We've all been logged into Facebook and then off to the right of our page seen one of those little "sponsored ads", right?  They are often times things or services that you are interested in, rather than just vague, off-the-wall ad slams.  How do they do that?  It's simple, but genius at the same time.  Facebook uses the information that we have all entered into our "Likes / Interests" area to send you ads that it thinks you might respond to.

As an example, for my purposes, I decided to create an ad for one of my online networking associations, thinking to boost traffic to the website only at the time.  That happened, definitely...I set up the ad so that I only paid on click thrus...which in the less than 24 hours, I received 126 click thrus...scratch that....targeted click thrus to my site.  This association targets female real estate agents, so I set up my ad this way:

• who live in the United States
• age exactly 18 and older
• who are female
• who like national womens council realtors, real estate buyers agent council rebac, real estate sales or realtor

Now...for the unexpected...  I was traveling yesterday once I had set this ad in motion and basically forgot about it. That is, until I thought to check my emails!  All of a sudden I was receiving newsletter subscription notifications for people that had clicked through my ad to visit the networking association website and ended up signing up for my newsletter!  I hadn't anticipated that response at all!  Based on the targeted click thru ads that I paid for the clicks on, I received 17 newsletter sign ups.  That may not seem like a ton, but that makes it about a 13.5% conversion rate, and I think that is a pretty good return on my investment for sure!  According to CoolerEmail, an average subscription rate is 5%, so I am happy with my results.

According to my research, approximately 7% of newsletter subscribers will be converted into buyers...which means that based on my membership fees (which are really modest compared to the commission that could be earned on a real estate sale), my ad campaign will pay for itself...and I will receive a 252% return on my ad campaign investment!  (results will vary for each ad campaign, these numbers should be considered an example of what a really good result would be and are the best case scenario of what my end results could be from this test.)

So, start thinking about if you are missing out on what could be a really lucrative form of advertising for your real estate business.  There are all sorts of ad parameters / filters that you can set in your ad campaign, you could target your local market so fiercely that you just might be surprised at the results.  Please let me know if you go this route and what your results are...or feel free to post questions, I am happy to answer if you need help setting up your campaign.  Good luck and enjoy your ROI!

OH - if you are having trouble figuring out your conversion rates, etc...here is an excellent page that gives you lots of formulas to get you started.