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:
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.
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.
Hit next after you’ve checked ‘Housing’
Choose Campaign Objective
In the Select Campaign Objective section, select the Lead generation objective.
There are three categories of major campaign objectives:
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.
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.
…..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.
Source: Adexpresso
Then select the radius.
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.
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
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:
You have 11 placement options in total.
Placements happen in two ways:
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:
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
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:
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.
For instance, here are two high-quality images from Shopping Casas.
See the full ad below.
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
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.
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:
Here are the available options for the call to action copy.
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.
As you can see, there are two types of forms for your real estate Facebook ad:
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.
There are two types of questions you can ask:
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:
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.
And this is the customized message that talks about taking a virtual tour of our top listings on our landing page.
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.
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.
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.
How did they pull it off?
By using top-notch real estate Facebook ads like the one below to drive their retargeting ads campaign.
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.
Here is a case study of one of their real estate Facebook ads.
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.
For illustration, here’s one of their successful real estate ads.
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.
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:
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.
Here’s an example of one of their ads that kept its real estate agents busy.
What makes this real estate Facebook ad effective?
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.
