Have You Started Your Facebook Ads Yet?

This post was originally published on the Home Value Leads blog.

Facebook is such a great way to hone in on your target audience for real estate ads, but it can be pretty confusing on how to set them up. But once you place your ads, they can definitely work for you to get more leads and even sales for houses on your roster.

How to Set Up a Facebook Ad

1. Go to Facebook.com/Ads to place an ad.
2. To pick your target audience or who you’d like to actually see your ad, make sure you know the demographic of the group or the zip code of the neighborhood you are trying to reach. Knowing your targets’ activities and interests combined with a city will yield a more effective reach. It’s good to be focused but not get too narrow so you capture prospects who may be interested in selling their home or buying one in another area of the town you cover. Also, Facebook is a stickler about audience sizes being too small and won’t let you post your ad until you increase your audience reach. You’ll want to, of course, target both men and women. Studies show that women use social media more for these kinds of sales and will likely be the decision maker on the purchase side while men will likely be the ones to decide on selling their homes.
3. If you are selling a house and it’s near an amenity like a golf course, running track, hiking trail, shopping area, etc., then make sure you target those hobbies in the interest section of your targeting parameters.
4. For capturing sellers, it’s good to include information in your copy that also suggests that if they know someone looking to sell to get in touch with you. Sellers may have a real estate agent they are working with, but talk amongst their social groups might inspire friends to sell and to work with someone like you who specializes in their neighborhood or type of home they are selling.

Ad Type and Bidding

1. The goal of your ad is to get them to click through to your website, so you’ll want to select “Click-through to Website”. You may want to provide a landing page that will give them more information about how you can help, what you can do and an easy way to contact you. If you have a HomeValueLeads.com landing page, for example, then you will want to, of course, direct them to that page. The copy on your page should then reflect a question such as “Are You Thinking of Selling Your Home?” or “Have You Wondered How Much Your Home Can Sell for Right Now
2. Bidding is the next step and where it can be a roadblock for many real estate agents. Impressions mean that your target audience will have the ad displayed on their feed but not necessarily that they will see it. Plus, you can’t capture them if they only see your ad but aren’t taking action by clicking on it.
3. Bidding above your top range of pricing that Facebook shows will make sure you are as visible as possible, so for testing’s sake, definitely go for that price.
4. Daily or lifetime budget? It’s best to set a daily budget so that you spread your budget across multiple days. If you do lifetime, once your budget runs out, then your ads will stop running.
5. Finally, make sure your ad is in the Newsfeed of your target audience’s personal pages, NOT the right column. Placement in the actual Newsfeed ensures your ad looks just like your target audiences’ other posts from their friends and family, yielding three to four more clicks more than if you put your ad in the right column.

Content

1. Images of attractive houses or one that you are selling will give your target audience the most visual, immediate information about what kind of houses you sell. A logo or even your personal photo (which I’m sure is great) won’t tell them much. You want to maximize the limited space you have for your ad, and pictures do this best.
2. In your same campaign, you’ll want to change your image to appeal to different audiences. This will also help you A/B test different images and even copy by changing just one thing about an ad ever so often without changing your audience to see what kind of response you get.
3. When it comes to Facebook ads, short and sweet is the most effective. A call to action that is focused and answers any prospective qualms a seller may have works well. For example, “Click here to find out how your house compares to others in the market. Get your free report today.” Once they go to your landing page and send in their email with other info, your system should send them the report they need right away.
4. Your headline has to be eye-catching so people know exactly what they will be getting or what to do. Ask a question or mention right away what your offer is.
5. In the Advanced Options section, include copy in the Newsfeed Link Description. This will give them a tiny bit more information such as how to get in touch with you, a fact about the price of houses you are selling, the area of town you specialize in or the types of properties you focus on.
6. Check the “Social Activity on the Ad” box so when others like your page, their friends will see it on the ad that appears on their newsfeed and feel more compelled to like it or take action, too.

So what’s a good amount to spend? Start with $20, daily, pay-per-click. To figure out your cost per lead, divide how much you’ve spent by the number of leads for that same period. Even more importantly, figure out your cost per conversion to a client by dividing number of clients yielded from your ads by how much you spent for the ads up to the time the last client clicked on your ad.

Some parting tips:

• Make sure you review your ad’s analytics daily. You’ll want to see how your ad is performing and adjust accordingly.
• Test your ads often. Test two ads in the same campaign to the same audience but try a different picture or different copy. The point is to change just one element and keep all others the same in order to see what aspect of the ad yields the most performance.
• Update your landing page as often as you need to. Nothing worse then leading people to a broken link or to a page that does not have the correct contact info or stats!
• Don’t forget – following up via phone, email, text or mail is still important to do! You want leads but only YOU can convert them to actual clients!