This is a guide for everything about Facebook Real Estate Marketing
The Very Basics
(Types Of Advertising)
CPM – Cost Per Mile
In CPM you will pay for every 1000 people see your advertisement. Regardless if they interact with the advertisement or not. Essentially this is good if you know and have data showing that people are going to interactive with your advertisement. If you get a lot of interactions, this is actually the cheapest way to advertise but, also the hardest.
oCPM – Optimized Cost Per Mile
In oCPM Facebook will ‘optimize’ your advertisements for you. This generally cost more then the regular CPM and Facebook doesn’t let anyone know exactly how they optimize your ads but, this method will drive higher engagement usually but, cost more. This is also only available through the power editor.
CPC – Cost Per Click
Cost per click advertising is the safest type of advertising. You only pay for the people who actually click and interact with your advertisement on Facebook. This method generally cost the highest but, is the most efficient.
CPE – Cost Per Engagement
Cost per engagement is when the person does any engagement with your Facebook advertisement. If they were to like, become a fan, share, etc… Facebook would charge you for that engagement.
When starting out you always want to start with CPC (cost per click)
Start With A Goal
There are many options/routes you can go with your Facebook real estate marketing. Let’s go over them and then you can decide which path is best for you right now.
Get Facebook fans for your Facebook page
If you don’t have a lead nurture system in place this is definitely one of the best directions for your advertisement. When someone becomes a Facebook fan, they become your fan for life… Or until they unfan you 🙂
You need to treat these fans like gold. After they fan your Facebook page, add them as a personal friend too and start interacting with them. The key here is to build a real relationship with them and then ask for their business. The relationship comes first.
Capture leads e-mails
E-mails are one of the strongest form of lead generation there is today. Consumers use their e-mail more then they use social media and also take it more seriously.
To do this you’re going to need a landing page and an e-mail capture system on the landing page.
If you have all that setup in place then you should install a tracking pixel provided by Facebook. When you click the option “Website Conversions” it will create a tracking pixel for you to insert on your conversion page and will help you track the ROI of your paid advertisements. This is a little bit more advanced but, has the highest potential for gathering leads and turning them into your listings.
Share/Interact with one of your Facebook posts
Most people are driven away from this type of advertisement because they don’t actually ‘get’ anything from the consumer. No e-mail address, no fan on their Facebook page, nothing.
There are some benefits from doing this though:
Cheaper engagements – It’s cheaper to get users to interact with your posts then it is to convert them or turn them into a fan.
Fans still possible – You can actually still get fans this way, the advertisement is just not optimized for it so it won’t happen as often.
Website clicks still possible – Same as fans – It’s not optimized for this but, it can still drive consumers to your website which will can lead to your e-mail capture system.
You can manually add users as a friend who interact with your post. Send them a message after saying thank you and become their friend.
Some peoples e-mails are available on their Facebook page under the about section. You can get their e-mail from there most of the time and use it for your lead nurture system or however you want.Â
Choices
(Facebook advertising choices)
*All of these advertising options use the choices we labeled above (CPM,CPC, ETC) – Remember always start with CPC
There are more choices then these to advertise on Facebook with but, these are the only ones you need to pay attention to as a Realtor.
Now that you have your goal it’s a little bit easier to understand which type of advertisement is best for you
- Page post engagement – Goal: Interacting with something you posted
- Page likes – Goal: Get fans!
- Clicks to website – Capture e-mails
- Website Conversions – Capture e-mails and track ROI
Targeting
Now you know which ad type, how do you target the right potential lead?
Let’s start with Age, Location, Language:
A good way to set your demographics with this is, take a look at your past clients and fill in this information with their average.
There are a lot of options here but, one that sticks out to me is engaged. What do engaged people do ? They buy homes and start a family. This might be a good way to find first time / new buyers. If you select this option, make sure you design your ad around first time buyers.
*Tip – The more specific your ads are, the more interactions you will have with them. This is a truth for any type of advertising.
Audiences
Think of audiences as people you already know. Here you can upload data files of your leads and advertise to them.
For example:
I have 1000 leads that i’ve generated over the years of being a realtor.
I want to create a Facebook campaign that targets them.
So I upload my leads contact information (e-mails) to an excel spreadsheet, upload it to Facebook.
Now I can create a campaign that only targets them.
Generally speaking, these type of advertisements are always cheaper
What types of advertisements would you run to your audiences?
Grow your Facebook fan page or get them to share something. Since they already know who you are, when they see you popup in their news feed they are way more likely to engage with the post and even share it to their friends.
The Rest Of The Options
Interests
Are you apart of any types of groups? Maybe the rotary club? Target them! The idea here when you’re targeting interests is not that you’re going to be able to narrow down the potential leads to people who want to sell their homes right now.
The idea is that you can find people who you WANT to work with in the future.
If you can get people you actually like to become your Facebook fans or give you their e-mail on a lead capture page, you can start building a real relationship with them. Then when the time is right, ask for their business or at the very least a referral.
Behaviors
This you’re going to have to look into yourself and bring out all the creative juices. They have one section called ‘travel’ and you can potentially target people who are planning on traveling in hopes that they might be moving as well. I would try to target these people with an advertisement about travel with my personal goal of getting the referral.
There is also filters by digital activities and mobile device users. Give it a browse, come up with new ideas and try them out.
Lastly & Most Importantly
How do you actually tell if you have a successful Facebook campaign?
A good rule of thumb is you want to establish under $1.50 per lead and/or activity.
An excellent campaign will get you $0.60+/- per lead but, they are very hard to create, they take time, effort and most of all you gotta start now!
Walkthrough
Creating Your First Facebook Real Estate Marekting Ad For Fans
Start by creating your own fan page.
You can do this at https://www.facebook.com/pages/create/Which will lead you to the choices:
Select Local Business or Place (You are a business)
Select Real Estate and fill in your information
And finish all the setup information it will ask you for (About, profile picture, etc)
Next: The actual advertisement!
Start here:
https://www.facebook.com/advertising – Click Manage Your Ads (top right)
Click Create Ad
Then choose the type – This example was for Facebook fans.
Select The Fan page you would like to grow and it will take you to the page where you set everything up.
Fill in all this information with the information we discussed earlier in the post and you’re done!
If you have any more ideas or need help with anything specifically about Facebook real estate marketing… Leave a comment below and I will add it to the post as well as reply directly to you!
Also don’t forget to share this article! 😀 <3
(ps here is a list of real estate flyer templates )