hiked all its buyer leads related numbers by adding Facebook Messenger to its lead generation strategy.

  • Over 13% increase in leads with Messenger.
  • 5% increase in lead quality with Messenger.
  • 65 more property tours scheduled with Messenger.
photo

For illustration, here’s one of their successful real estate ads.

Newsome Interactive LLC

It’s a simple but effective image ad format with minimal ad copy. The photo of a lovely landscape dominates the Facebook ad so users picture themselves with a home there. Not only that. The copy next to the CTA “order your free booklet now” complements the call to action and drives more conversions.

But the ad itself is half the story.

Newsome Interactive LLC

They get an instant response straight to their Facebook Messenger inbox. People then supply their email addresses so they receive the free booklet. They don’t just generate leads by collecting email addresses and stopping there. 

The company continues the conversation by digging deeper into the needs of its specific audience. They ask questions about pricing, property type, and if the lead is a former military/law enforcement member, so they get a discount.

What’s the lesson here?

Most real estate brands focus on the ad itself and forget to optimize for what happens after new leads click the CTA. To get real value from your Facebook advertising campaigns use the latest marketing tools and marketing strategies to optimize your:

  • Landing page.
  • In-app conversations.
  • Emails.

Quintain Living

Quintain Living is a London-based rental agency.

The brand attracted the attention of many potential renters by using the carousel ad format (plus videos) to target website custom audiences in its campaign.

Carousel ads are brilliant for showcasing the key features of a product. In this case, shining the spotlight on every square footage of a home or property.

They posted impressive results through dazzling carousels.

  • 4x increase in leads.
  • 50% decrease in cost per lead.
  • 2.4 more inquiries overall.
photo

Here’s an example of one of their ads that kept its real estate agents busy.

Quintain Living

What makes this real estate Facebook ad effective?

  • Visual Appeal - Combining a series of images in one advert makes for an engaging visual spectacle. And that while showing off the beauty of rental properties. Potential renters are sure to find out more about the advertised properties because they are attractive.
  • Benefit-driven Copy - They packed the ad copy with benefits that counter each major pain point potential renters may have about renting a property. They touched on benefits like affordability, no fees or deposits, and free WIFi that’s ready to go. 
  • Simple CTA - It concludes the commercial with a short, direct call to action “contact us”. The brevity provides a swift transition from Facebook to the company’s website.

They got more conversions by setting up a custom event whenever users clicked an inquiry form and used the data to improve the commercial.

It’s Your Turn To Grow Your Business Through Real Estate Facebook Ads

This was only a short introductory guide to launching real estate Facebook ads.

It’s not enough.

There’s a lot more to do to succeed with Facebook advertising. To reduce the amount of investment in advertising, you need to test often, find new creatives, and launch the most successful ones.

It is worth remembering that it is better not to stop there. There is always something to strive for. But one thing is certain. If you stay focused and execute well, your business will grow in leaps and bounds with Facebook real estate ads.

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About the author 

Mike Vestil

Mike Vestil is the author of the Lazy Man's Guide To Living The Good Life. He also has a YouTube channel with over 700,000 subscribers where he talks about personal development and personal finance.

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