Facebook marketing for real estate agents doesn’t have to be hard, and it doesn’t have to take up all of your time.
With over 2.4 billion monthly users — a stat that grows every quarter without slowing down — Facebook continues to be a juggernaut. Of these 2.4 billion, 1.6 billion check in every day. This is not a market any real estate agent can ignore.
So, how do we get started? We’re going to help you through the basics of Facebook ads, how to get the most out of Facebook’s data collection tools, how to create images and videos that will connect, and how to use quality content to drive leads.
The Basics of Facebook Ads
Facebook ads are easy-to-use and fairly effective. They certainly shouldn’t be the whole of your strategy for Facebook marketing for real estate, but they’re a handy tool that you can get started with right away.
Facebook has an extremely user-friendly walkthrough process for ads that you can find here if you’re ready to get started, so we’ll only over the basics to give you an idea of how they work.
First step is to create a page for your real estate business. Then, navigate to your page and click on “More” in the top bar and “Ad Center.”
Then, you’ll be walked through the following choices:
- Objective — Are you looking for brand awareness, reach, traffic, engagement, conversions?
- Audience — Drill down on age groups, areas, interests, and behaviors.
- Channel — Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network, etc.
- Budget — What’s your daily budget? This determines how many clicks the ad can get before the ad automatically shuts down. You also determine here how long the ad will run.
- Format — Is your ad an image, a video, or a slideshow?
After you make all of these decisions and then place your order — and enter your payment information — you’ll be given access to the Ad Manager to modify and monitor your ad.
Leverage Facebook’s Data Tools
Getting clickthroughs and engagement is obviously the goal, but the best part of Facebook marketing for real estate agents is the access you get to demographic data.
Who is Buying Houses Right Now?
The popular wisdom is that young people don’t use Facebook, having abandoned it for Instagram, Snapchat, and other even newer platforms. The stats might surprise you: 81% of people aged 18-29 use Facebook, as do 78% of people from 30-49. These are both prime real-estate demographics. And what’s more, those with college degrees use Facebook at a higher rate. From that same study, 71% of people who marked “some college” use Facebook, while 77% of “college+” polled use Facebook.
This means people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, with education and money are likely on Facebook. The buyers between 29 and 38 are the largest group of homebuyers right now, making up over a quarter of all home buyers. And they’re almost all on Facebook. Daily.
That’s your demographic. Facebook can help you find them.
Targeting Your Demographic with Facebook Marketing
Your Facebook page and Facebook ads will provide you with analysis of not only who is clicking, but where they are, how old they are, what gender they are, and what they’re interests are. You can then use this information for things like behavioral targeting, customizing your ads and posts to your actual demographic.
Take a close look at your ad campaigns and the clickthrough rates on the videos you post. Who is engaging with them the most? Are they in your target demographic? If they are, make more videos and ads in the same vein as the successful ad. Did you do quick video about local cuisine in the area where you sell houses? Include more interest pieces like that.
On the other end of the spectrum, is your ad being clicked by people outside of your demographic? Too old, too young, in the wrong country? Maybe you put up some content people found interesting, but it probably didn’t help you get any leads. Cut down on that type of content, consider shifting strategy.
Once you have enough data from these experiments, you can make your own custom ad audience on Facebook, and target them directly with future ads.
The key to Facebook marketing for real estate buyers and sellers is to never stop measuring. Make a date every week or month to go over your posts, ads, images, and videos to take a temperature check on what’s working and what isn’t.
Using the Right Images for Facebook
When creating a flyer, postcard, listing, or even just posting a real-estate meme or joke, not every image size will do. Facebook cuts off images that have the wrong dimensions, and it heavily compresses images that are too large. You don’t want blurry, confusing, or partial images on your feed — you want everything as legible and accessible as possible.
First, the cover photo for your page should be in 16:9 ratio with ideal dimensions of 820 x 360, with the most important part of the image as close to the center as possible. This keeps the relevant part of the photo in view no matter the browser or device someone is using.
Making a Facebook event, perhaps an open house? Go with a 1920 x 1080 dimension.
For images you’re posting — say the front of a house, stick to 1080 x 1080. Keeping Facebook images square tends to prevent any accidental cropping. They also look on mobile. Keeping them square also means that if you are using Instagram (which prefers a square image), you’re keeping it compatible across different platforms.
The Power of Video on Facebook
Video gets more engagements than other content channel, and is especially effective for showing off real estate listings.
If you’re not already using video for your real estate marketing efforts, you should: by 2022, 82% of all consumer internet traffic will be video.
But let’s talk about Facebook. The average engagement on any Facebook post is only 3.6%. Not strong. Facebook posts with video engagements, however, jump up to 6.13%. As you can see, you double the chances of engagement right off the bat just by including a video.
People remember 90% of what they see and only 10% of what they read, so don’t neglect your videos.
What Kind of Real Estate Videos Should You Make?
There are many strong strategies for real estate videos that we recommend, but here are just a few to get you going:
- Plan out your video in advance — budgets tend to soar during video production, so figure out ahead of time what you’re going to need in the way of locations, video equipment, lighting, actors, and staff.
- Hire the write person for the job — if you’re not a videographer and don’t have any friends who are, don’t skimp on hiring a pro.
- Include music, dynamic camera movements, and storytelling — make your video stand out and make the potential buyer feel something.
- Steal from real estate marketing videos you like — not the content, but the style.
- Consider videos of the local area — shops, restaurants, malls, parks, etc.
- Embrace relatively cheap but game-changing videography tech — a drone can give you the kind of shots your competitors will envy.
Now, what kind of video should you make to take advantage of the increased engagement rate?
What Size Should Your Facebook Videos Be?
Like images, Facebook prefers certain video sizes. Again, 16:9 aspect ratio is your friend. Or 9:16 if you’re filming something in portrait mode. 1280 x 720 are the ideal landscape orientation dimensions, with the reverse again for portrait orientation.
Facebook won’t take videos over 4GB in size, so make sure your videos don’t bloat out of control.
For 360 videos — which are great for showing off a room or yard — you should stick to 4096 x 2048 for the dimensions, with a maximum file size of 1.75GB.
You’re Not Here to Make Friends
While you’re doing your Facebook marketing for real estate, don’t allow yourself to get obsessed with likes and shares. Any little red notification bubble on social media makes us feel good, but it can distract us from what’s important. Engagement. Clickthroughs. Solid leads that take an interested party to the listing on your website.
If your videos and ads and links aren’t converting, no amount of likes and shares are going to keep you in business.
Instead, focus on treating Facebook as an inbound marketing channel and treating your content accordingly. High-quality content is key — images and videos should be clear, well-lit, and well-framed. Ad copy should be punchy, to the point, and should include a link to your listing as high up in the text as possible.
Embrace hashtags. A post without hashtags can only be seen by your direct followers — and even then, Facebook’s algorithm may hide it from some of them. Hashtags broaden your audience, grouping your post with similar posts that allow browsers with a purpose to find it. Hashtags like #JustListed, #RealEstate, #Listing, #OpenHouse, and #DreamHome are all good ideas for appropriate posts.
Consider locational hashtags as well — if you primarily sell in Austin, include #Austin in your listing posts.
A word of warning — don’t cram your posts with a million hashtags. Aim for three at the most. Facebook can tell when you’re stuffing your posts and will punish you in the algorithms, so keep your hashtags surgical and relevant to the post at hand.
Jump Into Facebook Marketing for Real Estate Today
Facebook makes marketing easy — it’s no surprise, it’s where Facebook makes most of its money.
Every real estate agent should have a Facebook page, they should stay active on it, and they double-check the success of their marketing efforts on a regular basis and tailor their future ads to match.
The amount of data you have access to, and the size of the audience, makes Facebook real estate marketing a strong, necessary strategy for anyone looking to get eyes on their home listings.