Advertising On Facebook Is A Great Option For Realtors – Here’s A Quick Guide To Getting Started!
Money can go a lot further with Facebook advertising, compared to search engines like Google – where Zillow and Realtor.com tend to dominate the paid advertisements – offering a better ROI in a tight, competitive market.
This is an overall look and strategy for successful advertising on Facebook.
Facebook Ads Vs Promoted Posts
These are the two main forms of advertising on Facebook that Realtors can use.
Facebook Ads are the most advanced form of advertising that Facebook offers, and require an ad manager account in order to use properly. Capabilities here include elements like call to action buttons, customizing ads based on your goals, and even showing up on Instagram.
Promoted Posts, also known as boosted posts, are a more basic form of advertising. In most cases, posts on Facebook will only reach a small part of your audience, perhaps as little as 1% – that means if you have a thousand followers, only 10 of them are even likely to see one of your posts.
Promoted posts will reach a far larger part of your current audience, helping you get enough views (and clicks) to make them more worthwhile.
In short, both of these techniques are good for Realtors. We’re particularly fond of using Facebook Ads to help reach new people and grow an audience, then using Promoted Posts – which are often more affordable – to reach that audience.
Looking for more tips to expand your marketing program? Four Ways to Use Email for Real Estate Marketing
Photos
Facebook isn’t quite as image-focused as Instagram is, but both real estate and Facebook Ads are primarily visual in nature – and you can use this to your advantage.
As a Realtor, you should already be focused on taking great photos of your property, and Facebook’s advertisements give you a chance to use them.
Great pictures of houses get people’s attention – viewers who like what they see will want to learn more, and you can use that to draw in people who are interested in that type of home.
This is particularly true when your ads are targeted to people that you know are looking for a new home – and speaking of targeting things, that’s our next topic.
Our experienced team can create and maintain your social media advertising program so you can focus on your business!
Targeting Users
Facebook Ads allow you to precisely target your audience… and that’s critical to your success in social media advertising.
While most people like to take a look at fabulous homes, your conversion rate will be better if you make sure your posts and ads get in front of an audience that is in the market to buy or sell.
You can target both ads and posts to specific demographics so that the people seeing your posts are more likely to click on them.
Note that your ads don’t have to be all about the properties themselves, though. You can also use targeting when you’re trying to grow your audience, and get interactions such as likes, follows, and click-throughs to your website.
Directing Clicks
Much like Google ads, Facebook Ads don’t require that visitors stay on the site – in fact, they can take visitors right to a landing page where you can encourage viewers to contact you, receive your newsletter, read your blog, or otherwise take any action you want.
This is a great way to grow your contact list so that you can use other marketing tactics such as newsletters and emails to connect with your audience.
Keep in mind that many members of your audience will be on mobile devices, so you’ll need to design your landing pages accordingly. If possible, set things up so they only have to click one button.
Using Analytics
Facebook’s Business Manager provides great analytics. Once you’ve gotten everything set up and have been both promoting posts and running ads, you can see what’s working and what isn’t.
Pay particular attention to who’s clicking through, which demographics are responding, and what pictures or phrases caught the most attention. With those pieces of information, you can adjust your future ads to make use of what works and improve both your clickthrough rate and your ROI.
To make things easier, consider using marketing automation once your campaign is successful enough to pay for it.
You may also want to look at our tips for keeping your campaign going – starting a marketing campaign is easy, but continuing it takes some real expertise.
Thanks for stopping by,
Laura
Breezy Hill Marketing is a Vermont based marketing company that provides Realtor Marketing Services including Realtor Web Design, Social Media Marketing, and Social Media Advertising services. We have experience in real estate marketing and love working closely with Realtors to create successful marketing plans!
